The fortune is in the follow up... I think most people in business have heard this over the years. And I've found that this statement is really true when you have an engaging follow up system in place. And that's what we're covering in today's post, your system and how it's working (or not) to help you sell more products and services.
The big question in the minds of many business owners is, how do you get to the point of "making a fortune"?
In my experience it has involved setting goals, using important tools to automate tasks and making following up a priority that is manageable, even if you're brand new, even if you have a hectic schedule. Today we'll show you the items needed to make follow up work for your business.
Your Results Are Falling Flat and You're Hearing Crickets
You're probably reading this because your results are limited, or you’re not getting results (leads, sales, repeat business) at all. That's okay, this article will give you solid tips and resources you can use to turn things around.
If you’re hearing crickets, it could be the result of your follow up system. More plainly put, your email marketing system (if it exists) may suck.
As a new business owner it took me a while (way too long) to figure out that email is the follow up system that businesses use to get real results.
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My Lightbulb Moment
Before my light bulb moment, I looked at email as a nice to have and I did little more than send the standard, "thank you email" when someone downloaded something, joined my list or made a purchase. After that, there was nothing.
Then the light bulb 💡 came on and I realized how much money 💰 I was leaving on the table.
I found out that social media and sales funnels helped me generate leads, attracting potential customers to my business. But I was leaving the "fortune" on the table, by not following up on a regular basis.
This is how to avoid the pitfalls and win more customers: Once someone becomes a lead, the ball is in your court. ⛹🏼♂️It's up to you to provide helpful, engaging, valuable follow up. This content builds your relationship with new, potential and existing customers.
Timely, consistent, engaging, interactive, valuable emails are like the glue that holds your business relationship together over time.
It wasn't until I started going beyond the generic thank you emails, that I understood the power it wielded.
Studies have shown that email is still the most direct way to reach customers. And it’s the best way to follow up with your ideal customers. For example, according to Hubspot, 60% of respondents say that marketing emails have influenced their purchases.
Believe it or not, according to The HubSpot Blog's 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report, at least 91% of the four billion current daily email users check their email every day. That's a huge, ever-growing audience.
Just the idea of your potential customers “checking” their email, each day makes it worth it, in my opinion, to get your messages in their inbox.
Email Marketing is Competitive
The challenge with email is that EVERYONE receives it. On any given day your business is competing with lots of other businesses. An estimated 347.3 billion emails are sent each day around the globe.
In addition to getting your emails delivered to potential customer's inboxes, you've also got to motivate subscribers to actually open and read your emails. And this is where the challenge lies.
This is why it's important to send an email to new subscribers as soon as they subscribe. When someone subscribes to get your free resources or lead magnet, they know your business and have an interest in what you have to offer.
Waiting a day or two afterward, or even a week after somone signs up, to send a follow up can mean that your subscriber has forgotten all about you and won't open your emails.
Email follow up should be a BIG part of your business process to engage people who are actively looking for what you have to offer. And the great thing about email is that it can be automated, which means you can set them up once and send them without additional interaction from you.
Your Primary Area of Focus When Talking to Subscribers
The goal in talking to email subscribers should center around these factors:
How to Make Your Fortune
This tutorial is needed because follow up is an area where a lot of businesses fall off the wagon. We typically do a great job of reaching customers, making a connection that resonates... and then nothing happens.
For example, a lot of us have lot's of followers and people who engage on social media, but few if any of those followers are actually turned into leads and customers.
Social media followers like, comment and share, and then they move on to the next post in their feed.
There are also people who visit our blog, marketplace listings, interact with us in forums and discussion groups, but they take a look, maybe they like what they see, but for whatever reason, they never take the next step in our buying process.
The connection we make on various social platforms is broken once that initial interaction is over.
The business owner and potential customers go their separate ways until another post or social interaction is created where the entrepreneur and potential customer repeat the process all over again.
The problem is, that there is no glue that holds them together.
When starting a business, the goal is to get the sale and as many sales thereafter as possible. That's a great goal to have, but if you're not thinking about what happens before the sale, you're overlooking a lot of potential customers.
There's a process, (also called a customer journey or sales funnel), that happens, based on what your potential customers are looking for.
You have to ask, are they looking to buy something or are they looking for information? Do they have questions that need to be answered or are they conducting product research? If so, they may like your product, but they may not be ready to buy. That doesn't mean they will never buy... it just means they aren't ready to buy right now.
If you want to sell lots of products, you have to find a way to keep the communication going no matter where they are in their buying journey. Otherwise, that means you have to work hard to find that next customer and make the sale. Email can fill in the gap between the first interaction and the day your potential customers are ready to buy.
Would you rather sell only one product to a customer or would you rather sell many products?
It's much easier to sell something to someone who has bought from you before, versus starting all over with selling to a new customer.
Spreading the Glue That Builds Relationships and Sets the Stage for Repeat Buyers
How do you convert more people from social platforms, groups and forums into customers? By setting up email follow up systems that do the heavy lifting.
This means creating a process (journey/funnel) that gets a potential customer from those outside platforms to a platform you have more control over. Once they are on your platform, you can give them information that moves them into your sales process, no matter where they are in that process.
