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What is an email reactivation campaign? And can it benefit your business?

Your email list is full of customers who've previously bought from you. For some reason they stopped. I’m going to show you how to entice them back. It all starts with a simple email reactivation campaign.

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What is a reactivation campaign?

A marketing reactivation campaign is an email campaign that targets three types of prospects:

1. Dormant or inactive customers (clients who left or haven’t bought in a while)—these we want to REACTIVATE.
2. Prospects who, for some reason, didn’t convert—these we want to RE-ENGAGE and activate.
3. Existing customers—these we want to RETAIN.

The purpose of a reactivation campaign is to stimulate a conversation. It’s to get your prospect to put their hand up and say, “Hey, I’m still interested in what you’re selling.”

For the reactivation emails to work, you need to understand why they stopped buying from you in the first place. And you need a strong offer to win them back. Check out the importance of having a message that connects here.

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Why you need an email reactivation campaign

As business owners, it’s tempting to put all our marketing dollars into attracting new customers. But what about those customers who’ve already bought from you?

And here, I’m not talking about those customers who are raving fans—the ones that continue to support your business year after year. I’m talking about the one-time purchases. The customers who, for some reason, haven’t done business with you again.

Do you know why they stopped buying? More importantly, do you know what percentage of these dormant customers make up your email database? The truth is, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing one. This means your database of email subscribers is a gold mine.

Email is incredibly powerful. It generates $38 for every $1 spent, making it more effective than social media or any other advertising medium. So the logical solution is to implement email campaigns. But not just any campaign will do.‍

You need to implement an email reactivation campaign.

‍But first, I’ll explain why customers stopped buying from you and which ones you want to reactivate. Then I’ll tackle how to implement a reactivation campaign that helps you win back inactive subscribers and make money.

Three reasons why customers stop buying

1. You did something wrong

Yes, as much as we all hate to admit it, sometimes we make mistakes, and these mistakes have repercussions. It could be that you delivered poor customer service or your product wasn’t a great fit, whatever. The result was you lost a paying customer.

2. They got a better deal elsewhere

There’s a large base of customers who are price-shoppers. They’re always on the lookout for the best deal. They’re not loyal, and they’ll never be. It’s a race to the bottom. So if you win a customer on price, you’ll lose them on price.

3. Apathy

This is probably the most typical reason for customers leaving. You neglected the relationship. You weren’t nurturing or building it, and sadly, it had turned into a purely transactional relationship.

During this time that they haven’t heard from you, their needs have likely changed. A competitor reaches out, offers a solution that meets their needs today, and there goes your customer.

If you want to retain customers or win back inactive subscribers, you need to make deposits. You can’t just make withdrawals.

I want you to think of your relationships in terms of capital. How can you make more deposits? How can you make the relationship more valuable both ways? When you get this right, you retain customers. And let me tell you, a lifetime customer is invaluable.

So email campaigns are a great way to win back inactive subscribers and get them engaging with your emails. But before I get into the six email reactivation campaign examples, let’s decide which customers you want to come back.

Three things to consider before embarking on an email reactivation campaign

You now know that there are customers within your database who will always buy on price. These are suboptimal customers and aren’t worth investing your time, energy, and money in.

So you need to decide whom you still want and whom you don’t want. There are three criteria I like to use:

1. Are they fun to work with?
2. Are they profitable? Can they afford your services?
3. Do they value what you do?

It's important to keep these questions in mind when you begin the laborious task of pruning your list of email subscribers.

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Pre-reactivation campaign work: Getting your database ready

Now that you know which type of customers you want to target, it's time to turn your attention to your database.

Chances are it’s a mess.

If you’re like most small business owners, your customer data is probably housed in various locations: your email, an excel spreadsheet, a drawer full of business cards, and a CRM.

I like to use Ontraport, but I've also used ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.

The choice of CRM depends on your list size.

Step 1: Pool your data into a single location, preferably a CRM system.

Make sure to remove all duplicates and triplicates (especially if you’re grabbing data from multiple locations).

Step 2: Start tagging and segmenting your data.

Reactivation campaigns fail when the message you’re sending isn’t relevant to the receiver. Effectively tagging your database of email subscribers ensures that you can personalize your reactivation emails.

Also, according to Campaign Monitor, business owners using segmented campaigns report a 760 percent increase in revenue. So segmenting is super powerful.

So you want to tag and segment your data by:

• Geographic location
• Demographics
• Industry
• Customer size

Step 3: Sort your database into three types:

1. Prospects
2. Dormant customers
3. Active or existing clients

Step 4: Run your email database through a validation system.

You’ve got hundreds, if not thousands, of email addresses that don’t exist.

Perhaps the prospect made a mistake when entering their email address. Maybe they moved companies, and their account was deactivated. Or they got married, changed their name, and created a new email address.

Running a validation test like Never Bounce allows you to pull out those email addresses that no longer exist and delete them.

This allows you to start over with a healthy database.

Once you’ve segmented your database and deleted emails that don’t exist, you’re ready to launch a reactivation campaign.

Remember, the goal of a reactivation email campaign is to get a reply. You want to start a conversation with your inactive subscribers because conversations lead to conversions.

So here are six tried-and-true ways that you can use email to rekindle relationships with inactive subscribers and move them one step closer to making a sale.

Try these 6 EMAIL reactivation campaign examples

1. The 10-word reactivation email

Invented by Dean Jackson from I Love Marketing, the 10-word reactivation email is an incredibly successful way to revive dead leads. And it’s so simple.

Here’s an example:

Subject line: John…

Are you still looking for a 50-ft yacht?

Or whatever you’re selling. This format is golden for any business, and it guarantees great open rates.

Just don’t be tempted to include more information in your engagement email. So forget the deals you’re running, upcoming workshops, whatever. I’d also suggest you hold off on adding graphics or images.

‍Why it works

‍It's short and sweet and ends with a question. The brain, for some reason, can't ignore a question. Also, sending a plain text email feels more personal, and people love personalization. So give this reactivation email a chance.

2. Email a personalized video

Shoot a personalized video using Loom or Bon Jovi. Then add a thumbnail of the embedded video in your email. And don’t forget to personalize your email subject line.

According to Yes Lifecycle Marketing, emails with personalized subject lines generated a 50 percent higher open rate than those without.

Here's an example video script:

I was going through my contacts recently, and I noticed your name. And I remember we were having a conversation last year about buying (XYZ).

Is this something you're still open to or something that you're looking at right now?

I'd love to re-engage in a conversation with you over email.

This kind of reactivation email is also great for cold prospecting.

A web designer could share on Loom and create a short video highlighting some of the major concerns on a prospect’s website.

Here’s an example of a script for cold prospecting:

Hey (Name),

I came across your website, and I can see you're doing some really awesome things.

You've got a great call-to-action here, and you've got email opt-ins, but I noticed the design isn't optimal for mobile use.

You know most people now visit websites on their phones, so I'd suggest a few things:

• X
• Y
• Z

By the way, we're running a webinar next week on website usability. I'd love to invite you to join. It's completely free. There's a link in this email to our webinar. Look forward to seeing you.

Why it works

‍Sending a video is personal but it’s also engaging. People are more likely to watch a video than read text.

In fact, MarTech Advisor’s 2017 data noted that embedding a video in your engagement email can result in a 300 percent click rate. So it’s definitely a strategy worth investigating and implementing.

3. Send a Thank You or Sorry or We Miss You email

This is probably the most recognizable reactivation email campaign. We’ve all seen those emails in our inbox with the subject line “We Miss You” or “Thank You.”

Here’s an example of an email script:

Hey (Name),

First I'd like to thank you for being one of our clients. It's people like you who make our business what it is today.

And, second, sorry. You see, I noticed since your last purchase we haven't done enough to get you back here. Perhaps we neglected the relationship or did something wrong, and we'd love to win you back.

So here’s a promo code or offer to put towards your next purchase.

Why it works

‍You can run campaigns like this online or by regular snail mail. And it works because you’re acknowledging that you haven’t done enough to keep your customer happy in the first place.

You might not have done anything wrong. It could just be apathy on the part of the customer. But by appealing to their ego, they’re more willing to give you a second chance.

4. Send a physical gift card via mail

Some people might say, why bother? Why not email them a coupon or gift card instead of mailing it? But it’s not the same.

‍Why it works

‍There’s an element of surprise and delight. It’s unexpected, and it can also be deployed immediately.

More importantly, people are less inclined to throw away a plastic or metal card with a monetary value. It feels like currency, almost like you’re throwing away dollars.

Also, most people tend to spend more than the value of the gift card.

