Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast I've got something special I'd love for you to hear.
Two or three years ago, I was running full-page ads in Success Magazine telling about 'The Amazing Nine-Word Email That Revives Read Leads'. I was experimenting with a new approach to engaging with people who would respond to the ad, and it was really interesting because people who responded would call the ad, an article.
I've posted the article below so you can see what I was doing, but the amazing thing was, we ran that ad for several months and averaged a 68% opt in on the landing page. This was cold traffic from a magazine ad, and what was even more amazing was that we would get over 40% engagement once people responded and left their name and email address.
I used a very simple sequence to engage with people who requested a copy of the Email Mastery book.
After they received a copy I'd invite people to get together with me on the phone to brainstorm some of their nine-word emails and subject lines. We would have group calls just like the very first one I'm going to share with you today, and you can see the landing page at emailmastery.com so you can reverse-engineer the process to see how it works.
What was amazing to me was hearing people I've never met before, coming on and sharing the results they were getting with the nine-word email they read about in my 'article' in Success Magazine.
There are lots of lessons to deconstruct here I want you to hear this because I'm going to deconstruct the process and share with you exactly how you can apply it to your business.
Links:
EmailMastery.com
GoGoClients.com
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 167
Dean: Hi, this is Dean Jackson. Welcome to the More Cheese Less Whiskers Podcast. This week I've got something that I'd love for you to hear. I remember about 2 or 3 years ago, 3 years ago now, I was running full page ads in Success Magazine telling about the amazing 9 word email that revives dead leads. What was really interesting about that was I was experimenting with a new approach to engaging with people who would respond to the ad.
It was really interesting because people would call it an article. I'll post up the article for us so you can see what I was doing, but the amazing thing was we ran that ad for several months and averaged a 68% opt-in on the landing page, from cold traffic from a magazine ad. What was even more amazing was that we would get over 40% engagement once people responded or left their name and their email address.
I used a very simple sequence to engage with people who had responded for the book, the email mastery book and you can see that landing page at emailmastery.com. You reverse engineer the process here to see how it happens and then I would invite people to get together with me on the phone to brainstorm some 9 word emails and subject lines. We would have these group calls, just like the one I'm going to play for you, which was the very first of these calls.
What was amazing to me was to hear people who I've never met before coming on and sharing the results that they were getting with this 9 word email that they read about in my article in Success Magazine. There’s lots of lessons to deconstruct here and I want you to hear this because I'm going to deconstruct this and share with you exactly how you can apply this to your business. Enjoy this episode.
Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson. Welcome to the email mastery and 9 word email brainstorm and call. It's been really exciting over the last several weeks to see what's been happening since we first started sending out these 9 word emails. The ad first came out in Success Magazine and we started getting the first responses right around the 1st of October. I've gotten to meet some pretty neat people and connect with people one on one and hear some of the success stories that have been going on.
A lot of people are trying it and there's a lot of commonalities. I'm starting to see people are really using the strategy in a great way. I'm always … I love to feel the excitement that people feel when they send out these emails and when they … and that they actually work. Especially when they've been sending out emails for years and not getting any response or sending out emails that get ignored. It's not uncommon to see the response rates of 25, 30, 40% response rates to these emails. Not open rates, but people actually responding.
What I want to do on these calls and I'm recording this call so you can go back and listen to it. If you're on the call with us, and if you couldn't make it to a live call, welcome to you too. You're able to be listening to this on the recording. For the live callers who are with us here, what I'm going to do is I’m going to share a couple of success stories from people who have sent in by email. We're going to deconstruct what they've done.
I'll share with you why these are working and then I'm going to go through as many as we can, some opportunities to brainstorm some 9 word emails for your situation. Maybe troubleshoot if you've sent some out and not gotten a response, or if there's the … you're confused about something like that. I can help you through with that too. We have a lot of people on the call tonight and I've got the call in lecture mode, Q&A mode right now.
I'm going to share some of these examples with you. If you want to get a head start and be one of the people that I brainstorm with or go through, if you press *6 on your phone that will bring you into the queue and I'll see that you've raised your hand and I'll be able to bring you into the call and go through the process with you. This is a great opportunity for you to work with me on maybe creating an email for your situation.
If you have a success story, I'd love to hear that too and we can talk about what happened and maybe talk about how to make it better. Maybe even improve the response that you’re getting. I just want to be clear about the purpose and the use for this 9 word email. Email is the killer app. Email is the very most powerful marketing tool that you have in your toolkit. If you said I could only use one thing, email would be the one thing because you really do have the opportunity to be in a one to one dialogue with somebody.
It’s amazing. We all know how much we're attached to our email, how much we check our email frequently during the day. We know that when people really want to get in touch with us, especially our friends or one of the things I always say is, emails from your mom get 100% open rate. There is no email deliverability problems. There's no any magic special formula for sending to get more deliverability or more open.
The real thing is to really connect with people and be interested and be personal and care. That's really the magic that works the best is when you really care and you really do want to engage with somebody in email and using it as a tool for communicating with somebody one on one. That's when the best things happen is when people read your emails and they feel like you’re the only person in the world that got that email.
That's what you're really going for, and the truth is that the best thing that you can do is really only speak to one person. Even though your emails are being read or received by thousands of people, hundreds of people, dozens of people, whatever you're sending to on your list. They don't care that they're on a list and they don't know that they're on a list and they don't know any of the other people on that list.
The only person who has any frame of reference for the list is you. People have a … they're on your ... you have their email address. That's all they know. It’s not that you're communicating to this big group of people. Every chance that you get to really hone your ability to not speak to the forest, but to speak to the tree, the individual trees, that's where you're going to get the highest results. It’s almost like … the same thing holds true in lots of real life situations.
