AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy here and welcome to another episode of the online marketing made easy podcast. This episode is part 3 of a 3-part mini-training on Facebook marketing.
Specifically, the whole training was how to attract fans, how to collect leads, and how to make money on Facebook. Part one was all about attracting a quality fan base, and you can find that at AmyPorterfield.com/7.
And then part 2 was all about turning those fans into quality leads. I talked about Facebook contests and a few other things in there. You can find that one at AmyPorterfield.com/8. Just the number 8.
Part 3 is all about selling on Facebook, making money. But I have a different take when it comes to selling on Facebook, so I want you to keep an open mind. I think you're going to find some valuable tips in here, but it's probably going to be a little bit different than you expected, which is always fun, right? Let's dive in.
First I want to start at the top. When I teach Facebook marketing, I usually break it down into 3 parts. Attract, promote, and sell. Now, if you want to see big results on Facebook, you want to focus your efforts on attracting a quality fan base and turning those fans into leads.
When you're on Facebook, I can promise you this–if that's where you spend your time, attracting those fans, turning them into leads and then cultivating those relationships by really making sure you're engaging with them and answering their questions and becoming their go-to source. If you only did that on Facebook, you would be able to then turn those leads into customers.
How do you do that? Well, this is where I differ sometimes with the whole idea of making money on Facebook. Once you attract those leads, I want you to add a whole ‘nother layer to your online marketing strategy.
That might sound like a whole lot of work, but believe me, once you get it in place you can put it on autopilot. And autopilot these days tends to be my favorite phrase because it means it frees up more time for me to do things that I really love to do.
I'm going to teach you how to put your Facebook marketing, at least a portion of it, the selling portion, on autopilot.
Here's what I'm proposing for this strategy here. Once you collect that lead, you get that name and email from your Facebook efforts, I want you to create an email campaign that is specifically geared toward that brand-new Facebook lead. It's very specific, and I've got a little strategy for you that you can follow, a formula to ensure that you are actually getting the most out of all the effort that you just put into getting that lead.
Now, this is the missing link. It's why so many people fail to see big results on Facebook. I really do believe that. There's this misconception that all Facebook marketing should be done inside Facebook. Well, I guess that makes sense. It's called Facebook marketing. But really, that's not the case.
Just like anything in life, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Because Facebook is not the end-all solution. That's right, I said it, I am a Facebook marketing author and trainer, and I'm tell you right now, Facebook is not where it's all at.
Facebook is your launching pad. Specifically, it's your relationship kickstarter. If you look at Facebook as your relationship Kickstarter, it takes a lot of stress out of the equation, because when you don't have to also directly sell on Facebook you're freeing up your time to do what people really want you to do on Facebook, which is connect with them, listen to them, offer them support.
Again, be their go-to source in whatever it is that you do in your business. If you just focused on that, and you focused on offering great value and some of that value is in return for a name and an email, your whole experience on Facebook one, becomes more enjoyable, and two, you make a bigger impact.
With that, I want you to kind of change your mindset, at least for the next 30 days, you start thinking of Facebook as your launching pad and your relationship Kickstarter, and it's where you are that go-to source.
Once you do that and you’re collecting leads, that's where we also add a brand-new layer which is the email marketing campaign.
Let me set the stage. You created an eBook, a webinar, a newsletter, a discount opportunity. Whatever it might be, in exchange for a name and email on Facebook. And again, we talk about that in episode 8 moreso.
Once you get the lead, now you're not going to stop communicating with people on Facebook, you're just going to continue to foster those relationships. But now you're going to take things outside of Facebook as well.
When you connect with your audience in real time on Facebook, and at the same time you're sending them valuable emails that they've got to open up because they want to know what's inside. Well, now you're staying top-of-mind at a whole ‘nother level. It's like this double-dose of goodness, because they see you in your newsfeed, and hopefully they're communicating and engaging with you, and now you've just sent them an email.