Just remember to include conditions for redeeming it.

Check out this post for more cool ways to wow customers.

Or discover the power of a shock and awe package. It's perfect for high-value customers.

5. Send a free sample in the mail

Another great idea to reengage inactive subscribers is to send them a sample of what you're doing. It needs to be something the prospect can test or consume.

A car salesperson might send an accessory like a branded keychain. A software company could offer a free trial.

You would then follow up on this gift with an engagement email. For example:

Subject line: We hoped you liked our gift.

We noticed you tried (XYZ) software in the past.Would you like to give it a whirl for another 30-day trial?

We've also got someone who can help onboard you and demo how you can use the software. They'll even help you to import all your data.

Why it works

It’s exciting. There’s an element of shock and awe, which creates theater around the product. This can be very impressive. Combined with a follow-up email marketing campaign, it's likely to engage inactive subscribers.

And if the prospect doesn’t want to use it, they can give it away to someone else—so you can’t lose.

6. Invite the prospect to an event

Lastly, you can re-engage inactive subscribers by inviting them to a live event or a virtual summit.

For example, take a client in the e-commerce industry who sells golfing equipment. You could host a live golf event and arrange for a professional instructor or golfer to do a live demonstration.

The golfer could show how to hold a club, correct swing, etc. And those who can’t be there in person can join remotely.‍

Why it works

‍These kinds of events allow you to attract a global audience. It gives your prospects a chance to mix with current clients—usually your biggest advocates.

Not only can your inactive subscribers re-engage with you and get excited about your product, but you can also find out why your former clients left and, hopefully, entice them back.

So those are six email examples that you can use to help you get started.

Hit Play on Your Reactivation Campaign

Reactivation email marketing campaigns are super powerful. They allow you to re-engage inactive subscribers and grow your business. While you won't convert every subscriber to a paying customer, you will win back enough to make a difference.

Not only can you make quick money using reactivation emails, but you'll now have a slimmed-down database of high-quality prospects and customers that you can market to more regularly.

And make no mistake, you should send out a reactivation campaign regularly. I’d recommend every quarter.

With the six examples I’ve shared, you can change up each engagement email campaign. Monitor the results. Determine which delivers the best return.

Which example gets the highest open rate? Is it the personalized video option or the 10-word email?

Once you know what works, it’s just a matter of a few tweaks before launching your next email marketing campaign. So get started.

Here's to growing your business.

Who handles marketing for you?

According to Vendasta, 47% of small business owners run marketing entirely on their own. Most of these small businesses don’t have a marketing plan.

Before you think, I don’t need one, can you honestly say that your current marketing campaigns generate consistent leads that convert into customers?

The problem is without a plan, there’s no strategy behind your marketing. It’s completely random.

You’ll dabble in social media marketing because an expert told you to. You’ll spend a little on Google Adwords or Facebook advertising. Maybe you sink a chunk of change into a print ad in that magazine you read all the time. But you can’t say for sure that it’s resulted in a bunch of new customers.

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‍

Most marketing newbies focus on tactics or what I like to call shiny objects. But without a strategy (your big-picture planning), your marketing won’t work.‍

You’ll see money rapidly flowing out of your business, but not much flowing in. This is where your marketing plan becomes critical. I wrote a book to help you. Check it out now. But I digress. Let's take a look at what is a marketing plan?

What is a marketing plan?

Think of your marketing plan as your business’s blueprint for success. It’s an operational plan for getting and retaining customers. It outlines the overarching marketing strategy and tactics that you’ll use to get your target market to know you, like you, and do business with you regularly.

• It gives you a clear picture of your target market. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do? What do they struggle with?
• It helps you to create marketing messages that resonate and ultimately get results to help you grow your business. Your customers expect one-on-one attention which requires a personal approach.
• It tells you exactly what you need to do next. So, where to advertise? What to offer? How to capture leads? How to engage with prospects? What systems to put in place, what metrics to manage, and much more.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

Tell Me More

‍

A marketing plan is not a business plan.

Both are independent documents that need to coexist. A business plan focuses on the goals of the company as a whole. It includes the company’s mission statement, vision, financial goals, and sales and marketing strategy. The marketing plan focuses on how it will achieve these goals.

Why do you need a marketing plan?

Because winging it won’t work. I know. I made many costly advertising mistakes during my entrepreneurial infancy. I spent thousands of dollars on ads that resulted in zero customer acquisitions. Nothing! I've also coached hundreds of small business owners.

From experience, I can tell you that if you don't know why you're investing in pay-per-click or opening a Facebook account, or how to monitor and measure its performance, you're not going to get the results you want or need.

A report from Content Marketing Institute revealed that documenting your marketing strategy gives you a 538% greater chance of being successful.

Quite simply, professionals have plans.

Teachers have a curriculum they follow. Doctors follow a treatment plan; pilots follow a flight plan. Why? Because when the stakes are high, you need a plan. You need to know what to do next week, next month, in six months, in a year. And it needs to evolve.

Like technology, your marketing plan should be flexible. It's not something that you create, look at once, and never refer to again. It’s also not something you blindly follow for the next three years.

Your business isn’t static and neither is your plan. It needs to be agile. As you implement your marketing campaigns you should be tracking and measuring its success and optimizing where need be.

More importantly, you need to be able to track how your content performs.

• How many new leads did you generate from your free webinar?
• What was the average engagement rate on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook?
• How much traffic did your website gain during the month? Do you know which pages performed well?
• Which Google Adwords garnered the most click-throughs?

Perhaps you find that Instagram doesn't deliver a return on investment, but LinkedIn is flying—so you shift and focus your efforts there.

‍Maybe you wrote a blog article that doubled traffic to your site. Now you know what topics connect with your prospects, so you decide to create more content around it.

That's why having a marketing plan is so important. Without one, without defined key performance indicators (KPIs), you can’t know what's working and what isn't.

But you need the right plan for your business.

Introducing The 1-Page Marketing Plan.

The problem with many marketing plans is they’re overwhelming. They’re pages and pages long—with graphs, stats, and information that isn’t really going to help you grow your business.

Just look at any of the top-performing articles by searching: What is a marketing plan? You’ll find multiple options to choose from—too much to know which is the right choice.

A marketing plan needs to be simple. It’s something that you take out regularly and review. You need to see it. Unfortunately, if it’s 90-pages long, it’s probably going to get read once and never again.

That’s why I developed The 1-Page Marketing Plan template. Think of it as an entrepreneur’s small business encyclopedia.

What is the purpose of the 1-Page Marketing Plan template?

According to Sophia Xiang of The Daily Nova, The 1-Page Marketing Plan provides the proverbial map to treasure: explicit instructions for making money, simplifying what would have been a tedious, complicated task into a manageable, concise plan."

The 1-Plan Marketing Plan is an implementation breakthrough that's simple and easy to do. It’s a nine-step framework that you can literally put together in 30 minutes.

• It's built for entrepreneurs.
• It's built to be practical.
• It's built to be something you use, not leave hidden in a drawer. You can place it on your wall or your desk and refer to it routinely.

Now I've used this marketing plan example in my businesses, and with many of my coaching clients. I know it works. So let's get cracking on building your marketing playbook so to speak.

A three-phased approach to building a marketing plan.

Marketing is a journey that you need to guide your prospect through to make a sale. There are three major phases in a marketing plan:

‍Phase 1: The Before phase—focuses on prospects

Phase 2: The During phase—focuses on leads

Phase 3: The After phase—focuses on customers

Often, business owners will ask me, What should I start with first? What is the most critical part of my marketing plan? Personally, the entire plan is critical. But you need to nail The Before phase of your marketing plan. If you don’t get this right, your marketing won’t connect.

Marketing Plan: The Before Phase—Focuses on Prospects

Unless you’re Samsung or McDonald’s, your prospect probably doesn’t know who you are.

So in The Before phase, your goal is to be noticed.

I’ll give you an example. You know how, in the movies, the nerd desperately wants to date the cool kid, but because they don’t move in the same circles. Mr. or Miss Popular doesn’t know they exist.

This is pretty much your business. If you want to attract the attention of your ideal customer, you need to become a factor in your prospect’s life. And that’s what The Before phase focuses on. It helps you to identify

Step 1: Who is your niche target market?

Step 2: What message will resonate with your buyer?

Step 3: What media will you use to reach your prospect?

Marketing Plan: The During Phase—Focuses on Leads

So leads are people who’ve indicated some interest in your offer. Now you’ve got to build on this interest and really drive home the benefits of taking your relationship to the next stage. So in The During phase, your goal is relationship-building and establishing trust.