If you take a first aid class, there’s … you have to be able to overcome something they call bystander apathy. If you are taking a first aid course and you’re the first person on the scene, what they instruct you to do is rather than call out, somebody call an ambulance, somebody get a blanket. Because to somebody to anybody, somebody is somebody else, but what they teach you to do in first aid classes is they teach you to make eye contact and point to one person and say, you call an ambulance. You get a blanket.
The odds of those 2 people calling an ambulance and getting a blanket when you've singled them out and you've made that connection with them are much, much higher than if you're just calling out. The same thing applies when you're sending emails to your list. If you're sending emails to, dear clients, just want all of you to know … when you're broadcasting is a different tone and a different kind of communication.
Whenever somebody is speaking to a group, that bystander apathy kicks in and the feeling that, well he's not really talking to me. I don't have to respond. I can just hide in the group here. I can blend in or ignore this. What you really want is you want to engage that sense that they're the only one who got this email, that you're just sending it to them. When we do that, the common elements that we're looking for, and this applies to any emails that you're sending expecting to engage with people is that, they have 3 key ingredients.
They're short, they're personal and they're expecting a reply. Those are the 3 key elements that you're looking for in your email. You always want to send an email that expects a reply if that's what you're looking for. Often people are not clear on what the purpose of the email that they're sending is. They’ll send out emails and just communicate, but not really have a purpose in mind. You want to be crystal clear on that and there are so many individual things that you can use email for, but we're focused right now on what I think is the fastest surest way to turn a short little email into money in your bank account by re-engaging with the prospects who you haven't been in contact with for some time.
The people who maybe inquired about something a long time ago or they inquired about something and maybe you were in dialogue with them and then it never went anywhere, and realizing that now they may be ready to do whatever it was that they inquired about. If you … I think on the last call I mentioned the study from the inquiry handling service that basically showed that, just over half of all the people who inquire about anything will buy whatever it is they've inquired about within 18 months.
When we're looking at this, most of the people who are internet marketers or email marketers or take that approach, really they're looking for the people who are going to buy in 18 days, not in 18 months. When you really take into account that if we check in with people 90 days from now, there's a good chance that things may have changed or they may be closer to doing whatever it is they inquired about, so you’ve got that opportunity to reconnect with those people.
When we're doing this, I'm going to share some of these emails with you that people have sent in in the success that they've been able to get. It’s amazing to me to see how people can do things very quickly and get results very quickly because you're in communication with people at just the right time. Right when they're ready to … right when they may be ready to actually do something now. I got an email from Sabrina from Elegant Interiors. She said, “Hi Dean, here's my 9 word email.” She just put her subject line with, hello.
She said I forgot the subject line should be the name of the person and that's always one of the very best subject lines that you can use, is just to say their first name in there. Dean or Paula or whatever it is and then the email is, “Hi Paula, are you still planning the remodel for this year.” Sabrina, now she said the results. I received the call about 2 hours after sending the email and I was hired on the phone to project manage the renovation from start to finish and I’ll also be doing the interior design.
She told me about the project here and why there was a delay. They’d been waiting for 6 months with an architect and a designer. She just showed them some plans and she's going to manage the whole project there. My total fees by the time the project is finished will be somewhere in the 5 figures. Not sure exact amount, but that is exciting when you send out an email like that and just get the … just get the response, engage right away. Let's see. Anthony Adams sent me an email.
He said, “I sent an email today actually that said, are you interested in a bulk discount on credit covers.” Which is skins for credit cards. He sent the email to about 500 people who had bought them one off from them and he said I got about 5 replies back as yes within about an hour. Each one is worth $297 for us. That’s a quick $1400 to $1500 just for sending a little email. Steve Pak sent me one. He said, sent out a 9 word email to webinar attendees about 45 to 60 days old. I only sent out 8 emails and got 2 positive responses. One client for $3,900 setting up their LinkedIn presence in coaching.
Now the email that he sent just had the … he sent me a copy of it. Dean, are you still interested in using LinkedIn to get more business. Steve, now that is a great email and first of all, it's not about the 9 words or 10 words or 11 words. There's no 9 word police that’s limiting you to those things. It could be 6 words, it could be 12 words, but the essence of it is that it's just a simple question that we're just asking one thing.
Now a mistake that I see is making the email about what you've got or what you do versus making the email about what they want or what they get. Now it sounds like a subtle distinction, but Steve sent an email, “Are you still interested in using LinkedIn to get more business.” Okay, now he's talking about the benefit of what it is that they were inquiring about. That’s what they really want is they want to use LinkedIn to get more business.
He could have made a mistake with this and say, “Are you still interested in attending my LinkedIn webinar or taking my LinkedIn training program.” Those are things where you're selfishly focused on yourself and the real win is when you can focus on the benefit that they want. Focus on them, what the real benefit is. Okay? That’s a great example of that.
Some of the … any people who’ve had mistakes or sent it and not gotten out really great response have usually been that's one of the mistakes that they're making, is they're making it all about them. Now here's another one. Adrian sent me, they do mainframe outsourcing and he sent me an email he said, “My 9 word magic ninja email is, Dean are you still interested in outsourcing your mainframe.”
You got lots of positive response from the simple effective technique, it generated the response about 19%. Not bad for my target audience. The chief … CIOs with IO. Chief I … I don't know what CIO is. I’m trying to blank here. Fortune 1000 companies. That’s pretty amazing and those guys, the things that they do are … it’s very expensive, so one client is worth lots and lots of money. Here's another one where a chief information officer, that's what it is. CIO, chief information officer, right.