Well, there's a stronger bond when they see you on Facebook, maybe even see you on Twitter or YouTube or whatever you want to use, and now you're in their email box as well. This strategy works because when you integrate email and social, you're just extending the reach of your email campaigns.
You're going to see higher open rates, higher click through rates and better conversions when you're actually integrating the two.
Have you ever heard that phrase “the money's in the list”? Sometimes I think that phrase is just a little slimy, but here's the truth–it's actually accurate. The money really IS in your email list. But the great news is, you do not need to have a massive list to profit from it. If you have a list of 1000 quality people, probably even less, but let's just say 1000 to be on the safe side, you could profit from that list, and you'd be pleasantly surprised the conversions you could get from that list if you've already been nurturing these people inside of Facebook.
For some of us, email marketing can be a bit tricky, but I'm going to break it down for you so that it becomes really obvious why you would want to create an email marketing campaign at the same time as marketing on Facebook.
Let's make this actionable. First, I get asked all the time which email service provider do you use? I used to use AWeber, for about two years when I first left Tony Robbins and started out on my own, I used AWeber. And it worked great for me and it wasn't too complicated so I was able to figure things out pretty quickly.
But then I moved over to InfusionSoft and I'll add links to both of those service providers in the show notes, but I moved over to InfusionSoft because it included a shopping cart, and along the way I realized how valuable it was if I could segment my email list and send really targeted emails to specific people. I couldn't do that as much with AWeber and that's what Infusionsoft is all about.
InfusionSoft is a beast. It's really difficult to learn in my opinion, but once you give it the time, it's my favorite tool that I use in everything I do. I love InfusionSoft. A lot of people say “don't get InfusionSoft until you've been in business for a few years.”
I actually disagree. I think you should jump on InfusionSoft or a bigger type service like that early on, and as your list is small you can make more mistakes and you can learn at a slower pace.
As your list grows, at that point, you're going to be a pro. So I'm a big fan of starting with something like InfusionSoft, so definitely check out both. There's a whole bunch of other ones, you can do a Google search, but I'll leave the links to AWeber and InfusionSoft in the show notes.
Now, for your email campaign, once you get the lead on Facebook, the very first thing you want to do, so now we're getting into the formula, the very first thing you want to do is you want to send a welcome email and deliver whatever it is you promised in that free offer giveaway on Facebook.
Let's say you were offering an eBook. You'd send an email right away, “Thanks so much for signing up for my free eBook, here it is,” and maybe give a link so that they can download it and then give them some more information about what they're going to find in that eBook to encourage them to actually read it.
That would be your first email. And then from there, you're going to start an email auto-responder campaign. For those of you who are not familiar with the term auto- responder, it's just a series of emails that you create in advance, and you release them over a period of time just to ensure you're sending emails out regularly. Because when you get a new lead, the last thing you want to do is not send them communication on a regular basis.
I've recently read, and I can't remember where I read this so I wish I looked it up before I started, but if you wait 30 days, if you wait 30 days to email your list, you're likely to get a lot more opt-outs when you send that email. Because it makes sense–if all of the sudden I get an email from someone and I haven't heard from them in a long time, let's say a marketing type email, I'm going to think “Well, I didn't sign up for this” because it had been SO long since I'd heard from them, and I don't even remember signing up for their list.
You've got to make sure you send that welcome email instantly, and let's say a day or two later you send a follow-up email. That's where the auto-responder starts.
Once you start this auto responder campaign, you’re going to send out a series of valuable emails, and then from there when you feel that the time is right, you can start introducing people to your products, programs or services through your email campaign.
That's what the auto responder is. It's a series of valuable emails, and then you lead them through this journey until you're ready to tell them more about your program, product and service. Of course, you're building up trust and affinity and people are getting to know, like and trust you more. Marketing 101.
That's the value of an email auto-responder. Speaking of email auto-responders I have an amazing resource for you. I feel like I talk about Pat Flynn way too much, so I hope that's not creepy, but I can't help it! The guy's got good stuff! And he has this blog post all about auto responders. I'm going to link to it in the show notes because it's that good.