Here’s another example. You hosted a webinar on content planning, in which 30 high-quality leads attended. You held a Q&A and many thoughtful questions were raised. So you take this knowledge and write successful blog articles that directly deal with the problems your leads are grappling with.

You have their email addresses, so you regularly share these tips and tricks. Finally, you offer five lucky subscribers a free content audit and a two-week trial at a massively discounted rate. They see value in this and decide to purchase your services. So let me ask you:

‍Step 4: How will you capture leads?

Step 5: What will you do to nurture these leads?

Step 6: How will you convert them to customers?

Marketing Plan: The After Phase—Focuses on Customers

Now this is where things get exciting. You're at last dealing with customers. You've done the hard work. You've won their trust, built a relationship, and enticed them enough to spend a little cash.

‍The goal of The After phase is to create raving fans. The reason why you want to turn customers into raving fans is that they buy from you more often. They buy in more volume and they refer new business to you more regularly.

For example, think of Apple fans. They don't just buy an Apple laptop or iPhone. They buy the iPad, the Apple watch, the TV, you name it. It doesn't matter that Samsung is the camera king. They live, breathe, and eat Apple, and they're never going to switch.

So this is what you want to achieve with The After phase.

‍Step 7: Outline how you'll deliver a world-class experience.

Step 8: What measures will you put in place to increase the lifetime value of your customer?

Step 9: How will you orchestrate and stimulate referrals?‍

So let's dive into exactly how to write your marketing plan. Answering these questions will help you to hone in on each step in building out your roadmap to success.

How to write your Plan

The 1-Page Marketing Plan is a framework where, in literally nine steps, you can clarify your whole marketing plan. So we’re talking the strategy, the tools you need to use, the tactics, the assets you’ll build, and the processes you’ll implement.

So we’re going to go in-depth into what is included in a marketing plan. The key is to complete each step as you go.

1. Identify your niche target market.
2. What’s your message to your target audience?
3. What media will you use?
4. How will you capture leads?
5. How will you nurture leads?
6. What’s your sales conversion strategy?
7. How will you deliver a world-class experience?
8. How will you increase your customer lifetime value?
9. How will you orchestrate and stimulate referrals?

1. Identify your niche target market.

The first step in writing your marketing plan is to identify your niche audience. Why? Because targeting a broad market is costly.

Your goal is to become a big fish in a small pond. To do that, you need to home in on the people you like working with or where you can really make a tangible difference.

For example, instead of trying to sell your miracle eye cream to every adult female, target sleep-deprived moms of newborns. It's highly specific which means you're not competing against thousands of other companies.

These are some of the questions you need to answer when deciding whom to target:

• Who is your ideal target market?
• Who is your ideal customer?
• Whom do you love to deal with?
• Who is profitable to deal with?

Need help finding your niche? Read this article. It includes 8-steps to finding a niche you can dominate.

‍Top tip: If you’re stuck on who to target, think about segmenting.

‍Market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad target market like entrepreneurship and business into subcategories. These are niches that are an inch-wide and a mile-deep, so important to your success. I'll give you an example.

When I started Lean Marketing, I thought, which market am I likely to have the greatest impact. I wanted to focus on businesses looking to better their lives and the lives of their people. So I started with success education, and then I focused on business education.

But business education is quite broad. It could encompass mindset, personal development, sales training, managing finances, getting funding, whatever.

So I shifted my focus to marketing education, a subcategory, or sub-niche of business education. I could laser in on content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, branding, you name it.

It's more targeted, but it's still a wide sub-niche. And while I have a lot of experience in these marketing areas, my message was still likely to get lost.

So I thought, where are the gaps, where can I gain a lot of traction. For me, the glaring gap was marketing planning. At the time, there was nothing like this available for business owners to use to create a holistic plan around marketing.

And so, that's an inch-wide and a mile-deep.

2. What’s your message to your target audience?

To get your target audience to take notice of you and buy from you, you have to come up with a compelling message.

This isn’t something you do in isolation. It takes field research. You need to be on the ground interacting with your target market. Asking them questions, listening to what they say and how they say it.

Using their language in your marketing collateral is an excellent way to craft copy that connects and gets results.

Here’s what you want to know:

• What are your customers’ wants, needs, desires, problems?
• What message would grab their attention and make them act?

Ask open-ended questions and pay attention to their body language. If they’re nodding their heads and responding, you’re on to something good.

If they’re looking a bit bored or are casually reaching for their phone, you’ve lost them.

Then you need to think: How will I package my offer. It needs to be unique.

I’ll give you an example: the Dollar Shave Club. The idea was ingenious. Men need razor blades. Men hate shopping. So these guys created a subscription service for cheap razors blades that get delivered to your door each month.

It was a winner with the market. They didn't invent razor blades or shaving. They just tapped into most men’s hatred for shopping and provided a workable solution. And what would you know, Unilever just paid them a billion dollars for their company.

So when crafting your unique selling point, you want to think about the following:

It was a winner with the market. They didn't invent razor blades or shaving. They just tapped into most men’s hatred for shopping and provided a workable solution. And what would you know, Unilever just paid them a billion dollars for their company.

So when crafting your unique selling point, you want to think about the following:

• How will your product or service make your prospects’ lives easier, better?
• Why should they buy what you’re selling?
• And why should they buy from you instead of a competitor?

You'll also want to tell them about all the effort you go to. So you want to share your business story. Thing is, storytelling in marketing is so effective. It makes you stand out in an already crowded market.

3. What media will you use?

In advertising, the only measure of success is: Did you get a return on investment? Did you make more money in profits than what you spent on advertising?

‍This, and your budget, will largely dictate what media you advertise in, so whether you use social media marketing, email marketing, digital ads, whatever.

And you might think that you know your target audience. You know where they live online or what publications they read.

A study found that 26% of small businesses don’t have a website because they don’t believe their customers are online. This is proof that you don’t know your buyer as well as you think you do.

So before spending your precious marketing budget, these are some of the questions you need to answer:

• What is a customer worth to you? What are you willing to spend to acquire a customer?
• What media does your target market consume? Ask them directly.
• Do you want to spend a lot or focus on organic reach?
• Do you spread your budget around, so invest a little in social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn), digital (Google Adwords, SEO, pay-per-click), public relations (learn how to write a press release now, print advertising, radio, television). Or do you focus on two lead-generating sources?

And KPIs become so important. You want to set key performance indicators (KPI) for all your marketing campaigns for your technology and the people you work with.

More importantly, you need to be able to track how your content performs.

• What are your short-term versus long-term goals?
• How much traffic to your website do you want each month?
• How many unique visitors do you want to convert to leads?
• How many leads convert to customers?
• What’s your average transaction value?
• What’s your break even point?

A dashboard is a great way to do this. You can use Google Analytics to determine the amount of traffic to your site, time on pages, bounce rates, etc. As long as you measure, manage, rinse, repeat. There’s always room for improvement.

4. How will you capture leads?

It baffles me how many business owners rely on social media to connect with their customers and prospects. What happens if Facebook or Instagram shut down tomorrow. How would you reach them?

According to Vendasta, 41% of small local businesses depend on social media to drive revenue.

The first bit of advice I want to give is never to rely on a single source of lead generation. You need multiple sources, for example, a book your website, a podcast, or landing page, PR, etc.

And you need this all to be funneled into a single location—this is where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system becomes vital. It allows you to automate and organize information in a way that would be difficult to do manually.

I’ve used many in my time as an entrepreneur. My personal preference is Ontraport, but I’d recommend ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit for startups or small businesses with a database under 10,000. So, ask yourself the following:

• What will you use to pique your prospects’ interests?
• How will you capture these leads?
• What do you do with them?

Also, set goals for your technology.

5. How will you nurture leads?

In many ways, lead nurturing is the most important phase of your marketing process. This is where you take someone from being vaguely interested in what you have to offer, to wanting it, and eventually buying it.

Getting this right requires a mindset shift. Don’t focus on the sale. That will come. You need to focus on educating and building a relationship. It’s about becoming a voice of value—someone your target audience looks forward to hearing from.

So these are some of the questions you need to answer:

• How will you build trust?
• What information will you share that resonates, engages, educates, and entertains?
• How often will you contact your prospect?
• When can you be sure that it’s the right time to sell?

Consistency is key. Almost half of small businesses spend two hours a week on marketing. If you want to scale your income, this simply isn’t enough.

6. What’s your sales conversion strategy?

Sales is by no means easy. For many, it feels uncomfortable or disingenuous.