Here's Aaron sent me an email says, he does training for lawyers. The subject line was, hi Dean, quick question and then copy is, are you still looking to generate more customers online. The results are 40% open rate, 10% reply rate, 3 new clients, $64,000 in revenue. Each client pays $1500 to $2500 per month. That's an incredible response. When you look at that, that's really how powerful this can be and how fast this can work.
We want to really have all the great things, all the great things that can happen just by sending up these emails. Now one of the big mistakes that that people make too and usually they fall into just a very few mistakes, but one is making it all about you instead of all about them and the benefit that they get, but another mistake is, I call it solving the mystery. Now and by solving the mystery what I mean is, sending an email that says are you still interested in getting, using LinkedIn to get into business, because if you are, I’m having a new training in blah, blah, blah, blah where you’re solving the mystery for people, or you’re being unnecessarily filling in more of the blanks.
The thing that really drives what happens here ... The thing that really drives the response is the compelling nature of the expectation that you’re going to have a dialog with them. That’s the kind of question where you’re asking a question that it feels like if you were at Starbucks, you’ve run into them. You saw them maybe 3 months ago and they were inquiring about something, and now you’ve run into them at Starbucks and you say ... To the same say, “Hey, are you still interested in using LinkedIn to getting new business?” That is a conversation starter.
Now, they would ... If you just imagine you at Starbucks saying that to somebody, and then you shut up, and they’re standing in that silence, the compulsion is going to be to respond if you think about it as a real conversation. We want to get that same vacuum created in a way in email, so that when you send that email and you ask that question and there’s no other information, our minds cannot stand an unsolved mystery, and I mean that in a good way that we are driven by our curiosity so we have to know, first of all, is he talking to me? If I am still interested in this, then that’s even better.
Now, the reason that this works so well is because a good percentage of the people that you send an email like this to are in fact interested in whatever it is that you … they inquired about, and so we’re at the right time showing up. If we know that statistically only 15% of the people who inquire about something will buy what it is they inquired about in the first 90 days. We know that 85% of them are going to buy longer than 90 days from now, so that’s where we want to keep the real ... That’s why when we communicate with people who inquired 90 days ago, we’ve got the big advantage that we’ve got the opportunity now because it just is perfect timing.
We’ve show up at the right time with the right message, and we’ve got their attention, because we’re speaking directly to somebody who is in fact still thinking about how to get business using LinkedIn. Now, the mistakes that we make is trying to make our message accommodate the people who are not interested in whatever it is that they inquired about. We want to go in the middle here, our tendency, and this one’s a little more subtle and a little harder to understand the difference here, but the only people that we are trying to engage right now are the people who are still looking for whatever it is.
We’re looking to engage with the people who are going to do it, the 5-Star Prospects. When I say 5-Star Prospects, I use that as our guideline for communicating with who we’re trying to reach, so if you can identify somebody is a 5-Star Prospect. A 5-Star Prospect is somebody who is number one, willing to engage in a dialog. That means that when you send them an email, they will respond to your email. That’s number one. You can’t have a 5-Star Prospect if they’re not willing to engage in a dialog.
Number 2, they’re friendly and cooperative. When you talk to them, so you engage in a dialog with them, you start a conversation, and they’re open and they’re willing to engage in that dialog with you. Number 3 is that they know what they want, and they’re willing to share. That’s a 5-Star Prospect, somebody who is going to do something. They know what they want. They acknowledge that they want something, that they have a need, that they have interest.
Number 4, is that they know when they’re going to do it. It could be that they’re ready to do it right now, or it could be that they’re ready to do it in 6 months and it doesn’t matter either way hopefully you’re still going to be in business 6 months from now. People do things on their time frame, you’re not going to try and turn somebody into doing something quicker because it’s more convenient for you for them to do it quicker. People do things for their own reasons.
Then number 5 is that they’d like us to help them, so that’s what a 5-Star Prospect is, so if that’s who we’re really looking for, and this whole process of sending the 9 word email is really just to start the process of 2 or 3 or 4 email exchanges that are going to help you determine if this personifies their prospect. It’s not just trying to do it all in one shot. We’re looking for people who meet all 5 of those requirements. It’s almost like at the drug races where if you see the staged lighting, they start at the top and then the second light and the third or the fourth and then off you go.
What’s the same thing? They’re willing to engage. Friendly and cooperative. They know what they want. They know when they want it, and they’d like us to help them. That’s who we’re looking for. That’s the 5-Star Prospect. If in your conversation ... and I do ... I call it a conversation because email is just as valid a way of having a conversation as talking to people on the phone. In that conversation, your objective is to uncover the answer to those questions. Are they a 5-Star Prospect?
We’re going to make our way down those 5-Star elements in a progressive way. It can happen all very quickly, but we’re guiding our conversation to uncover the information that we need to know for, to determine whether they’re a 5-Star Prospect, and we’re only looking for the 5-Star Prospects, so we don’t hedge our message, or hesitate in our messages, to not scare off or ... I don’t know what the right word is, so that’s scare off or offend or ... I’m not worried about bothering people who are not interested right now, or that people are going to tell me that they’re not interested, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
If you’re not that’s okay too, but we’re in business to help people who want to get a result, and if they inquire about something then it’s the most professional thing that you can do is to treat people like they are 5-Star Prospects. See a lot of times what people do is they treat people like they’re not 5 star prospects, until they prove that they are, versus treating them like they are 5 start prospects until they prove that they aren’t, so I’m inquiring which of those people who’ve been in for 90 days or 6 months, I’m sending an email that is written with the intention of engaging with a 5-Star Prospect who is ready to do whatever it is they inquired about.