But I contemplated telling you about that because again I think I mentioned Pat Flynn like two episodes. I promise it's not a creepy thing, it's just that the guy's got good stuff.
Here's the deal–I'll link to that in the show notes, you can learn all about autoresponders, and he's got some suggestions as to what to do and what not to do.
To make this really easy to understand, very actionable, I thought I'd take a page out of my own marketing and tell you what I've done with one of my products so you could see how I've used it on Facebook to get leads and then turned it into an autoresponder which then equated to profits.
Let me take you step-by-step, and then you'll be able to see just how this all comes together.
First, you've got to start with an end in mind and ask yourself “what is it to promote or sell on Facebook?” In my case, it was an ads program, an online training program all about Facebook ads.
I've got this ads program, I knew I wanted to promote it on Facebook, so then I had to create an opt-in opportunity on Facebook that's related to Facebook ads. What I did is I recorded a webinar and I put this webinar into a program where it runs every single day.
People could come to the sign-up page and it would have that date, today's date, and a time or a few different times that they could sign up for the webinar. It was a simulated live webinar. I didn't say it was live, but you get the point.
I actually added a custom app on Facebook where you could actually go to that custom app and sign up for the webinar. And then I ran ads to the custom app.
I know it might sound a little complicated but it was pretty simple. I recorded a webinar, put it into a system where this webinar would run EVERY single day. I used Stealth Seminar. From there, I added it to a Facebook custom app and drove ads to it. Now people were signing up for my webinar. That was getting me the leads. Once I got the lead, they would actually watch the webinar and at the end of the webinar I would tell them about the Ads Program. But a lot of people, because they were new to me, they weren't going to buy right way. Some would, of course, but not everybody.
This is where the email autoresponder happens. Once they sign up for the webinar I would send them an instant email. It's that welcome email. That welcome email would say “thanks so much for signing up for my webinar, here's the details you need to get on your webinar” which is, let's say, the next day. I'd send them access information. That was my delivery because they'd just opted in.
They would watch the webinar. In my next email, this is the email autoresponder, would be “Hey, here's your replay” because people love to watch webinars again. And I would mention in that replay email why Facebook ads are so valuable. I'd give a little bit of valuable information about the topic as well.
The next email after the replay was all about answering their objections to Facebook ads, because I knew that people were a little bit weary of trying Facebook ads. They didn't know if Facebook ads worked for them, they didn’t know how much money they could actually spend on Facebook ads and actually get results, they weren't exactly sure if they were going to be able to set them up themselves. There's a lot of objections when it comes to this product.
Through a Q&A email I answered some of their objections. I said “When you think about Facebook ads, you're probably thinking of some of these concerns. Let me address them for you right now.”
Right away I addressed objections through offering insight and feedback about how to use Facebook Ads. So it's like a value-add email.
From there I sent another email to give them three tips to get the most from their first Facebook ad. Once they set it up, there's three tips to fine-tune your Facebook advertising. Again, value-add emails.
I did this over a period of time, so probably every few days if not once a week they would get an email from me all about Facebook advertising. And then from there, I would stop giving tips and I started to promote the program. I told them why this program was for them, where they would find value in it, how they would benefit from it, and I painted a picture through these emails of why they just had to start using Facebook ads and why my program is a solution to their challenges with Facebook marketing and overall online marketing.
You see how this works? You build up to it! You don't just sell right away because we would never do that in the real world. Use your email campaign to offer value, build trust in your community and then eventually when the time is right, you're going to tell them about your program, product or service.
For those of you who are a little impatient you might think “I don't want to send out all those series of emails before I start telling them about what I want to sell them!”
Then be careful because you're going to lose an audience. You’re going to lose that lead you just worked so hard to get.
You've got to foster that relationship. You're doing that inside of Facebook as well as outside of Facebook. You're strengthening your entire campaign.