My best advice when it comes to selling is: Don’t be weird. Be authentic. Be yourself.

‍Don’t force a sale.

If you’ve positioned yourself correctly, if you’ve pre-framed your prospect, you’ve delivered value upfront, you’ve educated, you’ve built a relationship, you’ve become a trusted advisor, the sale will come naturally.

Many small businesses make the mistake of positioning themselves on price.

Positioning your service or product as a commodity is disastrous because there will always be another company that offers a lower price.

How you position your business will determine how customers treat you and what they’re willing to pay for you.

For example, as a coach, if you position yourself as an expert authority and you deliver great results, you can charge a premium price for your services, and people will pay what you ask.

So here’s what you need to consider:

• What is your sales process? Map it out. Think about the different stages your prospect goes through to eventually make a decision, and then sell the next step in the strategy, not the end step.
• How will you price your product?
• What sort of package can you offer to make the sale more enticing? Think about a-try-before-you-buy, a risk reversal offer or an outrageous guarantee, whatever.

7. How will you deliver a world-class experience?

There’s nothing quite like a raving fan. Think of them as your personal cheerleader. They can’t wait to talk about your product or service. They’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. Write a review, post on social media. You name it. They’re your champion.

Delivering a world-class experience converts customers into raving fans. But many businesses stop at a sale. They don’t follow up. They don’t stay in touch. And then that customer becomes a one-off transaction.

So part of your marketing plan is to figure out what strategies you’ll use to continually WOW your customers. Ask yourself:

• How can I go above and beyond?
• What business systems can I put in place that will help me deliver a world-class experience?

8. How will you increase your customer lifetime value?

Here you want to think about how you will get the customer to buy in more frequency, volume, and quality, perhaps moving them up to the next level in your program or the next highest version of your product? And doing that in a way that actually benefits the customer.

In this blog post I break down how to upsell to your customers. Check it out.

There are five ways to do this:

• Raise your prices. If they love what you’re selling, they won’t complain about a price increase.
• Upsell. Instead of discounting your product or service, include an add-on.
• Offer an ascension plan, that moves customers up to a higher, better value tier.
• Offer a subscription service, send them reminders, or give them a reason to come back—like a voucher to put towards their next purchase. It works every time.
• Build a reactivation campaign. It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing one. And increasing customer retention by 5% increases your profits by 25% to 90%. So it’s something to give serious thought to.

You also need to consider which critical marketing metrics to measure. I’d advise:

1. Customer lifetime value - how much does each customer spend over a lifetime?
2. Monthly recurring revenue - this is the total recurring billing, and, ideally, this needs to grow each month.
3. Churn rate - this is the percentage of customers who stop buying from you or cancel subscriptions.
4. Customer satisfaction rate - how many complaints versus compliments do you receive?

These are all numbers that you should measure monthly.

9. How will you orchestrate and stimulate referrals?

Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful but notoriously unreliable. Most business owners quietly hope for a referral. This is a losing strategy. Yes, you want to add word-of-mouth marketing to your plan, but it needs to be an active process. You want to make it part of doing business with you.

So these are some of the questions you need to answer:

• Will you request a referral in the onboarding phase?
• Will you request a referral once the job is completed?
• How will you create a win-win scenario for a joint venture? Click the link to learn more about forming the right partnership.

Implementing an email reactivation campaign that targets dormant customers is another great way to increase revenue quickly. You can find out more about how to do that here. And that’s the nine steps in your marketing plan.

Marketing Plan Examples: 1PMP Template

To help you get started, I’ve included a few examples of completed 1-Page Marketing Plans. Use these as thought-starters and a guide when filling out your marketing plan template. Build out your marketing plan with the Free 1-Page Marketing Plan Examples. ‍

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Plan Your Way To Marketing Success

Marketing without a plan is a lot like fishing in rough seas, the chances of you catching anything are slim to none. That's just a waste of time and money. So start being intentional with your marketing.

Remember, your marketing plan identifies the steps you have to take to attract high-value leads, build relationships and ultimately convert them to customers, again, and again.

To do that, download our marketing plan template and start fleshing out your strategy for scaling your business. And if you need inspiration, check out our marketing plan examples above or leave a comment below.

‍If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article, What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.

Like many other industries, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) moves extremely fast. But where is the future of SEO going?

What does an effective, organic digital marketing strategy need to look like in the next few years?

While not too long ago, everybody was totally focused on keywords and backlinks (links from other websites). Today, we hear search and SEO more and more in the context of machine learning and artificial intelligence within a collection of hundreds of ranking factors. But there is much more to the future of SEO!

However, before we dive deeper into where the search industry is heading (based on my point of view), I would like to make sure you, as a reader, can see Google through somewhat different eyes.

What does Google want?

For digital marketing specialists, and in particular, in search marketing, Google plays a very special role—not only because of their market share (more than 92% in 2020) but also due to their incredible focus on user experience.

The search engine was the first company to focus on what’s best for their users—after all, a happy user will come back for more. This should be enough to shift our view of Google from the “evil giant” to a giant that aims, above all other things, to do what’s best for its users.

Artificial Intelligence

Digital marketing is getting more and more automated: automatic bidding, programmatic marketing, tracking, email marketing automation, hyper-segmentation, cross-platform promotion.

All these are only possible due to the vast amounts of data points big platforms have gathered about each and every internet user. Those masses of data then need to be analyzed so that algorithms can make sense of it and leverage information for higher returns on investment.

Companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon have more information stored about us than we can possibly imagine—and one of their main goals is to obtain even more.

The reasoning couldn’t be clearer: the more information they have, the better they can make us happy. While “happy” could mean product suggestions on Amazon, for Google, it refers to ads and organic search results.

Already today, answers to search queries are personalized based on your location, preferred websites, previous searches, and more. What a person sees in Sydney on many searches isn’t going to be the same result someone would see in Melbourne.

A good example would be a Google search for “pizza delivery.” The search engine would understand local search intent and bring up results geographically near the respective user. But personalization goes much deeper than that.

The massive amount of data requires machine learning tools to process and artificial intelligence in order to identify patterns that can then be fed back into the algorithm. Google “learns” with every single search.

On a given day, by the way, thousands of searches are being executed by users all over the world for the very first time. Google has never seen them before but will still try to “understand” the underlying search intent to serve a relevant result.

So, for your site’s SEO, how could you beat Google’s AI engine? The answer: with AI itself. From early on, machine learning tools have received a very special place in our toolbox: link research, content brief creation, content optimization. Wherever machine learning tools can be used in SEO, their results should definitely be considered for the ongoing optimization process.

User Experience

When a platform like Google wants to make its users happy, it needs to factor in a whole lot of elements. The following deserve some further explanation:

Relevance

If a search result isn’t relevant for a user, they will hit their browser’s back button and click on another search engine result. Relevance can refer to design, layout, content structure, content length, and depth, etc., and should always be a top priority in every SEO campaign—stay relevant!

Search snippet

Users are only happy if they find their answers fast. The way search snippets are designed and the content they contain play an important role, which is why Google sometimes decides to overwrite a page’s title and so-called meta description in order to present a nicer result to search users.

Care about your search snippets as if they were your cat!

Mobile

Nobody likes to wait for a page to load, especially on their mobile phones. As a result, site speed and mobile performance, and usability are crucial elements for Google when determining the ranking a site deserves.

With users’ patience levels decreasing and attention spans shortening, there is a demand for increased loading speeds. Consequently, search engines will be forced to insist more on a site’s performance. This will especially be the case on the server-side, as 5G and similar technologies are very likely to reduce the effect of large images or videos that before might have been slowing down a page.

Link Building

Google’s success in providing high-quality search results is largely based on their algorithm and how it interprets links from one website to another one as a signal for authority.

With social media and other sources of data giving search engines more and more information, it is very likely that the effect link building can have on a site’s ranking might diminish over time. Until then, focus on actively pursuing links from other websites to your homepage and your pillar articles!

Personalization

One of the best ways to attract people’s attention in marketing is through personalized communication. Search engines are getting really good at personalizing search results, and with the growing number of data points of more and more people, it is to be expected that they will get even better at bringing us the right results at the right moment.

Already today, Google tries to come up with search results based on what they know about us, our calendar, and our movements between different places—even before we search for them. Ever gotten into your car and Google Maps told you how long it would take you to get home? This is Google’s personalization in action! For search results, personalization will probably, at least in part, mean very personal search preferences.

• Some users might prefer longer and more in-depth articles as search results when they are at home and shorter summaries when browsing through their phone.
• Others will only use their phones to check their email, but whenever they search for products, they will buy at Amazon, so Amazon might need to come up first for them on any of their transactional searches.