Now, so that’s all I care about. That’s who I’m sending that message to, and that’s where when we’re speaking to people in that 9 word email process, that’s how we’re getting those response rates, because we’re speaking to people who are indeed interested in what it is that we have to offer there, and this is something that you can do. You can automate this process by you send personalized emails to your whole list, but you’re sending them in a way that is feels like and looks like they’re the only one getting the message.
It’s all very exciting. There’s lots of great subtleties to it and it’s also very simple to try. I’m going to open up the call here and we’ll brain storm some for your specific situation. I’d love to hear any specific results that you’ve had so far. We’re spending a lot of time on just this one message, and I want you to understand ... and I’m sure you know that there are so many ways to use email.
The first and the fastest is to engage with the people who’ve already inquired, but haven’t yet bought. Those are the ones that have ... that’s where there’s immediate money to be found right now. Then the next thing is to start focusing on from this point forward using email more powerfully to engage with the new leads who are responding. Then using email to communicate with your clients.
The people who have already bought what it is that you do. Then using email to engage with new prospects. There’s lots of opportunities there. Excited about email has like a great tool for you. I really want to spend this time making sure that you can have a big win with engaging with the prospects that you have right now, so let’s focus on our 9 word emails here and let’s talk to our first caller. Here we go.
Robin: Hello.
Dean: Hi, who’s this?
Robin: Hi this is Robin Estevez. How are you?
Dean: I am fantastic, Robin. How are you?
Robin: That’s great. I met you in New York this summer. Nice meeting you.
Dean: Oh awesome.
Robin: Yeah, my question is I’m in the supermarket business, and I wanted to do a combo email with Bumpy Mail. My thinking is it’s actually a 10 word email, and it would be, are you hosting Thanksgiving dinner or be an invited guest, and I would ...
Dean: Okay.
Robin: Yeah?
Dean: Perfect, yeah.
Robin: Yes, and then I would ... depending if you’re hosting, I would have one set of offers as opposed to if you’re an invited guest, because if you’re an invited guest, you don’t want to show up empty handed.
Dean: Right exactly. Now, that’s ... I love that because one of the things that we’ll send like to the real estate clients is we’ll send an email that will offer an option like that. Are you an investor or are you looking for a house to live in? That’s a good thing because now you know which path to go down with them. In some ways, if you can ... if it’s like this or that, or this or not this type of an email, if it’s ... you may be able to send one email, you ask one question without it having to have the other option.
If you said are you hosting thanksgiving dinner this year? If they respond no, we’re ... I get we’re going wherever. We’re going to our nephews or we’re going to our daughters or our families, or they’ll reply yes, that they are, could be just a little bit ... sure. The thing that sounded just a little flunky with ... I’d like to maybe word smith it if you’re going to send that out. Are you hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, or going somewhere as a guest, but probably be ... Because our ... What was your email? It sounded ... it was just ... there’s certain ... there’s a lyrical quality to this too then where you say them out loud and they sound very conversational.
If you were to ask somebody that at Starbucks, so let’s paint that scene, you own grocery stores and may run it into one of your customers at Starbucks and you see them and you ask them the questions, say the words that you said in that email.
Robin: Are you hoisting Thanksgiving dinner, or are you going to be an invited guest?
Dean: Yeah, now that sounds better when you say are you going to be an invited guest, but ... and I don’t know whether ... would that even be ... that sounds maybe a little formal doesn’t it? Would you say that in conversations?
Robin: Yeah, I think it’s the same. Speaking with amongst family and friends and you would ask, are you going to be hosting Thanksgiving this year, and that’s basically where you would end up. Then now there’s someone ... as you said, someone would eventually say, “Actually No, I’m going over to Dean’s this year.”
Dean: Right. You see what I’m saying about how when you architect it, it’s almost like you’re writing a little vignette here, so you imagine that you see somebody, or maybe even see them in your grocery store. Somebody you’ve seen who has come for years and you just see them and you say, “Hey, good to see you. Are you hosting thanksgiving this year?” That is enough because they’re going to say no, we’re going somewhere or yes I am. The answer is going to be the reveal itself.
Robin: I got you. Then what about combining this would a ... would mailing them a ... I was thinking of ... usually I mail them something during this time of the year and during Christmas to try to engage them to get into the store, and ... but this year, I was thinking of sending them actually a designed place mat thinking as I’m setting a place at the table for you with … I don’t know if you’ve seen the plastic folk and [crosstalk 00:36:21]
Dean: I did see here ... I didn’t manage ... I couldn’t print it out to read the whole thing but I saw what you had sent. I don’t know if I describe it [crosstalk 00:36:32]
Robin: [Crosstalk 00:36:31]
Dean: So that people can see hear what you’re talking about, because you’re talking ... when you say Lumpy Mail, you’re talking about sending something physical and something [crosstalk 00:36:40]
Robin: Yeah. What I was thinking about is getting a paper place mat designed with the center being a circle where you would place the plate, think about a place mat like at a diner that they give you a paper place mat. What would make it bumpy would be the silver plastic fork and knife, wrapped In a Thanksgiving paper napkin, and then that ... so it would ... when they open it up, there would be like, “Food Town is setting up a place at the table for me.”
With the question that you and I just discussed here, are you hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year? Have them going this way I prerecord a message, or have a coupon on there, in order to get them to come into the store.
Dean: Yeah, I agree. That’s great. All you’re looking for is to have ... I think you can follow up, you can send something to somebody if that’s ultimately what you want to do, if you had something to send them, that could be the next step because so often what you need to do is know where it’s going. Where you’re headed, so what’s going to happen, this is often the thing that happens when people get caught off guard.