Here's the great thing about using email marketing to actually profit from your efforts on Facebook: when you believe in your product or program or service, writing these emails, crafting this autoresponder campaign will start to come natural to you. It's not difficult to actually talk about the topic you're so passionate about, right?
From there, you're offering value through your first series of emails, and then you're telling them about your product. If you believe in what you're doing, this doesn't have to be a stressful strategy. That's one thing I love about email marketing because I could talk all day about Facebook marketing, and now I get to craft these emails that give value, insight, feedback AND because I believe in all my products I get to tell people they can benefit from working with me.
To me, it's a win-win situation all around. I know it's a little bit of a different strategy than you might have expected to hear. I'm not saying never sell inside of Facebook. Sometimes when I'm promoting a program at the very end before I close the doors to the program I'll say “we've got 24 hours until the program closes.” I'll say that on Facebook! But I’m not expecting to see a rush of sales come through it. I now that the majority of my sales for my programs come through my email marketing campaigns. That is a fact.
But of course, I would have never had those leads if I didn't acquire them from Facebook. Facebook is my #1 resource for acquiring really quality leads. Of course, then I use email marketing to move those leads into customers.
To switch gears a little I really want to drive home the importance of creating a solid email campaign for your new Facebook leads. I wanted to give you some tips to help you get bigger results with your email marketing efforts.
To mix things up, I invited my friend, an email marketing expert DJ Waldow to give us some tips about email marketing. DJ has a popular website called Waldow Social, and he's the coauthor of the book The Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing.
DJ is my go-to guy for all things email marketing, so it made perfect sense for me to invite him on the show and give us some tips for email marketing. So let's listen in.
DJ, thanks so much for being with us!
DJ: Thank you for having me, what an honor to be on your podcast! This is pretty cool!
Amy: Well, I'm excited that you said you'd come on and share some tips because I love talking about email marketing but I'm definitely not the expert in this area and you really are. Give me the first tip you've got for our listeners.
DJ: The first tip, I think, is probably one that we all know deep in our hearts, in our souls, but we don't necessarily practice it enough. It's simply to be human.
Think about all the different marketing messages that you get all day long. I'm not talking just about email, but any kind of messages on Facebook, on social media banner ads, whatever kind of message you get. The ones that stand out at you the most, I think, are the ones that–you feel like someone's actually talking to you. I think what we forget when it comes to email marketing is that even though yes, a machine actually sends the email and receives the email and all this, ultimately it's a human or several humans talking to other humans.
I really think–I know for me on a personal level, the emails that resonate the best with me are the ones that you're reading and you're kind of nodding your head saying “Yeah, I get that. I can relate to that, totally.” So my tip is just to be more human in how you communicate with your audience.
Amy: Okay, this is a great one, because we're talking about people that have collected email lists through Facebook. They have this casual, more friendly conversation with them on Facebook, they get up on their email list, now they're going to start emailing to them and this is so important to keep that same vibe, that conversational fun, friendly, whatever it is that you're doing on your Facebook page to get the lead–you've got to keep that same kind of tone and voice in the mails. To be more human, that's such a perfect tip, especially when these people are coming from social networks.
DJ: Yeah. You know, with my newsletter that I sent out, I mean, I–a week or so ago was my Dad's 65th birthday. I let off a newsletter to a pretty substantial sized list with a video “happy birthday” to my Dad.
You start with that and then, yeah, of course the bulk of the messages are about email marketing, but I Try to keep the tone conversational. Just like you said, if people are coming from Facebook especially, keep that tone. There's no reason to make it all icky and corporate-feel.
Amy: Exactly. That is a fantastic tip! Give me the next one!
DJ: The pressure's on! If that was a fantastic one then all of the other ones are downhill from here!
The second big tip, to me, where a see a lot of people missing is the call-to-action. For those that are familiar with that, the call is basically what you want your subscriber to do. What action do you want them to take in the email? It could be register for a webinar, it could be buy a product, it could be “learn more about my services that I offer.” Whatever the case is, every email should have a goal, a call to action, something that you want them to do.