SEO is an important part of marketing, and personalization will definitely play a big role in marketing in the near future. Learn how to use market segmentation to better understand your business customer.

OK Google

How many voice assistants do you have available in your day to day? Most of us might be used to calling Siri or Alexa, Google Assistant or Cortana, to help us with daily tasks, reminders, or to do some quick research. The essential idea of a voice assistant is to get a question as an input and respond with an answer. This directly affects SEO because voice assistants will limit themselves to very few, if not only one possible answer.

The more we see personalized search results coming up, the higher the chances are that voice search relies on a search engines to make sure the first result contains the best possible answer. Integrating an AI voice generator could significantly improve communication by creating natural and engaging content directly from internal discussion.

While now we generally have ten search results on page one of Google, in the future, it might just really be the first or maybe the first few results that count. In any case, questions will (and have always been) play an essential part in search.

‍People have questions and want answers—fast. Back in 2010, I had my first client start answering two questions a month on his blog. He did this consistently (with our writers’ help) over many years, and still ranks with very simple answers to very simple questions, getting leads and sales still in 2020, leveraging answers written in 2011.

If you have the best answer to your target audience’s question, you are likely to do very well in SEO. Add consistency over time, and you’re up for a long-term winner!

Search Components

There is just one thing that Google likes more than making users happy to help them find the right website: make them happy finding the answer directly within Google.

More and more, we see search elements popping up in search, like “People also asked” sections, featured snippets, carousels, maps, local search results, and knowledge panels.

All these blocks extract information from websites to answer user queries directly on the search result page, resulting in approximately 50% of searches not leading to a click-through to a website. The search engine has (and provides) all the necessary information.

The trend towards more and more search components has been clear over the last years. And while it's a good SEO strategy for sites to sneak their way into the first page with some specially marked-up answer, site owners will have to accept that Google is actually becoming their website’s homepage, giving direct access to the different parts of information they consider relevant, and sometimes, providing the full answer directly within search results with no click going to the website itself.

Google has a problem.

Not all problems can be solved easily—not even by Google. While still trying to make their users happy, Google aims at finding a way to find out whether a site is trustworthy, has a certain authority in its niche, and whether the presented information comes from a source with expertise in their field. This is especially true when it comes to so-called YMYL sites (Your Money, Your Life).

YMYL refers to sites that directly impact on people’s lives (health) and finances, thus directly impacting happiness. There is just too much content being produced online to keep track, and it’s getting harder and harder to determine which content really should be consumed when seeking advice, and which content has been written by a non-expert on a budget in 15 minutes by rewriting whatever could be found on the subject.

And there’s more: with AI getting more and more ahead, in no time, there will be commercial writing programs available, creating original content automatically with AI engines, based on a few parameters like topic, length, level of expertise, etc.

Those engines will feed themselves with thousands of similar texts to extract common patterns and produce articles on their own, in less time than it takes a copywriter to open their favorite editing app.

‍E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and has become a very important term from 2018-2019 when Google added a section to their quality guidelines, asking quality raters at Google to check for relevant signals that might indicate whether the site and its author can be trusted.

‍Branding might just be one of the most important things you can do in order to make sure future algorithms can recognize the expertise you own in your field.

So do you need SEO?

The future of SEO is definitely going to be based on artificial intelligence, enabling search engines to improve user experience through extremely high levels of personalization.

The exponential growth of partly AI-created content will require extra levels of analysis in order to select not only the best, but also the most trustworthy response to a user’s search intent. Many business owners are being told you need SEO to get more leads.

So it's a tactic you implement. But what is your strategy? If you want to learn the difference between a strategy and a tactic, click the link.

A well-crafted email sequence is a vital part of your marketing arsenal. Master the art of writing a lead nurturing sequence, and you'll regularly convert leads to customers. Get it wrong, and you'll butcher your email list.

Luckily, there is a simple lead nurturing process that you can follow.

I'm going to show you how to write a lead nurturing email that:

• gets high open rates
• moves your prospects further along the buyer's journey
• results in sales

But first, I want to start with a little myth-busting. You don't need to be a copywriter or a bestselling author to write a lead-nurturing email. Anybody can do it. Just follow the process.

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‍

What is a Lead?

In many ways, a lead is a high-value future customer. This is a person or organization that will, in time, need your product or service. And you attract these high-value prospects with marketing.

Great content is vital for generating high-quality leads. I'm talking about writing blog posts, lead magnets, a landing page, social media, eBooks, etc. But you also want to capture their details—so their name, surname, phone number, and email address in your email list. And you can do this with an opt-in form.

Now the next step is to nurture these leads. But what is lead nurturing, and why is email marketing the perfect medium to use?

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with a prospect at every stage of the buyer's journey. It engages potential customers in a series of conversations, with the end goal of converting them into buyers.

For them to convert, they need to be nurtured repeatedly in the sales funnel.

Thankfully, automated email sequences make the nurturing process possible.

Lead nurture is the basis of direct response marketing. To learn more, click here.

What is the Purpose of an Email Lead Nurturing Sequence?

Not all visitors to your site are ready to purchase immediately. In fact, only three percent of your target market is ready to buy at any given moment.

So what about the other 97 percent?

You could take a chance and hope they'll see your next marketing campaign and buy your product or service then, but humans are inherently suspicious. They've been burned many times before by brands who've overpromised and underdelivered.

To convince prospects to invest in your product or service, you need to build trust. You do this through education, entertainment, and by taking a personal interest in them.

This requires email marketing. It's a great way to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with minimal time, effort, and spend on your side.

5 Benefits Of A Lead Nurture Sequence

A lead nurturing sequence is an automated series of emails that a prospect receives after subscribing to your email list.

And the purpose of the lead nurturing process is to:

1. Stay top-of-mind for prospects who are interested in what you're selling but aren't quite ready to make a purchasing decision in that moment. We want to be on their mind when they're ready to buy.
2. Give your prospect a result in advance. It's compelling when a prospect takes your free advice, implements it, and gets a positive result. Imagine what a lead could get if they paid for the full service.
3. Inform and entertain. Think of your lead nurturing email sequence as infotainment. You want prospects to enjoy engaging with it. If you can educate in a fun and unique way, that's far more compelling than dry, boring content. Use it to send updates or share an important announcement. It is the best way to stay in touch with your customers.
4. Stimulate a conversation. Conversions come from conversations. By engaging with your prospect, you build a relationship that makes the decision to buy from you easier because you've earned their trust.
5. Move your prospect to action when they're ready. It could be a subtle call-to-action in your email signature. Or it could be a direct call-to-action in the body of your email—for example: “Get 25 percent off when you purchase my course today. Offer expires at midnight.”

Now that you know the benefits of a lead nurturing campaign, let's look at the types of email sequences you can send to your subscription list.

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8 Types of Email Sequences in Marketing

When devising a lead nurturing campaign, you want to think about the type of nurturing sequence you wish to send your customers.

There are loads of automated email sequences you can use to nurture leads. Remember, the purpose of a lead nurturing email campaign is to build relationships with your prospects, move them closer to a sale, and become lifelong customers.

Not all of the email sequences listed below will be relevant to your business. For example, if you don't sell directly from your website, it's unlikely that you'll need a cart abandonment sequence.

Your goal should be to familiarize yourself and choose the best lead nurturing sequence to suit your needs. Here's our list of eight.

1. Welcome email sequence—helps you build trust and enables you to set the tone and mood for pushing the sale.

2. Confirmation email sequence—used to verify the identity of a subscriber.

3. Onboarding email sequence—provides information about the benefits of your offer, how to use it, and even testimonials from loyal customers.

4. Cart abandonment email sequence—a trigger-based sequence used to recover customers who have left a product on their shopping cart but never made the final stage of the sales funnel.

5. Repeat customer email sequence—used to upsell or offer similar recommendations that can best entice a customer to make another purchase. We break down how to upsell your products or services here.

6. Re-engagement or reactivation email sequence—used to win back prospects who have stopped interacting with you for a certain period for whatever reason.  

7. Event email sequence—used to notify users about an upcoming event to motivate them to purchase tickets or book a trip to a venue.

8.  Follow-up email sequence—used to remind subscribers to make a purchase, read a new blog post, complete a course program, or answer a survey, to name a few.

The beauty of a lead nurturing email is it's simple but effective. A nurture sequence is a compelling way to stay in touch with your customers on a personal level and entice them to buy a new product.

