Selling With Email—How to Transition from "Hello, Yay, Friends" to "BUY M' STUFF, BISH."

Yo! It’s me! Haaaaappppppy Cyber Mondayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully you didn’t delete this email in a massive “must delete all emails” hysteria, because that’s exactly what I did today. Like, no one survived. Not even people I like. It was all “unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe from the madnessss!” Even though I am an email marketer and I LOVE SENDING EMAILS AND TEACH IT AS A CAREER. When the Cyber Monday emails come out, it’s just a grand opportunity to see every mofo in your inbox and then pick and choose teams. 🤣

So, anywayyyyyy, since we’ve been on the topic of email, I thought today might actually be a great day to go over how to SELL TO PEOPLE on that email list, once you’ve started to grow it. Because that’s also a fear a lot of people have—and one of the things that holds them back from starting an email list in the first place:

I just don’t know how to transition from “friendly, useful content” to “here’s my sales promo, bitches—BUY NOW!”

Of course, you’re seeing a lot of this today in your inbox: the transition with Cyber Monday is as simple as “Hey, it’s Cyber Monday, here’s 50% off!” Which, honestly, is not a bad promo to run. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are really profitable across the board for all sorts of retailers AND creators, because people are in a buying MOOD. They’re ready, they’re waiting, they’re pumped to buy. That’s what their intention is. So by not running one—maybe in fear of looking like a generic copycat—you’re definitely missing out on a lot of revenue your business should have.

ANYWAY—while Cyber Monday is a promo opportunity you shouldn’t miss out on, you obviously can’t rely on just one day a year to sell your stuff. And so this brings me to a couple of emails we got from our reader friends Kate & Nadia this week:

Nadia: What do promotional campaigns look like within an email newsletter? Any recommendations for structure? How to balance them with the regular newsletter content so that it is seamless?

Kate: Do you use a sales funnel (or something similar by another name) to drive subscribers from your newsletters to your products? If so, I’d die to be walked through it!

It would be useful to show you the 30,000-foot view. Because none of this is intuitive—and until you see how all the moving parts work together, reading about the intricacies of a campaign might make you even more confused!

What I try to do with my businesses when it comes to selling with email: (a) It’s systematic; (b) It ensures I am making offers consistently; (c) It allows me to put a large portion of it on autopilot; (d) It’s scalable and repeatable, and every new subscriber can go through the same initial sequence, and get the same initial offers, with the same deadlines, and it’ll all just WORK, without me having to constantly push the business up the mountain myself. Know what I mean???????

So that first block when someone new opts in? A one-time new subscriber special offer designed to sort out my super hot leads who are like, yes, I NEED SOMETHING FROM YOU NOW. Of course, you want your business structured so the hot leads can give you money in exchange for value right away. Fantastic. Except…they are the exception, not the rule. And typically, this offer does need to be kept pretty low because otherwise, it’s jarring to subscribe to something and suddenly there’s a $1,000 offer in your face. That’s not going to work. It doesn’t feel like an easy, natural “yes”—a gift—even if those people already heard your gorgeous ass on a podcast and even if they already read your book and they already love you (or whatever). This is the reality of business. So think about when YOU are a new subscriber and if someone were to present you with a fun, new subscriber offer that expired in, say, 24 hours: it would have to be something reasonable + fun + delightful to which you'd respond positively. So that’s why my advice is less than $49. If you don’t have a product that’s worth less than $49, make one.

Next step: build a relationship! Send ‘em your best and your brightest advice and inspiration ideas for a month (and this is also why I said nooooo less than 1/week emails, because even then you will have only emailed them 4 times before you’re pitching an offer, and the relationship isn’t as strong as it could be). The name of this game is showing up and giving, giving, giving 80% of the time, and selling 20% of the time. Which is why, once a month is complete, I then take a full week to pitch a product. And I’ll create a campaign where you’ll get an email every single day about buying this product, turning it into an event. And the email campaign will do all the things an email campaign needs to do: warms up the topic, gets you thinking, presents a solution, plus a deadline, and some other fun ingredients, like testimonials and FAQs. But I’ll give that sale its very own email sequence, which will be separate from my regular newsletter. This way, I can put people into that sequence when it’s time and then they will automatically pop back into the regular email sequence when it’s done, without losing their spot.

Now, I should pause here and say: the idea here is that you’ve automated at least your first month’s emails and this promo sequence, so this way your business is working for you. But you’re not going to have all of that in place, just yet, so it’s okay if you do it manually! Just do a month of emails, then promote something, then continue on with your regular emails. Later, you can turn these into automated emails so every subscriber has the same good experience and human error doesn’t come into play.