Too often, what I see is, I open an email and I say “what am I supposed to do?” If you pause for a second as a subscriber and you pause and say “I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this email” then you, as an email marketer, the person that's sending the message–you failed.
Keep in mind, I've seen plenty of newsletters that people send out that their goal is just to get you to read it, right? It might be to click back to the website, but it's to get you to read it. And that's sort of a different animal, there's not really a call-to-action in that email.
But I believe strongly that when you are including some call–and it could even be a call to action like, do you like this? Reply to this email! Or “share this with your social network, tell people on Facebook or Twitter” or whatever the case is. But make sure that when you have a call to action in your email it's very, very obvious what people should do.
Amy: Okay, this is equally just as good as that first one, because—
DJ: Phew!
Amy: [laughs] Because I'm all about that call to action! For the strategy I'm teaching i this session, it's all about getting the lead and then building the relationship through your email marketing in the form of an autoresponder, so you've just got the lead.
Now let's put together 4 or 5 emails where we're just building a relationship, giving great value, before we actually go for the sale. A lot of people have different strategies, here. This is just one strategy, so when you're talking call-to-action, I like what you said where it's not always about “buy my stuff.” It could be “click here to read my latest blog” and you give a teaser about that one so they want to click. Or, “leave a comment on my blog” or “click reply; I want to hear from you!”
There's different ways you can give those little calls to action, but would you agree that getting people to take little calls to action in the beginning, they're going to be more ready, or just the behavior's there to then click your links when you start to sell?
DJ: Totally! It's like anything else. I'm working with one client right now, and we're really revamping their welcome email strategy. Now, they're B2C, so a little bit of a different case, but we're revamping their strategy and we're basically giving them a discount–we're offering them a discount in order to subscribe, and then after they've subscribed in the newsletter, that first email welcome email has the discount in there.
We've talked a lot about this and one of the people on the team said “oh, that’s great but I don't necessarily want to just give away stuff. Maybe they're already going to buy!” And my argument there is what we're doing is we're getting them in the habit of buying. Once they've clicked and then they've bought–even if you've lost 10-50% because of that, they're now USED to buying. They've gone through the checkout process.
I can't control the other stuff. The checkout process is crap, or if the product isn't good, you can't control some of that. But get them in the habit. So exactly what you said, get them in the habit of clicking, get them in the habit of opening the email,, smiling when they read it–any of those things, and you THEN can go further around the road and start selling a little bit more.
Amy: Awesome, fantastic. What's the third?
DJ: Whew, the first two you said–maybe I should reorder these…
Amy: This one better be good, buddy.
DJ: Heh! All right. This one's a little bit different. I think especially if you're talking about people coming from Facebook…this goes into the Be Human, call to action, it all sort of blends together, but it's this idea of asking questions.
You see a lot of this advice on blog posts, if you want people to engage with your blog and leave comments, you ask a question at the end. You–something thought provoking. It could even be as simple as what do you think? But I've found a lot of success, individually and with clients if within the email body you ask a question.
And you ask somebody to then respond to you or you tell them–again, it's this be human and call to action thing. Ask a question and have them post it to Facebook. There's ways to take an email, create a link within your email that will automatically post something to Facebook.
Amy: Oh good, because I was going to ask you, because–with those that have a larger list, you don't want people replying all the time, because then when you're not getting back to them–if they're clicking reply and you're not getting back to them, it's not going to be good form.
But you're saying ask a question and say, “click here and let me know what you think.”
DJ: Yeah! And the “click here, let me know what you think” could then post it on–you could get something posted on Facebook where they ask a question within a Facebook group, or–so that question could be posted somewhere else.
But I will go back to the “click here to respond to the email.” I know what you're saying, if your list is really large, that could be a problem, but you know what? Most people still don't do that, right? I mean most people still say, “Oh. I get an email from Amy Porterfield that says ‘reply here and tell me what you think' I might say oooh, I don't want to reply to Amy, she's not going to have time to respond to me. I don't want to bother her about anything.”