What to Do Before Writing a Lead Nurturing Email

Most of the work that goes into lead nurturing happens before you ever write a single word. It comes from researching and understanding who your audience is and what the different sub-segments are.

Before you write, you'll have answered in your head:

• What's keeping them up at night?
• What do they hope for?
• What are their pain points?
• How can your product or service improve their life?

Answering these questions ensures you know what type of content to include in your lead nurturing emails. Next, you need to organize your email database and CRM.

Not sure which CRM to use?

Personally, I'm a fan of Ontraport. Particularly if you've got a list that's more than 5,000 subscribers.

But if you're just starting I'd look at ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit. Both are great customer relationship management tools.

1. Identify what type of email sequence you need to create.

Generally, an email sequence can be categorized into a time-based or trigger-based sequence.

A time-based email sequence sends messages at predetermined time intervals through an email autoresponder. For example, once a prospect submits her email address to your CRM, a welcome email is forwarded. A series of lead nurturing emails will follow—sent on specific days—no matter if she responds to your welcome message or not.

On the other hand, a trigger-based email sequence, as the name suggests, is sent based on a recipient's actions. A series of lead-nurturing emails will only be delivered as long as the prospect responds, whether through clicking a button or checking out a link.

2. Organize your list of recipients.

Manually organizing your email list is a time-suck. A smart way to avoid this is to give your lead the option to self-select when signing up for your newsletter. This is particularly helpful to brands with multiple target audiences.

For example, an e-commerce platform selling various products will have some customers interested in kitchen equipment, others in the latest technology, and some in children's toys. Now a business owner without kids won't want to receive emails promoting Lego's new technic line. It's irrelevant to their needs, and they may unsubscribe.

So a lead nurturing campaign must be relevant to the customer receiving the email.

Also, don't buy email lists. You'll end up with a host of low-quality leads. Instead, develop a lead magnet such as a case study, eBook, worksheet, checklist, template, whatever. A lead magnet is an excellent marketing tactic and ideal for lead generation. (I've written about how you can create a lead magnet that converts in blog post.)

So to recap: allowing users to self-select on your opt-in form ensures you funnel the lead into the correct sequence.

3. Check your email sequence.

Whether you have one or multiple lead nurturing sequences before launching your email campaign, you’ll want to ask yourself:

• Does it follow a logical marketing automation workflow?
• Does it help achieve your objectives and goals?
• Does each step move the prospect through the buyer's journey?
• Will it result in more sales?

Much of this will boil down to your choice of a subject line, email content, and call-to-action. Let's look at the content you’ll need to include in your lead nurturing campaign to help you start.

But first, how do you generate content ideas? I'm going to share my best practices for developing content ideas. Follow these tips, and you'll boost your email open rate.

The Top Five Email Marketing Content Ideas

1. Write down frequently asked questions.

I generate a lot of my content ideas from frequently asked questions. Whether I'm on a podcast or presenting live, I encourage people to write to me. And they'll often ask questions. I like to note these down. So I'll use Apple Nights, but you can use something like Evernote. I can use these questions to generate content that my prospective customers are interested in.

2. Address the elephant in the room.

Next is objections. For example, why are your prospective customers saying no? Roadblocks could be that you're too expensive or they have a false impression of what your product does in relation to competitors’ products. Addressing these objections in your content is very powerful. By addressing the elephant in the room, you create trust.

3. Use stories and anecdotes.

Human beings are wired to listen to stories. Weaving stories into your lead-nurturing sequences is an excellent way to connect with your audience, grab their attention, maintain it, and lead them to a sale.

4. Show them case studies.

Now I've found this syndrome that many customers suffer from. Very often, prospects will be wondering if what you're selling will work for them.

So they'll say, "This works for B2B but not B2C,” or "This works for the tech industry but not the financial industry."

Case studies are a great way to bridge this gap. So showing people like them can get from point A to B, from a worse condition to a better state, can help the sale.

5. Tell them what's new in your field.

What's new in your prospects' life as it relates to your field, product, or service? There'll be innovations or things that come out very often, and people don't know because they're not in your industry. So being that source of news in your field is very powerful.

How to Write an Automated Email Sequence that Leads love

Now, it's time to get into email sequence writing. Follow these best practices to keep in touch with subscribers and turn them into repeat customers.

Write an awesome subject line.

The subject line is the first thing that your lead will read. It's been known to make or break email campaigns. It must be compelling or intriguing. Any time I come across a clever or quirky subject line, I like to note it down. Sometimes it sparks a new idea. But there's also nothing wrong with shamelessly stealing a powerful subject line now and then.

Ideally, your subject line should not be more than nine words. Anything more, and you could adversely affect your campaign’s open rate.

Introduce a pattern interrupt in your email.

I like to use a pattern interrupt in my email content. Whether it's an anecdote, a statement, or a question, this technique sucks people into the copy. It makes them read every sentence and paragraph because they're intrigued.

A short anecdote, a statement, a question, or something that makes a lead keep reading, is very powerful.

Share a knowledge bomb in your sequence.

I have this rule where my free emails should be more powerful and more valuable than other people's paid content. I don't want my emails to be just about selling or promoting a product or service.

So I make sure to include some kind of knowledge bomb that customers can walk away with. It's a nugget of information they can take and implement into their business and start seeing results.

Delve deeper into a topic.

I like to do this over multiple sequences.

I'll write a soap opera sequence where I'll open up a discussion on a topic and end the email on a cliffhanger. Like any well-written television series, you leave the reader wanting more. And then we move to the next one, and we go deeper.

So rather than just skimming over a topic in one email, I'll do this over multiple emails. It's a great sales tactic because I'm nurturing my prospect, building trust, and moving them along the sales funnel.

Add personalization to your message.

Customers or prospects want to feel like you're talking to them directly, so send a personal one-on-one email. People need to know they're not dealing with a robot. A.I. has its uses but not in email marketing.

Here's a tip: Address your lead using their first name. This creates personalization and encourages dialogue.

We cover how to personalize your marketing here.

Write according to your goal.

What is the purpose of your lead nurturing campaign?

Is your email sequence intended to reactivate a dormant customer, entertain, or make an offer?

Each type of email sequence requires a different approach, so it's vital to stick to your objective with every message you write. If your message deviates from your end goal, your sequence can end up being a total mess.

Address your leads' pain points.

Start with the pain. By recognizing what your leads are feeling and what keeps them up at night, you develop a sense of camaraderie.

Use their words in your marketing content—so your lead magnet, blog articles, or posts on social media. It's the best way to attract high-quality leads.

Deliver what you promised.

Did you promise a free case study or access to exclusive videos on the form your lead filled out? Did your lead magnet promise to show them how to build a lead-nurturing campaign?

The quickest way to lose a potential customer is to overpromise and underdeliver. Make sure your campaigns meet expectations.

Encourage leads to connect with you on social media.

Besides email communication, share links in your message where the reader can connect with you on social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. This is another way to stay in touch and share different content.

Make them entertaining.

I prefer writing my nurturing sequences with a sense of “infotainment.” I want them to be educational and entertaining at the same time. This ensures you solve their issues without boring your reader. Best of all, customers will look forward to hearing from you.

End your message with a call-to-action (CTA).

This is an essential component of your message. What would you like your reader to do next?

Should they click a link to your offer? Or claim their coupon from your website? A strong CTA should convince your prospect to act.

You need to create a sense of urgency or add an element of scarcity in your closing. This makes your sales engagement more powerful.

The Top 11 Tips for Writing a Lead Nurturing Engagement Email

Nurturing leads is all about establishing a relationship with your email subscribers. Your goal with each campaign is to move them further along the buyer's journey. Follow these 11 tips to write nurturing email sequences that convert.

1. Be conversational.

Make sure you use a conversational tone in all of your content. It helps to break down barriers. It makes it easier to read or consume. It's also easier to write. So write your lead nurturing engagement email much like you're speaking to a friend.

2. Keep your sentences short.

Cutting long sentences into readable bite-sized chunks is an art. If you want to create an impact with your words, a sentence should have eight to ten words max. So keep your paragraphs nice and short.

3. Check your spelling.

Sounds simple, and yet, I get countless emails with spelling mistakes. I've sent out a few myself.

The problem with spelling errors is it looks sloppy and it can draw attention away from your message. Basically, customers focus on the grammatical mistakes, and if it annoys them too much, they may unsubscribe. So put your emails through Grammarly. It can help you fix weird sentences and phrases.

4. Highlight important words or phrases.

You want specific phrases or offers to stick out in your text. Highlighting, bolding, or underlining helps to emphasize a call-to-action.