They get surprised by the response. If you send out that email and people say, “Oh, yeah I’m hosting.” Or, “No, I’m going to my son’s house.” Or, “My mother’s house.” Or whatever, you have to know, now where are you going with that? When I use that with the realtors, are you looking for ... are you an investor or are you looking for a house to live in, then when they say, “Oh, I’m an investor.”
Now we’re going down that investor path. Perfect, are you ... you may say if somebody says I’m hosting, then you may have the next level of that knowing that are you doing the turkey or ham or both? Or however you do that ...
Robin: Yeah, we already have in the pipeline where a person can earn either a free turkey or ham or a gift card and all the trimmings and so on and so forth along the way. Depending on where they would be, whether they’re a host or a guest, we pretty much got them covered where they would land.
Dean: Awesome, well Robin that’s great. I’m just going to focus on the email for tonight and I think that’s the answer, if you think you’re right on track with that. It’s a good engagement. It’s really timely coming up to Thanksgiving here, so go with it and let me know what happens.
Robin: I’m going to be sending it out tomorrow morning.
Dean: Awesome. Thanks man.
Robin: I’ll let you know.
Dean: Okay.
Robin: Would this work with other holidays you think?
Dean: Absolutely, yeah. On the first call we had a gentleman who sent it out. Are you looking for the Christmas gifts for fly fishers and he got swamped so, yeah it would work with all of the holidays. It’d be perfect.
Robin: All right. Thank you.
Dean: Okay. Thanks Robin.
Jeremy: Dean.
Dean: Hi.
Jeremy: Hey, this is Jeremy here in Arizona.
Dean: Hey, Jeremy how are you?
Jeremy: I’m great, how are you doing?
Dean: Good, good, good.
Jeremy: Good, really good stuff so far. I just wanted to ask a question more about … I was the one that sent you the email about doing web design.
Dean: Web design, yeah.
Jeremy: Yeah. I guess I have a lot of contacts, and I'm working right now on organizing them. I guess my challenges right now, is I can send out these emails, but there are some people I haven't necessarily inquired directly about web design or something like that. I want to get your ideas on what I could do to almost get inquiries and what your thoughts around that.
Dean: That's a great, using email for inquiring about something is really one of the things where I have used the 9 word emails as well, is going in outbound emails. We had a, and for guys who do all my postcard mailings, one of the divisions of their company they did birthday marketing would send postcards, birthday postcards around the one or 2 mile perimeter of a restaurant or spa, or a local business giving people a gift card for their birthday to come in and celebrate at the restaurant.
They had a list of 3,000 or 3,200 restaurant emails, and they sent out beautiful HTML emails and got no response, and then I said let's send out an email that just asks a simple question. We put the name of the restaurant in the subject line, and then in the body of the email, it just said, do you do birthday parties? That was an incredible response.
They got over 30% response rate to that email because it was not speaking about them, like if they sent out the email talking about, “Let us send postcards for you,” and all about us, but when they’ve sent out an email that is talking about a benefit or what they really want, “Do you do birthday parties?” That's like the bear, that's the minimum thing for somebody who would be interested in sending out birthday cards. If they don't do birthday parties, then there's no point in them sending out birthday cards, right?
Jeremy: Sure.
Dean: When they would send out that email, people responded with, “Yes, we do birthday parties. How many people and whatever it was.” Now they were ready to respond to that by saying to the people who had responded, “Perfect, I'd been working with Roy's restaurant here in Sarasota. I’m doing some birthday marketing, and I'm looking for somebody to work with in Phoenix. Could you handle 5 or 6 birthday parties next month?”
Just baby stepping along the way. When you think about that, what would be a question that you could ask new people about when you're inquiring to people that would start a conversation about their website or about the results of their website? What could you offer that would engage them in starting with you?
That's really how you want to focus on this, and you can use those 9 word emails for getting new business as well, but the main focus of what I want to spend time on tonight is about re-engaging with people, so what fit for you, the simplest thing would be when people are have inquired about a website that you are asking them, that point blank.
Are you still interested in redoing your website or getting more business from your website, or whatever it is that your specific purpose for redoing their website is going to offer? Whatever the benefit that they inquired to you about, that's what you’re really are focused on.
Jeremy: Yeah, that’s perfect.
Dean: Awesome, and then next week we're going to talk about the, using email to engage with new prospects.
Jeremy: Awesome.
Dean: There are so many things. I really want to focus on the, and I have been focusing on the 9 word email because it's so easy for everybody to reengage with people, but for the next several weeks, starting next week I'm going to do a whole email master class on doing … using email to get new prospects, on using the email to engage with the leads that you're getting right now, to use it as a better conversion tool, using email to engage with long-term prospects so that whenever they are ready, they're ready to do business with you and then engaging with your clients that you already have to nurture lifetime relationships with them, and then use an email to orchestrate referrals.
There are so many different ways to use it, and over the next several weeks, I’m going to do a whole email master class on how to set all those things up.
Jeremy: That's awesome. Very cool, just that the email that I had sent you, that I’d sent out to … I just sent it to a small handful of different people, several of them would say, “No, I’m not quite ready right now, but I'll be ready in January or I’ll be ready in a few weeks?”
Dean: Okay, that’s good because you’re going to be in business …
Jeremy: Even knowing the timing for them is very valuable.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s great.
Jeremy: Yeah, so it's been awesome. Thanks a lot of Dean.
Dean: Thanks Jeremy. Hello, who have we got? Okay, I think we lost them, how about …
Steve: Hello.
Dean: There we go. Hi?
Steve: Hi Dean. This is Steve, how are you doing?
Dean: I’m good Steve.