So the question you should ask yourself is when your audience (either in person, social media or otherwise) likes what they see and your message resonates with them, what should happen next? Do you have things in place that take potential customers to where they can get more information?, what should they see or hear?... what actions should they take?
How do interested visitors or potential customers take the next step to learn more? What happens if they like what they see, but they're not quite ready to buy?
Do you have a sales process? If so, you should have a plan that helps your ideal customers consume content no matter where they are in the buying process.
Once you have come up with the action you want them to take, create a plan that includes a way to deliver or walk people through the next step in your sales process. Make your plan simple, and easy for your ideal customers to follow.
The actions you take when you receive feedback that your message is connecting with your audience (or not) will set the tone for the rest of your business relationships.
So it's important to build relationships (spread the glue) that will help your ideal customers reach their goals, and allows you to reach yours.
Factors to Include When Following Up:
Common Missteps Business Owners Make When Following Up
Today we will talk about mistakes you might be making with email and what to do to turn things around. If these scenarios describe you, here are some things you can do to take action.
- You feel that you don’t need a list, so you don’t have an email list at all. While you may feel that things are going along fine today, things are also becoming more crowded and competitive. At some point what you're doing now may dry up. You need as many ways to connect with your ideal customers as possible, earning passive income. Email is a way to build real relationships with real people. It can also deliver an increase in sales and passive for your business.
- You are not emailing your list on a regular basis. We know that life gets hectic... And while emailing your list once in a while is better than never at all, if your emails are random and contain information that your audience is not interested in, you may be doing more harm than good.
Having a structure and a regular schedule let's your audience know when they can expect to hear from you, makes you look more credible and reduces the chance that your messages will be unseen and drowned out by other competing messages that wind up in your customers and potential customer's inboxes. - You're sending fluff emails because you're not sure what your audience is looking for. Knowing who you're selling to is the key to improving your ability to connect with more people and earn more money. Knowing your ideal customers and performing market research and the data you receive from your blog, social media campaigns, from tools like Google Analytics and email marketing are the key to knowing and understanding your audience.
People can see through the fluff and bull, and they will begin to not open your emails, eventually unsubscribing because they are not getting what they signed up for. - You hate writing and have no idea what to say to your audience. There are lots of tools and resources that are available to help you write better emails. Consider using AI to write better emails, generate unique ideas for campaigns, create witty headlines and subject lines, bold calls to action and persuasive preview text that are spot on with your audience.
You can also use the free guide provided in this article. The guide comes with 41+ email swipe files that cover a range of topics that can be used to communicate with your audience in no time to make more connections.
Tweak the templates and make them your own by adding your wording, changing the fonts, colors and images. - You don’t know how to use automation to manage your list. There are also tools, like the Auto-Sell Architect workbook that will walk you through setting up and using automation to create sales funnels that work to build your business 24/7 while you focus on other things.
This workbook asks probing questions that will walk you through establishing goals, showing you what to look for in an email marketing provider, how to create a valuable lead magnet, how to set up landing pages and more.
The workbook is an excellent companion to the free email training tutorial that shows you all the steps needed to set up a simple, yet powerful automated email marketing system.
Whether you're selling your own products, or affiliate products, you can increase your revenue when you know how to use email marketing the right way. If your email marketing provider provides automation, you can use it to create emails that you can set, forget and tweak to improve over time. Using the data provided by your email marketing provider will give you feedback on what's working. You can do more of what's working and less of the things that are not.
By using automation, you'll be able to reach your audience, drive traffic to your platforms and build solid relationships with real people who will love hearing from you and take action when you have something to offer. - You become discouraged when people unsubscribes or only a few people open your emails. When people unsubscribe or fail to open your messages it means they don't perceive that they are getting value for whatever reason. Your subscribers can perceive that they won't receive value based on your subject line or possibly based on topics discussed in previous emails.
It can be that they received value when they signed up but it's possible that their needs have changed over time.
One of the things that can result in your emails not being opened can have to do with your subject line. Subject lines are very important when it comes to getting emails opened.
Unsubscribes can also be the result of trying to sell too early in the relationship or not delivering anything except sales emails without adding value. - You don’t want to be salesy or intrude too much on your subscribers. You're in business to make money and being shy or holding back on reaching out will not serve you well.
While you don't want to run down, SPAM or pester potential and existing customers, you have to reach out to your audience to make a connection. Read on to learn what you can do to balance the frequency of emails sent to your audience.
Without the connection to leads and customers that are possible when you have a solid email strategy it can be harder to have that ongoing interaction that builds trust and makes it easier for customers to work with you. - You're new to online marketing and you don't know where to start. That's easy. Just sign up and you'll have access to a deal on our eBook, that shows you how to build an engaged email list. Read the eBook and take action on what you learn.
Items Needed to Build and a Follow Up System
Optional Items (Or Items That Can Be Added Later)
Actions You Can Take to Overcome Missteps to Reach and Connect with More Customers
If you've received our eMail series, you have a step by step guide to building a simple, automated email marketing system. We also discussed the different types of emails you can send to your audience. In addition to the 15+ ways to promote your business using email, you can take the next step to incorporate these five activities into your business using email.
