When it comes to email marketing you must overcome many obstacles:
- Driving traffic.
- Developing an opt-in list.
- Writing great content.
- Writing great content on a regular basis.
- Making it aesthetically pleasing.
- Developing a compelling call to action.
- Using an inbound marketing CRM that can actually deliver your email.
- Track bounce rates.
- Clean up and maintain your list.
- Track open rates.
- Track sales.
- Develop up-sells, cross-promotions and affiliate offers.
- Deliver up-sells, cross-promotions and affiliate offers at the optimum time. (This is where having the ability to read the minds of your clients comes in handy!)
This "mind-reading" capability is provided by a little feature HubSpot offers called tracking URLs.
Like the name says, these are links to your website, landing page, webinar, etc. that are embedded in your HTML emails that can track whether or not your email recipient clicks on it.
Related Article: 4 Ways To Improve Email Marketing
Related Podcast Episode: Use Mind Reading To Close More Sales With Ian Rowland
You can then create "action sets" (another email, a phone call, a fax, a text message, a postcard, a letter) to run when your prospect takes the step to click on the link or after some amount of time expires and they haven't clicked the link.
For example, let's say you are conducting a webinar 21 days from now and you send out an email to your list of 1,000 people inviting them to register and the results look something like this:
- 400 open the email.
- 200 click on the link to register.
- 100 actually register.
- 600 do nothing.
With HubSpot's ability to track both open rates and trackable links you can deliver targeted, relevant messages to the four different types of recipients above - readers, clickers, registrants, skippers.
Readers
To those that read the email but did nothing further you could create a follow up email that is set to be delivered 24-48 hours later that says,
Wes, Thanks for checking out the email I sent yesterday about the upcoming marketing webinar. If you misplaced the link to register here it is."
Clickers
To those that actually clicked on the link but did not register you could send a different email 24 hours later that says,
Wes, Isn't it crazy how quickly we can get distracted from doing the things we need to do to grow our business? I see you went to register for my upcoming marketing webinar but something must have popped up that required your attention before you could finish registering. It only takes 15 seconds to complete the registration. Here is the link again."
Registrants
Those that do register will get will get an entire sequence sent to them including a confirmation email, reminders two weeks out, one week out, 3 days out, the day of, invitations for them to pass on to friends and co-workers, etc. I'll write more on that later.
Non-Attendees
The 600 that didn't even bother opening the email could be sent the same email again the next day or the next week.
Since they didn't open the first one this won't be repetitive to them.
Just be sure to change the number of days until the webinar in the next email!
Wes, The marketing webinar is 14 days away." or "Wes, The marketing webinar is 7 days away."
When you are delivering relevant, targeted messaging at the exact moment your clients and prospects do (or do not) take action it appears you can read their minds. This helps you connect with them by showing empathy. (You show empathy by speaking their language and not bombarding them with irrelevant crap messaging and offers!)
The better you can connect with human beings the more you will sell.
Like Jeffrey Gitomer says, "People hate to be sold, but they love to buy."
(Hear Jeffrey Gitomer on The Sales Podcast.)