Sometimes it's called junking up or word art. Basically, this helps your customers focus on essential information. For example, it could be the link to a form or a new course you're selling.

5. Include facts, statistics, or quotes.

Use data in your lead nurturing. Here's why. Data is eye-catching. It reads as truth. So when writing your lead nurturing email campaign, consider using data to emphasize something you're saying.

6. Only use one CTA.

It's tempting to link to multiple offers or webpages in an email, but don't do it. You'll only create confusion. Instead, determine your email's purpose and link to one call-to-action. You can include a link multiple times.

For example, if you have a limited offer or something that's time-sensitive—like an opt-in for a webinar—you'll want to pepper the call-to-action throughout your email. See below:

7. Focus on one topic.

Again, like with the call-to-action, you don't want to create confusion, so focus on one topic per email.

8.  Link to podcast clips or pieces of content you've written.

People like to engage with your emails, so make them interactive. It's not just about sharing your thoughts; you want your customers to take action. Including links to podcast clips, blog articles, or contributor pieces is a great way to build trust, educate, and move your prospects from the bottom of the funnel to closing sales.

9. Write a super signature.

So a super signature is a soft sell. It appears after your name and can be included in sales emails and value-building emails. I like to have it as a P.S.

And what a super signature does is give your leads the option to purchase your product when they're ready. So whether you're creating an email marketing campaign or you're just sending helpful content, make sure you've included a super signature.

10. Get someone who's not in your field to read your email.

It's easy to assume that if you write with clarity customers will know what you're talking about. That's not always the case. So get someone who isn't in your industry to read your emails. If they don't understand what you're talking about, it's helpful to know before hitting send on your lead nurturing email.

11. Develop a copywriting style guide.

You might also want to consider putting together a copywriting style guide, especially if you're planning to hand content writing over to your team. Style guides make it easy for content writers to get the voice of your business.

If you don't use swear words or slang, that needs to be in your guide. If you prefer to write in the first person, note that down. Make it easy for a writer to get into your head and craft compelling lead nurturing emails.

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How Often Should You Send a Lead Nurturing Email?

Now, this is a question my clients ask regularly. You don't want to annoy your audience, so it's vital not to bombard them with emails. For example, I don't want to hear from my plumber three times a day.

Whereas my stockbroker, I want to hear from him regularly. I want to know what happened in the stock market that day. So the frequency depends on the industry.

Also, you don't want to wait too long between emails. The maximum time you should go between a prospect hearing from you is a month. If you're not connecting with your audience at least monthly, you run the risk of them forgetting who you are, and they could unsubscribe the next time you email.

Start Building Your Lead Nurturing Campaign

Now that you know what a lead nurturing campaign is and why it can help move your leads through the buyer's journey, it's time to craft your email sequence. Note down the process you need to follow:

Step 1: Build a lead magnet.

Step 2: Select your email sequence.

Step 3: Start writing each email in your lead nurturing campaign.

Step 4: Set up your CRM to funnel leads into the correct sequence.

Step 5: Hit the autopilot.

Don't be afraid of marketing automation. It will help to move leads through your sales funnel and closer to becoming a customer. As long as you've written conversational emails that entertain, inform, and nurture, your campaigns will result in sales.

Not sure what is a business process? Click the link to learn more about how to craft your processes.

Found this helpful? Check out our blog on the difference between lead generation and lead nurturing.

Marketing can be incredibly confusing. Most people don't really know what it is, they just know it can be the answer to their business prayers.

But simply implementing marketing into your business won't result in success. You need to first understand what marketing is, and then have a plan of action.

So let's start with what marketing is. And this is the simplest, most jargon-free, definition of marketing you’re ever likely to come across:

What Is Marketing?

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday’, that’s advertising.

If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion.

If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity.

And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.

If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.

And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.

Learn How To Market Your Business Successfully

But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Other Marketing Definitions

Marketing is a series of activities and processes that a business or brand takes to promote their product or services to their ideal customer. These are the people most likely to buy what they're selling.

Marketing encompasses research, strategy, advertising, social media engagement, and selling.

The point is to educate, inform, and move a prospect closer to a sale.

Why Your Business Needs Marketing?

It's simple, really. If someone has never bought from you, how do they find out about your product or service?

Unless you've got a robust referral system in place, they're unlikely to have heard about your business.

And they're most likely not going to buy from you.

So, if you want people to take a closer look at your business, and spend their precious dollars, you need marketing.

It's what you do to attract your ideal customer.

Now you need a strategy to get them to like you and do business with you. We've got the perfect solution. You need direct response marketing. Click the link for more information.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on How to Create a Lead Magnet that Converts in 6-Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to attract high-quality leads and you can automate much of it.

Much of the time we spend here is devoted to discussing strategies for rapid business growth through marketing.

However, I’ve found it’s just as important to learn from mistakes as it is to follow good advice.

In this article, I’ll outline three of the most common marketing blunders made by small and medium-sized businesses.

These three “stupid” marketing strategies have killed many small businesses. Left unchecked, they could kill yours.

So here's what not to do.

Want to know what is the difference between marketing strategies and tactics? We've broken it down here so you can have all the facts before you invest time, money and resources into marketing your business.

Also, check out this blog to see the hot marketing trends for 2022.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

Tell Me More

#1 Stupid Marketing Strategy – Not Tracking Advertising Return On Investment (ROI)

John Wanamaker, one of the marketing greats, famously said:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

While this was understandable a century ago, when it was first said, it should be a crime to say today. Yet the reality is that most small businesses do little if any tracking of advertising.

Not measuring where your leads and sales come from and not tracking ROI on ad spend is the mark of the amateur. We all have at our disposal the technology to quickly, easily and cheaply track advertising effectiveness.

Tools such as toll-free numbers, website analytics, and coupon codes make this trivial. Remember what gets measured, gets managed. Be ruthless with your ad spend by cutting the losers and riding the winners. Obviously, to know what’s losing and what’s winning, you need to be tracking and measuring.

#2 Stupid Marketing Strategy – Going Too Broad

Who is your target market? If you tell me “everyone,” then I know you haven’t properly thought this through.

Trying to target everyone, in reality, means you’re targeting no one. By going too broad you kill your “specialness” and become a commodity bought on price.

By narrowly defining a target market whom you can wow and deliver huge results for, you become a specialist. A specialist is someone sought out, respected, and most importantly trusted.

When you narrow down your target market, you naturally decide who you’re going to exclude. Don’t underestimate the importance of this.

Excluding potential customers scares many small business owners. They mistakenly believe that a wider net is more likely to capture more customers. This is a huge mistake.

Dominate a niche, then once you own it, do the same with another and then another. But never do so all at once. Doing so dilutes your message and your marketing power.

Read this article to Find Your Niche & Dominate It.

#3 Stupid Marketing Strategy – Wasting Money On “Branding” When You're A Small Business

So many small businesses waste huge sums of money on “branding.” They see their large competitors do so and think that this must be the path to success.

I explain in explicit detail here why this is crazy.

Here’s a short illustration. Think of yourself as a hunter and your marketing dollars as firepower. You need to use your limited firepower wisely so that you can successfully hunt, come home victorious, and feed your family.

If you start randomly firing in every direction, you’re going to startle and scare off your prey. You need to be targeted and clever if you wish to be victorious.

Of course, some people will argue with me and say that “getting your name out there” is the way to go.

Unless you’re a large business like Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, or similar then it’s likely you can’t afford to burn tens of millions of dollars on fuzzy marketing like “branding” or “getting your name out there”.

Rather than “getting your name out there”, you’ll fare much better by concentrating on getting the name of your prospects in here.

Time To Craft Your Marketing Plan

As a small or medium-sized business, you need to get a fast return on your marketing spend.

Putting your comparatively tiny marketing budget into fuzzy marketing is like the proverbial drop in the ocean. You need a plan.

The game of mass marketing, branding, and “getting your name out there” type of marketing can only be won with atomic bomb scale firepower.

If you’re a small to medium business, that’s not a game you’re equipped to play.

If you’ve found yourself engaging in any of these stupid marketing strategies, now’s the time to stop, re-evaluate, and change course.

Whenever I speak to business owners, the topic of conversation invariably turns to marketing. When I ask how they market themselves, “word of mouth” almost always comes up as the primary or only form of marketing they rely on.

This used to shock me but now I’ve come to expect it.

Whilst word of mouth marketing is powerful, and an important part of your marketing plan it’s an extremely slow and unreliable way of building a business. Assuming you do everything right, it can take many years, even decades, to build a successful business on the back of word of mouth alone.