1. Change Your Mindset: It's important to recognize the power of building trust, and relationships when building a business. Building a business is not just about selling products, its about those relationships and how your products, the environment you create and the benefits you provide for your audience, helps others reach their goals. It's about making the connection between that makes sense to your audience and incorporating the things into your business moves them ahead.
Set Goals: Setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) is crucial to setting up a follow up system that helps you excel in reaching your income goals. SMART goals will help you focus on what's important, enabling you to break down big visions into actionable steps. They ensure progress can be tracked, making it easier to measure success and identify areas for improvement. Ultimately, SMART goals helps you prioritize efforts, maximize resources, and achieve long-term success.
2. Personalized Follow-Up Emails: Send personalized follow-up emails to leads and customers based on their interactions with your business. For example, with a welcome email series, according to HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats, more than 8 out of 10 people will open a welcome email, generating 4x as many opens and 10x as many clicks as other email types. This means that your welcome series is your big opportunity to spread the glue and build the relationship that sets the tone for your ability to connect and engage with potential customers going forward. You only have one opportunity to make a great first impression and this is it...
If done well, you will build an audience of people you can engage with on a regular basis. People who, when you send an email will open it with anticipation and take action. They will recommend your business to their friends and give you reviews and testimonials as they use your products and services.
If not done well, your potential customer will never become a paying customers. They will go on his or her separate way and the connection will be broken.
So a value packed, helpful, automated welcome follow up series should be included when someone takes action with your business. If you have people who browse articles on your blog, provide a compelling way for them to sign up and become part of your community.
If you have people who like, comment and share your information on social media, create a landing page that invites them to sign up for your email list.
An opt-in form or a strategically placed exit intent pop up will do the trick on each blog post. Once potential customers sign up, send a personalized welcome email that addresses them by name. It’s also important to reference specific actions they've taken or products they've shown an interest in.
If someone visits your shop and takes a look around, or places something in their cart, be sure to send a short branded, personalized message that follows up with them. These are called transactional emails and while most email marketing providers will send out generic messages for you, the goal is to make these messages short, but personalized and specific to your brand.
According to the same Hubspot report mentioned above, abandoned cart emails convert 3x more than other automated emails.
If your email marketing provider will allow you to edit transactional emails, it might be a good idea to make them more personalized and brand centered.
Whether your follow up emails are from your blog or your shop, it’s important to use these emails to provide valuable content, answer questions, or offer exclusive deals tailored to their needs.
3. Regular Check-Ins: Ensure that you have regular check ins with your audience by setting up automated emails. This would be one of the systems you set up that makes your business more efficient.
Setting up automated emails takes the task of figuring out who signed up and manually sending out emails off your plate. It ensures that your audience is receiving a value packed welcome message on auto-pilot that brings them into your community and explains how your process works.
One of the factors that you should consider when selecting an email marketing provider involves selecting one that allows you to set up automation.
We use Brevo and aWeber, for email marketing, and we recommend them to our new business owners.
Schedule regular live Q&As, provide FAQ sections if you have a blog, promote your support team and let people know how to get in touch with your business if they need help. Include links to this information in your follow up emails.
Send thank you notes and cards via email… to show your gratitude. Check in with leads and customers to see how they're doing and if they need any assistance.
This could also happen through phone calls, video calls, or even in-person meetings depending on the nature of your business and relationship with the individual. These check-ins show that you genuinely care about their success and can help identify any issues or opportunities for further collaboration.
4. Social Media Engagement: Promote your email list on social media, letting potential followers know the benefits they will receive when they join. The goal is to move someone from a social media follower to a lead that you can follow up with.
Once someone becomes a lead, invite them to engage with your brand on social media platforms. Take polls that you can also announce using email marketing and social media) to find out which social platforms your audience hangs out on.
Engage with leads and customers on social media platforms where they are active. Like, comment, and share their posts, and respond promptly to any messages or comments they leave on your own posts. Highlight top engagers on your posts and pages to show appreciation. This two-way interaction helps to build rapport and keeps your business top of mind.
5. Exclusive Events or Webinars: Host exclusive events or webinars for your leads and customers where you can provide valuable insights, industry updates, or training sessions.
Announce your webinars and events using email marketing, inviting your subscribers (leads and customers) to join you for the event. Offer them early bird deals on things that you might be providing during your events as an incentive to attend.
This not only positions you as an authority in your field but also creates a sense of community among your audience. Encourage participation and interaction during these events to foster meaningful connections.
5. Surveys and Feedback Requests: Use email to regularly solicit feedback from leads and customers through surveys or feedback requests. This demonstrates that you value their opinions and are committed to continuously improving your products or services based on their input. Act on the feedback received to show that their voices are heard and appreciated.
Wrapping It Up
Email is a proven method for follow up and relationship building that successful businesses are using to earn consistent, passive income online. Email makes things like driving traffic, making announcements, sharing knowledge and selling products possible.
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