3 Smart Ways To Use Email Marketing As A Conversion Tool

Email marketing has primarily been thought of as a tool for converting leads to buyers. There’s a good reason for this—it works. Think about the number of times you’ve made a purchase from a company because they sent an email.

It makes sense that email works… you’re connecting with people who voluntarily joined your email list. So when you’re launching your business, planning a sale, promoting a new product or service, you should include email marketing in your plan. It’s an essential component of the overall messaging strategy that you need to use for any kind of promotion.

But your knowledge business isn’t the same as Old Navy or Target. You’re not selling shirts or kitchen gadgets. You’re selling a transformation.

That means that if you’ve neglected your email list and failed to build a connection with your audience by providing valuable content, you shouldn’t expect your email marketing campaign to succeed. 

You need to connect with your audience and provide valuable content before you sell a product or service.

Let’s look at how email marketing works to take people from a lead to a buyer in a knowledge business. 

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Understand That Conversion Doesn’t Just Happen

You need to have a strategic approach for your email marketing. Sending emails that convert isn’t a coincidence. The strategy behind your whole email sequence will determine whether your campaign fails or succeeds.

You need to consider your promotional email sequence as part of your overall strategy. You need to take your audience on a bit of a journey. You lead them to the right path and deliver the right message at the right time.

But before all that, you need to understand that there are different types of buyers. Some of the common buyer personas are:

• Impulsive Buyers or Action Takers. They act and decide quickly. They don’t want to read the entire sales page, so you can easily convert them from leads to buyers early on. They just want you to tell them what to do and where to buy. These are the people who want to find the button that lets them make the purchase.
• Emotional Buyers. These are people who are moved by inspirational stories and testimonies. Unlike the action takers, emotional buyers don’t buy right away, but they also don’t look for every last detail. An emotional trigger leads them to take action.
• Detail-Oriented Buyers. They read everything on your sales page before they make a decision whether to buy from you or not. They want to know the benefits and features and how your product or service will impact them when they buy from you.
• Fence Sitters. They’re indecisive and don’t make decisions right away. These people take their time thinking through your product. You need to give them a reason to take action.

You also need different messages to convert different types of buyers during your promotional sequence. You can do that by sending core emails in a certain sequence.

• Value Load Email. This is the first email you send to your audience. It lays out your offer and details the benefits, features, and other reasons why they should purchase your product.
• Alternative Costs Email. It tells your audience how much it will cost to solve their problem. It’s where you can set a real value for your product.
• Cost of Inaction Email. It tells your audience what will happen if they don’t do anything to solve their problem. It’s where you help them recognize their problem and the consequences of not taking action.
• Testimonial Email. It gives your audience an idea of what will happen if they take action on their problem. You present testimonials from people who have used your product and how it helped them make progress.
• Question and Answer Email. This is where you address the common questions your buyers have. Ideally, this email should have a conversational tone and explain how your product can solve their problem. The value load email and the question and answer email are the longest emails you’ll send to your audience during your promotional campaign.
• Urgency Email. It’s where you tell your audience that they have to make a decision now. You have to let them know that it’s not too late to decide, but you also don’t want to wait any longer. At this point, you’re talking to buyers who are referred to as fence-sitters. These are the people who wait until the last minute and you need to address their issues so that they feel good about purchasing.

When In Doubt, Send Another Email

How many emails should you send to your audience during your promotion? The simple answer is when in doubt, send another email.

Don’t feel bad about emailing your audience. You’re sending business emails not friendship emails. Keep in mind that these people wanted to be on your list, so it’s only normal for you to promote to them. If they get annoyed, then they can always unsubscribe.

You don’t have to worry about how often you send emails as long as they’re good emails. The problem starts when you send long and boring ones, which will eventually result in people unsubscribing from your email list.

Another problem is if your emails are always all about selling. Your emails need to offer value and be entertaining so that readers will enjoy them. You have to add personality and interesting stories to catch the attention of your audience.

People also get annoyed with promotional emails if they always present negative emotional triggers. Stories or warnings of the many bad things that will happen to them if they don’t buy can be irritating.

If you want people to stick around, your emails shouldn’t make them feel bad in hopes that they’ll become buyers. That means avoiding high-pressure sales methods with negative emotional triggers. Instead, create emails that inspire and amuse. Use an approach that yields positive emotions.

Send a minimum of one email every day if you have a promotional campaign that runs for two weeks or less. But if you’re running a campaign that’s about to come to a close, you can send multiple emails, a minimum of three, on the last day of the promotion. You can also send separate emails to people who have been quite engaged during the launch.

Allow People to Opt-Out

There’s an easy way for you not to feel bad when you’re sending lots of emails: Give your audience the option to opt out. 

I don’t mean telling them to opt out of your email list. Instead, give them a choice to opt out of a certain promotion but remain on your list. That way, they’ll continue to receive emails from you about topics that they’re interested in but not those that they don’t want to hear about.

This will help address concerns about not wanting to annoy your audience when you send out several emails because you have given them the right to say that they don’t want to receive anything involving that particular promotion. You should include this option on every single email you send when you launch a promotion.

Email Is Versatile

Always remember that you don’t just send emails for the sake of selling. You should send them to build connections, create value, and convince people to buy, later on. Create good emails that will trigger positive emotions. 

Send your promotional emails in the right order so you can address the needs of different buyers. Don’t forget to add an opt-out link so your audience has the option not to receive emails about a certain promotion while still staying on your email list. That way, you don’t have to feel guilty or get worried that they will be annoyed if you send lots of emails during your campaign.

Be sure to join my FREE program, BADA$$ Online Marketing University (BOMU), if you want to learn more about inbound marketing and building the business of your dreams.