So there's a chance you're not going to get as many as you think to respond. Just like anything else, test that and see. Try it one week. Try something and see if you can get people to respond to your email.
If you're overwhelmed, hey, that's a good problem to have, right?
Amy: It's so true! You know, one of my very favorite strategies Derek Halpern taught me this and you probably heard it, where when people get on his email list, the first email they get, he asks them “tell me about”–I might get this wrong but “tell me about your biggest marketing challenge” and they respond. Literally, he reads them all! I don't know if he can get back to everybody, but he checks them all out, which is such great market research anyway—
DJ: I stole that! I stole that idea from him.
Amy: Did you? And are you–you've seen it?
DJ: Actually, Scott Stratton does something similar, too, when you sign up. He asks, I think, just one question. So you don't know this Amy because you signed up for my list before I made this change, but if you were a new subscriber to my list, you actually get–before the true welcome email, you get an email that says “Mind answering three questions?” And the three questions–oh geez, I should probably know the 3 questions that I wrote! Right? I'm going to have to go into my email—
Here, someone just responded to it today. So the three questions I ask are “What's your biggest need when it comes to email marketing?” “What are you struggling with the most?” “And what do you hope to get out of the Waldow Social Weekly?”
Amy: And do people answer those? I mean–
DJ: Yes!
Amy: Really?
DJ: It's crazy! So now, I've been doing this for probably a month now, and I would say– I have to go look at the actually numbers, but I would say about 20% of the people respond to that initial email, which…I think is impressive. I know that people see it and they might just, ehhh, I'm not going to take the time to do it whatever, but not only do I get–this is kind of another–I guess this is tip 3A, or 3B, but I get so many responses where all of the sudden, I've now–sort of like the idea of clicking, getting them used to clicking?
Now that they see that they respond and they see that, oh wow, DJ's actually human, he's going to respond to my email. From a sales perspective, this hasn't–I haven't done this too much yet, but when somebody says “What's my biggest need?” when it comes to email marketing, and they say “geez, I need somebody to help me blah blah
blah” all of the sudden they have a different status on my list because now I know they're somebody that could be a potential client.
So I'm gaining that intelligence. And I'm not doing it in–hopefully, a creepy way. I'm just doing it in as…
And there's other times where I've exchanged–I've actually replied back to somebody and I say “I've got to write a blog post about this.”
She wrote back “OH my god! You just responded to my email!” You could tell she just didn't know what to do or how to react to it, but.
Amy: It's so rare! So yeah, you could make someone's day if you do something like that!
DJ: Totally! And then you've won somebody over. You know this from relationship building, it's SO important to have that.
Amy: It stays with them, definitely.
Okay, I do–I liked that one. I did. Give me number 4.
DJ: I feel like it wasn't as strong as 1 or 2 though.
Amy: Well, they can't ALL be PERFECT, but that one was really, really good.
DJ: Hah! Okay, let me come back with what I think is a strong one. Headlines or subject lines are so, so critical when it comes to email marketing.
Amy: Good, this is one of my favorite topics, okay.
DJ: Whew, okay. It's so critical because…you think about your inbox right now. I'm looking at my inbox and there's all sorts of subject lines. I've got one right now that's called “Brewkouski”[?]
Amy: What?
DJ: Which is a–it's a guy I've been coordinate getting a beer with for weeks now. But it's Brewkouski but it stands out in my inbox, as opposed to another one that's called
“Design work” or another one that just says “Liz Post.” I think too often people, their subject line is just an afterthought. They'll write the entire email, they'll put all their heart and soul into this email, and then they're like “Hmm. What should that subject line be? Hmm.”
They'll just plop something on there. But what you have to remember is, there's only– there's 2 1/2 reasons why somebody opens your email.
The #1 reason, and this is in no particular order, but #1 is they recognize who it's from and you, your company or your name is somebody that they trust and they value. So, perfect example. You emailed me today–I could care less what the subject line said, it was Amy Porterfield. I know that when you send in an email it's going to be something good.