Once you’ve run your first promo, then you’re going to spend another month building that relationship, sending your regular newsletter emails. Once that month is up, then this is when you can run another promo for a different product. Do you HAVE to have a different product? Hell no! But if you do have a few different products, this is how I’d work it. This way, each product gets their own spotlight—and you’re not just throwing something down at the bottom of every email, hiding it in the footer area (which isn’t effective for sales, btw. Even though we really would love it to be! That would be so much easier! It’s just not—there’s no urgency. You need your promos to have their own email campaigns, and they need to feel like an event.)

If you don’t have another product, just pitch your same one! That’s okay! In fact, you might have to pitch your product 10 times before a customer buys. Part of the name of the game is persistence. Truly, the health of your business depends on the consistency of your offers: you can’t make money unless you aren’t asking people to buy. They will not decide on their own. So that’s why I encourage you to get into a pattern and make a system for yourself. It doesn’t have to be every month! It could be every 3 months. It could be every 3 weeks. A lot of that will depend on how high the price point is of what you’re selling, and how engaged your subscribers are. If you’re just selling a pack of pencils, you aren’t going to take 7 whole days to sell that pack of pencils, either. That would be disproportionate to the value. However, if you were to make a special holiday bundle, then THAT you could promote for all 7 days. Know what I mean? As for how long is too long, typically I’ve found that for things like online courses and other products < $500, a 7-day promo is enough. You don’t want to burn out your audience, either. (That’s why I take them out of the regular newsletter sequence when running a promo sequence: so they aren’t getting 2+ emails every day, which might cause them to unsubscribe.)

After that, you’ll do another month (or whatever period you choose) of regular newsletter emails, and then you’ll start the cycle over again: pitching Product A, followed by more regular newsletter emails, and then pitching Product B. Of course, you’ll want to filter out anyone who has bought either one of those products so past buyers aren’t getting pitched something that is irrelevant to them. And this is how I would continue throughout the year: alternating giving, giving, giving, giving, asking. Giving, giving, giving, giving, asking. Notice that’s 4 weeks on, 1 week promoting.

And THEN…once or twice a year, you will take your subscribers into a 1 month focused discussion, prepping and priming them for A BIG LAUNCH. Typically this is something that’s at a much higher price point: maybe your private coaching or consulting, maybe group mentoring, maybe a high-end online course for $500+. The goal here is to focus the conversation around your topic—whatever the topic is of your actual product or service—to start building momentum and discussion. So that way, when you do the actual launch??? Everyone’s there and ready, excited to partake! The conversation feels natural, not sudden or random—and that’s all by design. I often get questions like, “How do I sell without it seeming jarring???” and the answer is: “Plan it.” It’s sort of like having a discussion at the dinner table: you need transitions. You need bridges to get from “that one time when we were 15 and burned down a dumpster” to “hey, so, do you think you could help me with a down payment for the house???” You know how to do that already because you are a human being: you just need to think about it on a different scale and context: email marketing is really just one long conversation. And that conversation requires: an opening, a topic, a transition to a new topic, a discussion, a conclusion, and then a transition to a new topic, and a new discussion, and a new conclusion. What you’re doing here is no different than talking to the people you already know at the dinner table. 🍽

The only thing that really changes, however, is the length of time I’d say you should spend on opening and closing the doors to a BIG LAUNCH. The higher price point requires more time—usually 14 days—to fully have that conversation, have a dialogue, answer questions, create room for customers to decide, AND…to create an event that feels worthy of the price point. This is actually important: when you don’t dedicate enough time or fanfare to your launches, people assume that what you’re doing isn’t very important. (Let that sink in, if you've ever been nervous to talk about your stuff too much.) Conversely, when you dedicate lots of time and fanfare to your launches, it elevates things that aren’t even that important….to feel MUCH more important. Does that make sense? By creating a larger event out of your launch, you’ve also created a larger demand for it: the more public time and effort and energy you put into something, the more it will be perceived as important. And then the more attention your people will give to it, and the more it will feel like a good decision. That’s (annoyingly) kind of how the online world works: we pay attention to the things that are being trumpeted. It stinks in a way, because there are some bad things out there being trumpeted. But it can also be an opportunity: you know that if you have enough nerve and courage to stand up and say “Come here, let’s talk!” then you can make a beautiful business out of what you love. If, on the other hand, you remain quiet and hope that sales naturally fall into place without you having to actually trumpet anything (and trust me, I get it), then SO MUCH GOOD gets lost in the shuffle. We don’t see you because we can’t see you. We only see the things that are being touted…not because other people are touting them, but because you are having the courage to tout them.

This is hard work.

But this is good work.

This is important work.

This is the work of marketing.

Hope your week is off to a good start…even though it already sort of feels like the holidays are here and who is even working?!?!?!

XOXO,

Ash