Steve: Good. I’m in your business in the sense, I market to real estate agents. We have a product that helps agents get more listings, and what you taught me so far has been phenomenal. What that little … and sent you an email, I don’t know if you got it, but I basically had a lot of leads that were old. People that looked at a video a while ago and they didn't go anywhere basically.
I just put together a real short subject line bobs. Are you usual looking for listings in in, and I put there’s zip code, 14626. I've done 20 so far and I’ve got 15 back that have said …
Dean: [Crosstalk 00:48:21].
Steve: Yes, “I'm interested.” Some response, so it’s been phenomenal so far.
My problem is continuing the conversation, because what I did and I want everybody to know this. I made a bad error, where I try to go in for the kill, or make the sale in the next email which was a mistake. I didn't keep the conversation going and they got scared and ran away. I need a little help with that second verse, keep the conversation going and when do you know to go in for that kill or that sale?
Dean: That’s a great question. When do you know? I think that you want to reframe it in your mind, that when do you go in for the kill probably of the best mindset that have, right?
Steve: Right. Exactly.
Dean: I would have said, when do I …
Steve: I wanted to go into the sale I should say.
Dean: No, but I mean there … But it’s so Steve, it’s so and I’m playing with you, but that the mindset that people have. When do I go in for the kill? When do I make the sale? The question that is the winning question is, how soon can I start helping them get listings right?
Steve: Right.
Dean: Look at this, and I'm saying to you that what can you do that would be a magic trick that would help them get some results right now? What would you do that you could engage that you're going to get them on your side, and they're going to know that you’re on their side, because you’re helping them? You're not going in for the kill, because that's what they think you're going to do. That’s the thing when people ...
Steve: That's what happened the ...
Dean: Yeah, it’s exactly when people ...
Steve: They tend to run away. It's like going on a date and the second date you say,
“You want to get married?” The girl takes off.
Dean: That’s exactly it. Okay, I'm going to share this, because there's ... on the I Love Marketing Podcast, that Joe Polish and I do, we spent ... There are several episodes about this idea of how your prospects are like mice, in that they're scared. They’re very afraid. They're timid. It's all based around the central idea that mice come pre-programmed with 2 prime directives, and that is get cheese and avoid cat.
Now, that means that a mouse is interested in and constantly seeking cheese, but as soon as they see whiskers, or as soon as they see any indication of a cat, they're going to run away, because their life is more valuable than the cheese. When you take that same thing, if all people who are inquiring, all real estate agents want the cheese, they want listings, and you've asked them, you started with the cheese, but then as soon as they open that door there you are with your whiskers, and they’d sense that you're a cat.
You're not trying to help me get listings, you're trying to get my money. That's what they're doing. When you look at that, that's your real objective now is to how can you gently and slowly start showing them that you’re on their side, that you're going to [crosstalk 00:52:15].
Steve: [Crosstalk 00:52:15]. The second email now and I settled it down and I said, “Well that's great Bob. Would you have an interest in getting further information on our marketing program?”
Dean: Question again.
Steve: Very subtle. I’m just trying to keep the conversation going so to speak, and so we’re trying that.
Dean: It might be interesting ... Sorry. It might be interesting if you were to continue that conversation by trust, to be finding out what they're currently doing, to really either show that they don't have a strategy for getting listings, or that their strategy is not that effective at getting listings, or it's more expense or something like that, but if you're giving them some ... Like we did with the restaurants, saying, “Perfect, I've been working with Roy's restaurant in Sarasota, and I'm looking for someone to work within Phoenix.”
If you're saying there is zip code, you know where their zip code, is if you have clients that you've worked with in a neighboring zip code, and you say to them, “Like I live in Winter Haven Florida.” If you were communicating with me and you said, “You know what? I've been working John Jones in Lakeland, which is the next town over on getting some listings, would you have time to take a couple of new listings next month?” Now you’re deepening their capacity for doing this right?
Steve: Right.
Dean: That's a more engaging conversation, they’re leaning forward, leaning forward, leaning in rather than running away or retreating.
Steve: Got it. Yeah, I’ll try that. I’ll try keeping that conversation going and for a few emails and then settle and go in with ... Because we normally do a demo online, but again, that takes place after you have that conversation 2 times.
Dean: That’s exactly, but you're on the right track.
Steve: Okay, I appreciate your help Dean.
Dean: Thanks.
Steve: Thank you.
Dean: Okay guys, hang on. Hold on one second. I know you're on there. If you want to brainstorm, or talk about anything with your email star 6 on your phone that will bring you into the queue here, but who am I talking to right now?
Fiona: I think you're talking to Fiona in Toronto.
Dean: You are? That’s you Fiona.
Fiona: Oh boy. You never know until you start talking. I just actually ... I just got on, so I’ve missed most of it I'm sorry, but I have been following the podcast, and they have been amazing. My situation may be a little different. I actually run women's magazine. We don't have what I would call old prospects. We definitely have subscribers who are not engaged with us. Is there a way to use a similar 9 word email that they’re willing to go through the web?
Dean: Sure. Absolutely, so you have subscribers who are reading the magazine, do you have all their contact information? Like that kind of?
Fiona: We have. We have a list of subscribers and obviously some we know are opening and reading, and others we know are not, and we’re always trying to get the very best homogeneous information to those that are interested.
Dean: What would be ... Whenever you’re doing this, you want to begin with the end in mind, so what is it that you can help them with, or what's the result that they want, or what is the ... What's the service that you offer? What's your proposition going to be? Let's begin with the end in mind.
Fiona: One of them probably would be easier if one is an E-magazine for women, single women who are dating, so what came to mind is something like, are you still looking to find a great guy?
Dean: Yes.
Fiona: It’s a possibility.