I would also couple that with a good subject line. “Something random” I think it was or “Random question for you.” But there's that first reason. I trusted who it was from, and therefore I'm more likely to open it.
But the second thing is the subject line. If I don't necessarily know who it is, but I see a subject line that jumps out at me, I'm more likely to open that email. I say there's 2-3, because a 3rd is just people who open every email you send, no matter what it says or who it's from. There's a group of people like that.
But the subject line is so important, so. My tip is, think about the subject line before you–take a lot of time, actually, considering what that subject line is. If you have– using an email provider that allows you to do any sort of testing on different subject lines, test which subject lines works best for your audience. Because remember, it's different for everybody.
I'm a big believer in putting out a subject line that causes my email to stand out in the inbox somehow. For example, the newsletter that I sent out today, I said “having trouble getting your emails delivered to Gmail.” That was today's subject line.
That was a little bit risky of a subject line because if you're NOT having trouble getting emails delivered to Gmail, you might look at that and say “No I'm not! So why should I bother opening this email?” But it gets people…it causes some sort of reaction. Everybody knows what Gmail is. You can recognize it.
Amy: Yeah.
DJ: [inaudible] It's always the same [?], just take the time to actually think about what your subject line is going to be.
Amy: I'll include some links to some great headline resources in my show notes, at AmyPorterfield.com/9 I'll include some great resources, and I'll get some from DJ. They're going to be really good.
But I have to say, headlines are huge. I'm constantly thinking of new headlines. I’ll even think of some headlines even if I don't have the email written and I'll just jot them down so I don't forget them for later, or if I see one that I love from someone else, I always keep that little swipe file as well. So—
DJ: I seem to remember, you put a headline in that you thought was maybe controversial at one point, right? You put a…
Amy: Yes!
DJ: Which is funny, by the way, that you say headline and I say subject line. It shows the difference in the different industries.
Amy: So true! But yeah, I recently had a headline or subject line–that's really more accurate–a subject line that said “The not-so-sexy part of marketing, but I love it.” I have to say though, this is interesting, and then we'll get ot your final point, but–I had, really quick, I'm talking about a pretty big list. So this number's not huge. But really quick I had a bunch of complaints, like 5 or 6 right off the bat.
There's certain people, I think, that just don't like the word sexy in a headline. I don't know.
DJ: Just to be clear, when you say complaints, you mean they click “complaint” like, marked it as spam, complaint?
Amy: Yes!
DJ: Or they actually emailed you and said…
Amy: Oh, no. Just marked it as spam complaint. And I usually don't get those. So that word kind of triggered something.
DJ: Of course you're just, like—
Amy: Freaking out at first!
DJ: Anxiety filled, and what did I do?
Amy: “Oh no!!” I watched that number so closely over the next two days afterwards. It turned out to be a great email and did well for me, but still, you've got to be a little careful. But it was interesting that you told me–tell everybody what you told me about, or I thought I couldn't put the word “sexy” in a headline because it would get in spam filters.
DJ: Well, I think, actually, my initial response was you should never use that, and then I intentionally waited to respond until after you had to make you more anxious.
Amy: You're so bad!
DJ: But here's the reality. When it comes to subject lines, it used to be the case that if you put the words “free” in a subject line or if you used all caps, or if you used, you know, lots of exclamation points or other punctuation that email filters, spam filters would block it. That's not the case anymore, at least with the major domain–so if you're thinking about Gmail and Hotmail and Yahoo!
You certainly could have a system admin person, you know, an IT person within a large company that says “We're blocking everything that has the word ‘sex' in it, and we're not going to let any of that dirty email come into our–into my inbox!”
Amy: Right.
DJ: But the reality is, it's not that way anymore. It's really mostly…most of the reasons something is classified as spam is because of, really, the domain. Who it's being sent from.