Word of mouth or referral marketing is the business equivalent of a free lunch. Sure it’s nice when it comes your way and you appreciate it, but do you really want to rely on it to feed your family?

By being solely reliant on word of mouth, you’re putting the fate of your business in the hands of others. Essentially, you're hoping they like you and remember you often enough to regularly send new business your way.

This is an extremely dangerous path to be on. Instead, now’s the time to start building a much more robust marketing system.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

Tell Me More

Building An Unbreakable Marketing System

Having only a single source of new business is extremely dangerous. Being unable to control that source makes it doubly so.

I advocate having at least five different sources of new leads and new customers. This is called lead generation. You can read about the benefits here.

Added to that, I recommend that most of these five sources be in paid media i.e. they cost you money to market yourself. The reason paid media is so important is twofold.

1. It's Extremely reliable.

If I pay a newspaper to run my emotional direct response ad, there’s a high probability the ad will actually be run. It’s much harder to get reliable and consistent lead flow from free marketing methods such as word of mouth.

2. Paid marketing Forces you To Focus on Return on Investment (ROI).

If a paid marketing method is not working, you cut it. You don’t waste further time or money on it. Whereas when the marketing method is free, such as with word of mouth, we tend to be less ruthless and often end up wasting huge amounts of time because we didn’t have to pay anything upfront. However, there’s an opportunity cost which, if careful analysis is done, often translates to a surprisingly large amount of real money.

The art and science of being able to consistently turn a dollar of paid advertising into a dollar or more in profits through direct response marketing will make your business resilient and can help you turn the tap on to rapid business growth.

Boosting the Reliability of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

While we don’t want to be solely reliant on word of mouth, we do want to amplify it’s power and increase it’s reliability where possible.

One of the best ways I’ve seen this done is by straight out asking for referrals from customers for whom you’ve delivered a good result. It’s amazing how many business owners hope for referrals yet rarely ask for them. Something as simple as:

“Mr. Customer, it’s been such a pleasure working with you. If you know anyone who’s in a similar situation as yourself we’d love you to give them one of these gift cards which entitles them to $100 off their first consultation with us. One of the reasons we’re able to keep the cost of our service low is because we get a lot of our business through referrals from people like you.”

See what’s going on here:

• We’re acknowledging them and appealing to their ego.
• We’re not asking them for a favor but instead offering something valuable they can give to someone in their network.
• We’re giving them a reason why they should give us referrals – a reason that directly benefits them.

You could also look at affiliate marketing. This is another great way to generate referrals to your business.

Systemize Your Word Of Mouth Marketing Strategy

By putting a system around generating referrals, we’ve dramatically increased the reliability of word of mouth marketing. And while not everyone will give you referrals, many will and it sure beats just silently hoping.

Relying on the goodwill of others is not my idea of being an entrepreneur. By creating multiple sources of new leads and increasing the reliability of word of mouth marketing, you take back control of your lead flow and build a solid foundation for rapid business growth.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on How to Create a Lead Magnet that Converts in 6 Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to acquire leads for your business and build your authority.

If you're new to marketing, you might be wondering why you don't want to position your business as a commodity?

Whether you’re selling freshly baked bread, accounting services or IT support, the way you market yourself will have a dramatic impact on the clients you attract and the amount that you can charge for your services.

Position your business as the best price or lowest offer, and you'll attract price hunters. Here's why that's a bad deal for your business.

Marketing Positioning - It's not about the product

A commonly held belief is that “it’s all about the product” i.e. if you have a better product or service people will automatically be more likely to buy from you and pay you more for it.

While this is true to some extent, the law of diminishing returns comes into play when your product or service reaches a “good enough” level. After all how much better can your IT support or accounting services or bread be than that of your competition?

Once you’ve reached a level of competence, the real profit comes from the way you market yourself.

How you position your business can determine the type of customer you attract, and whether they stay long-term or short-term.

How Much Money Does A Violinist Make?​

How much does a world-class violinist make? Well, that depends on how he markets himself.

Have you ever heard of Joshua Bell?

He’s one of the finest classical musicians in the world. He plays to packed audiences all around the world, making upwards of $1, 000 per minute.

The violin that he plays is a Stradivarius violin built in 1713, currently valued at $3.5 million. This particular Stradivarius violin, being close to 300 years old, is renowned to be the most beautiful sounding violin ever crafted.

So, here we have the finest violinist in the world playing the most beautiful violin ever. It’s safe to say that Bell, as an musician, is the best at what he does.

At the height of his career he was approached by the Washington Post to participate in a social experiment.

They wanted him to play at a local subway for an hour, during which thousands of people would walk by and hear him playing.

So on the morning of January 12, 2007, Bell played through a set list of classical masterpieces with his violin case open.

Can you a guess how much the finest violinist in the world, playing a beautiful $3. 5 million violin made in hour?

A grand total of $32. See for yourself:

The finest violinist, playing the most beautiful instrument made a meager $32 from his “customers.”

The same violinist played in a Boston concert hall a few nights earlier. It was a performance where audience members paid $100 or more per ticket. During that event, he earned over $60,000 per hour.

The same talented musician, playing the same music on the same violin, yet in one instance he earns $32 an hour and in another, he earns $60,000 per hour.

What made the dramatic difference? In a word – positioning.

Positioning For Profit

If you’re a professional musician and you position yourself as a subway busker, your “customers” will treat you as such and pay you accordingly.

Conversely, if you position yourself as a professional concert performer you attract a totally different customer and once again get paid accordingly.

In other words, people will generally take you at your own appraisal – unless proven otherwise. Of course, you can’t cheat by positioning yourself as a professional musician and then show up and be unable to perform at a high level. The same is true regardless of what business you’re in.

If you’ve got a quality product or service, what’s stopping you from positioning it at a much higher level – offering it a premium price and attracting a much higher quality of customer? Resolve to stop positioning yourself as a commodity and competing solely on price. The result to your bottom line will be phenomenal.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.  

So many business owners just don't get marketing. They waste time and dollars on adverts that just aren't going to engage their target audience. If you want to catch their attention, and grow your database of leads then you need to hone in on their problems.

You want to target their pain. To do that, you need a plan. Let me break it down for you.

Become Your Prospects Pain Relief

You’ve got a splitting headache. You open your medicine cabinet and start rifling through your museum of half-used tablets, creams and vitamins only to realize you’re totally out of pain relief medication.

So you rush down to your local pharmacy in the hope of getting the tablet that’s going to give you the relief you so desperately need.

Do you worry about the price? Does it even enter your mind to shop around and see if you can buy the same product cheaper at another pharmacy? Unlikely.

You’re in pain and you need immediate relief. In fact, even if the tablets were priced at double or triple the normal price, you’d probably still buy.

The usual ways of shopping get thrown out the window when we’re in pain. The exact same is true for your customers and prospects.

The problem with Selling features & Benefits?

So many times businesses talk about “features and benefits” rather than speaking to the pain that the customer already has.

How much selling does a pharmacist need to do to sell pain relief medication to someone with a splitting headache? Very little I suspect.

The same is true whether you sell TV’s, cars or consulting. You have prospects and customers who are in pain. They want pain relief, not features and benefits.

If you’re selling me a TV, you could sell me features and benefits by telling me it’s got four HDMI ports and 1080p resolution. This will mean very little to most people.

However, imagine instead you target my pain point which is bringing it back home, unpacking it, and spending an infuriating number of hours trying to get it working properly with all my other devices.

Instead of price discounting and positioning yourself as a commodity, why not offer to deliver it to my house, mount it on the wall, ensure the picture quality is spectacular, and make sure that it works perfectly with all my other peripherals.

Now you’re giving me pain relief and price becomes less important than if you’re selling me a commodity with a list of features and benefits.

Comparing Apples with Oranges

In the above example, even though you might be selling the exact same TV as your competitor, if you package it up in a way that takes away my pain – then you’ve won my business.

It’s also much more likely I’ll become a raving fan and refer others to you because you weren’t just the vendor of a commodity. You were a problem solver.

Now it’s an apples to oranges comparison. How do you compare this to “it’s got four HDMI ports and 1080p resolution”?

Selling features and benefits is the best way to turn your prospects into price shoppers who view your product as a commodity bought solely on price.

Your goal is to be a problem solver, pain reliever, and turn any comparison with your competition into an apples-to-oranges comparison.

What's Your Cure?

Remember people are much more willing to pay for a cure than for prevention. Targeting existing pain rather than promising future pleasure will result in much higher conversion, much higher customer satisfaction and lower price resistance.

Look for pain points in your industry and become your target audience's source of relief.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.