Dean: That's good.
Fiona: Okay, so the dating ... Because I listened to you in the car all the time, the dating one seemed rather straightforward. The other one it’s a much broader market, it is for women leaders of all walks of life, and I just haven't found the 9 words that say are you still frustrated? Are you still frazzled? Are you [crosstalk? 00:57:03]
Dean: When you’ve got a list like when you ... I don’t know if you were on the call when I was talking about the birthday email to restaurants.
Fiona: I’m sorry. No, I didn’t.
Dean: Okay, so this ...
Steve: I’ll listen to the [crosstalk 00:57:14]
Dean: Absolutely. I’m going to post up the call so you’ll be able to listen absolutely, but the thing that is going to ... You could do is ask them sorting these questions in a way, so if I were sending to the restaurants for ultimately a service that delivers birthday postcards around a radius of your restaurant to everybody having a birthday that month, so the restaurants who would be interested in sending birthday cards like that would first have to be open to doing birthday cards.
We sent an email to them with the name of the restaurant and the subject line, and then saying does Dominic's do birthday parties? Do you do birthday parties? That is engaging with people, or with the realtors will send out a message that says are you an investor or are you looking for a house to live in. Of course so you’re now sorting these people.
If you’re saying you're not quite sure what their real need is because you've got more women, but if you suspect that within that big group of all of those subscribers, that there is a certain number of them who are this particular thing, or would be interested in this particular service or offer, that's how you can do it, so what would be one of the things that some of those people might be.
Fiona: There definitely they’d be publication of womenwhorunit.com. They're definitely ... They're striving for leadership in their life. The word leadership came to mind and I have [crosstalk 00:59:19]
Dean: Could it be that they’re business owners, or that they work for a big company?
Fiona: That would be a good delineator.
Dean: That’s what I’m asking, yeah could that be more right?
Fiona: Yeah. Okay.
Dean: It would be valuable to you to have that differentiation, so if you sent and said “Do you run your own business or do you work for a company?” If they respond back, and now there's this curiosity element too, now you've got ... You go down the business owner path and you’ve now made your contact lists smarter too. You now know you can tag those people, flag them that they are business owners. You're getting intelligent data about your subscribers now.
Fiona: Okay. All right, great.
Dean: Yeah, but that's great. I love to hear all the different types of businesses people are in. It’s fantastic.
Fiona: I'm a Mary Ellen trivia disciple.
Dean: Good, there you go. That's great. I'm going to actually be a … Mary Ellen is going to be on my email master class.
Fiona: Oh lovely. Great.
Dean: Yeah, that’s exciting.
Fiona: Yeah, so thank you.
Dean: Okay. You're very welcomed. There we go.
Laurie: Hi Laurie Wise.
Dean: Hi Laurie, how are you?
Laurie: I'm great. I've been listening and these emails are absolutely wonderful, but I'm curious about what subject lines do you go along with them?
Dean: That's great. The best subject line is just their name. That would be a great subject line. For this purpose, it's really not … You don't even really need to go much deeper than that, or something that's charged neutral that's like what I was saying about the restaurants go put in the name of the restaurant in the subject line, or one that we send an email to realtors who have just gotten a new listing, and we put the address of the property that they've just listed in their subject line, whatever would be interesting and engaging to them.
Another one might be response, especially if it's old prospects that you're engaging with, if you've had an email dialog with them, one of the best things is to go back in the your inbox from 90 days ago and revive the thread, the email thread that the last correspondence that you had with them. Does that makes sense?
Laurie: Yes.
Dean: Yeah, those are … so the subject line is no, it's not like a sales message or anything like that, it's just their name or just something very charged and neutral, and by that I mean not like amazing news this, or announcing this. It’s not a sales message, it's a charge neutral message.
Laurie: Did you say quick question?
Dean: Quick question. That's a great one, yeah. Especially if you can't put their name in there, if you put their name, that follows my first choice for these kinds of engaging thing.
Laurie: Just their names?
Dean: Yeah, just their name. In so many studies you look at things where people like eye tracking studies, and things where people are shown a list of words and their name is one of them, and as soon as they see their name, their eyes get bigger and they dilate and that recognition right there, we’re wired to pay attention to stuff that significant to us.
Laurie: Okay. Got it
Dean: Okay. Very exciting.
Laurie: I have another question.
Dean: Sure.
Laurie: Okay. I’m wanting to inform a very large mailing list about something that happens locally where I live. Most of the people are not local, and so when I write to them, I think they think I know who they are and where they are because it’s always personal and I'm not quite sure how to frame it so that I get just the people who live where I want them to.
Dean: Do you know … You have no way of knowing that?
Laurie: I have no way of knowing who lives where.
Dean: Okay, so many of these things that, and I'm going to say this too, because so many of these things, if you have smart tools, it makes it easier to do these things. If you have a tool that can emerge somebody's first name into a subject line or into email if you have the ability to tag where somebody lives as a … so you can just send emails to just those people. It's always an advantage. I know a lot of people don't have those kinds of things.
We're just now, I’ll tell you guys about it now, but part of our email master class is one of the tools that we use is something called GoGoclients.com, and it is a smart contact management system that has all of these tools for email marketing built right into it, with landing pages, and auto responders, and email broadcast, and a contact management system that when people reply to things, you can tag them and enhance that record so that you can … if you send out an email and ask somebody a question, are they a business owner or do they work for a company, when they reply you can now tag their records so that you know, “I just want to send an email to the people who are business owners or who live in this geographic area.”
That what might be something that would be useful, but my other question to you Laurie would be, does it really matter? What are you worried about if you send an email to somebody who doesn't live in that area? What's the worst thing that's going to happen?