So if you have a domain that is, that has an IP address that has a history of sending bad email, you're more likely to get marked as spam. That's probably a little more than this group wants to know, but—
Amy: No, but it's good to know. I was surprised to hear that you could kind of get away with more in the headlines than I thought you could, so that's good stuff.
All right, give me #5.
DJ: All right. We're going to end with a bang here. Now this–I should also say is, I think, some of you know I wrote this book with Jason Fallw, it's called The Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing. It talks about breaking the rules. So, my 5th and final tip is to break some of the rules.
And when I say “rules”, you can't see me because this is audio, but I’m doing air quotes.
Amy: I love air quotes!
DJ: And the reason for air quotes, though, is because there are things like this, with putting “free” in the subject line. That's a rule that somebody said years ago that's just not true anymore. Or people say, you know, you should always send in the middle of the week and you should never send your newsletter on a Saturday or a Sunday. Well, plenty of successful people do send your newsletters in different days. Chris Brogan sends his newsletter every Sunday morning, and he has open rates over 40%.
And so, you know, test some things. I think the key is you have to remember that your audience is not my audience. Perfect example is, you–your audience, you use the word “sexy” in your email, and yeah you got a little bit of a backlash but overall it was successful. That may not work for my audience, particularly because my mom sometimes reads my email.
Now, my dad would love it if I used the word “sex” in an email, heh! But that's the key, you have to remember your audience is not my audience. Best practices really are practices that are best for YOUR audience. So test and see what works best for you.
Amy: This is a great one, because I'm constantly trying to see what works best for my audience and I have to kind of be careful of, I'm such a rule girl. You might not know that about me, but I follow the rules in pretty much everything I do, so once in a while I have to remind myself “Why am I doing it this way? This is not working for me.”
So I started to send more emails on Sunday morning. I didn't even know that that's what Chris is doing, but this is great to hear. I have stellar open rates on Sunday
morning. I would've never known that if I'd listen to the rules that you constantly hear about when you should be sending emails.
Just like Facebook marketing and any kind of social media marketing, there's rules but then, really, who's setting these rules? And I really want to encourage you, just like DJ said, challenge those rules, break them when you think it's necessary, and you've gotta experiment. So, fantastic. These tips were good! I knew you would deliver!
DJ: Well, you put so much PRESSURE on me, geez!
Amy: Hah, I have to tell—
DJ: I've been thinking about this for weeks!!
Amy: You liar! I really appreciate you coming on. I think we need to do an entire session, even get in deeper. I'd love to have you back. But thank you so much for agreeing to jump on here with us.
DJ: Any time, Amy. Anything. Love it.
Amy: All right, you take care.
There you have it. I hope you found DJ's tips helpful. I know I did. In the show notes, I'm going to add two different resources to help you create awesome headlines for your email subject lines. One's from John Morrow, and it's called Headline Hacks. The other is from Copyblogger, really good, it's the one I probably use ALL the time. I'll give you some resources to create great subject lines for your emails.
Also, I hope that you will explore this strategy. I know that it's a little bit more work, but I can tell you this–once you get it in place, you can turn something like this on autopilot, so you'll have more time to do the things you love in your business and in your personal life.
One last thought: I talked a lot about creating a valuable giveaway to encourage people to opt in, and I feel like you can use that strategy across all social sites and of course on your website. And I know some people struggle to find the perfect giveaway that will attract a bunch of quality leads. I was thinking about doing a podcast episode all about creating a valuable giveaway opt-in opportunity.
I wanted to find out if you think that would be valuable to you. Before I actually create that episode all about creating an opt-in offer, I thought I'd ask if you really want an episode like that. If you go to AmyPorterfield.com/9, leave a comment and let me know what you think about an episode like that.
And if you like this three-part Facebook mini-training, I'd truly appreciate it if you'll help me spread the word. If you go to amyporterfield.com/love you can tell all your friends about it.
I can't wait to hear all about your Facebook marketing successes, so definitely keep me in the loop, and until next time take care. Announcer: Thanks for listening to the online marketing made easy podcast at amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com.