Laurie: It'll be irrelevant.
Dean: That's okay sometimes right?
Laurie: Mm-hmm (Affirmative).
Dean: Does it matter?
Laurie: It seems like a breaking faith with people on the list.
Dean: What's the context of it?
Laurie: The contact is reviving a training program that used to exist 20 years ago that's now been going to become available again.
Dean: What does that have to do like the local element [Crosstalk 01:06:41].
Laurie: For local people, it’s going to be an in-person local training.
Dean: Like a live training?
Laurie: Live training.
Dean: Would it be unreasonable for you to send an email that the first question, is do you live in whatever?
Laurie: I think that might …
Dean: That might be your first question.
Laurie: Mm-hmm (Affirmative). That would make sense.
Dean: Right, but don't solve the mystery with that. Don't say it, because if you do then we’re having this, right?
Laurie: Okay. All right, so I could have ….
Dean: If you don't have mailing addresses for people, one of the great things that you can do is send people an email that asks them, what’s your mailing address? I'd like to send you whatever.
Laurie: Okay, great ideas. Thank you so much.
Dean: You're very welcome.
Derek: Hey Dean, it’s Derek. How are you?
Dean: I’m good. Derek, how are you?
Derek: I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be on the call, I’m picking up a lot of great tips.
Dean: Awesome good.
Derek: I had a question for you. I’m in real estate here in central Florida, in Orlando, and I was just going through some of my older emails over the past week or 2, and I've sent out a good number of the 9 word emails. What I'd tend to do is if I don't know for say like you were saying earlier, if I know their name, that's what I put in the subject line. Dear Dean and then I put the 9 word email in the context of the email and then just sent it out.
I've gotten a couple of actually of … Actually, I’ve gotten more responses back and I've actually got one listing from it which is pretty cool, but I was just curious. Is there another way that you would suggest that I send out an email?
Dean: Yeah, absolutely and that’s a great question because this is like a one thing, so it’s like when I say all the different ways that you can use email, and all the different purposes, what I'm looking for this 9 word email is the asset that everybody, every business has. If you've been in business for more than 90 days, you've got people who inquired more than 90 days ago, so reconnecting with those is the best thing, but that has a short shelf life in terms of, now that you've reconnected with everybody who inquired more than 90 days ago, in theory you have to wait another 90 days for the next group of people who inquired today who haven't yet bought, right?
Derek: Sure.
Dean: The next level of that then is now using email to engage with the new leads that you're generating in a way that is going to enhance your conversion of those. The more people that you'll be able to help, and setting up a system, a way a flagship communication that every single week you're in contact with people, so that over the next 90 days to 9 months or 12 months or however long, that there's always communication going on, that's consistently adding value and consistently building your relationship with them, and it could even be enhanced with a podcast or with videos.
We have one of our realtor clients sends a daily video of all the new listings that are come on the market. He just does a video review of them, and that's speaking directly to the 5 star prospects who really want to know about the brand new listings.
Derek: Wow.
Dean: I would encourage you to start thinking about at least once a week sending an email with an update of all the new listings that have come on in whatever area you're focused in.
Derek: Okay.
Dean: In that way you're kind of full circle. You're starting by reengaging with the people who inquired 90 days or more ago. You're now engaging with the ones who are inquiring now you've hopefully gained some email, some skills to handle those emails a little bit in a personal way, and then adding into that now a weekly flagship email that you're sending out valuable information every single week.
You to look at the way we do it out there that’s just adding a ton of value to people, and building relationships, and bonding with people and really delivering valuable information to them that they're looking forward to receiving every week.
Derek: That's great.
Dean: That opens the door that when you do communicate with people, that they are happy to hear from you, you know?
Derek: Absolutely, that's great. That is super. I'll definitely do that.
Dean: Okay. Thanks Derek.
Derek: Thank you.
Dean: Okay guys. How time flies when you're having fun. We're just over, we’ve gone over the top of the hour here, but I've had a great time talking with all of you guys. There’s so many great success stories, so many great ways to use email. If you want to continue going down this path of how to use email for all of these other ways, stay tuned because next week I'm going to be starting a email master class, where we're going to for the next several weeks, talk about all kinds of different strategies for using email to engage with your existing clients, to orchestrate referrals, to convert more of the initial leads that you're getting right now, to communicate with and getting new people engaged using email as a prospecting tool.
We're going to go through that over the next several weeks. I'll be sending you up information about that this weekend, and look forward to continuing the journey with you. If you want to try the tools that I was sharing as a great tool kit for you, for deploying all of these email strategies, you can try GoGoclients.com. You can go there. It shows you all the tools that you get and you can do a 30 day free trial.
Try it for free, see how it works for you, and it's the tool that I use to do all of these email marketing messages, and all the dialogs and keeping all the great records for everybody. I'm going to talk more about that over the course of our journey together, but if you want to get a head start because you're on the call live tonight, you can go to GoGoClients.com and get familiar. If you take a free trial GoGo Clients.
Thank you guys for coming on the call. I'm going to put up a replay of the call so that you can listen again, and maybe share it with your friends. That would be awesome too. Okay, thanks for calling in. Thanks for playing. Have a great night, and I will talk to you next time. Bye-bye.
There we have it, another great episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers. We’d like to carry on the conversation. First of all, what you can do in this episode is you could go to emailmastery.com and you can download the email mastery e-book that everybody was talking about in this episode. Then try a 9 word email yourself. I’d love to hear how that goes for you, and send me your 9 words at Dean@DeanJackson.com. Just send me an email. Tell me what happened, how you tried it, and let's see what we can do to get a 9 word email working for you.