The "Secret" to email Success!

by midasman09 Banned
18 replies
As a "Thanksgiving" type of "giving back" and "Thank You" to the folks at WF...I thought I'd toss in something that's been working for me.... regarding using EMAIL to get OFFline customers/clients.

This year, I've bought lots of WSOs and other "sales" stuff as to "How To Sell Stuff using email and direct-mail".....HOWEVER, they ALL have good stuff about "HOW" to do this or HOW to do that...etc....BUT....NONE of them have (IMHO) ....HOW to get prospects to OPEN your email or Sales Letter!"

Holy Camoly....guys, "If ya can't get im IN the Door....HOW ya gonna sell em YER STuff?"

So....on this "after Turkey Day where I'm feeling Bloated AND happy AND Thankful I'm still "Free" and have family around me....I'd like to "reveal" something that has worked for me this year.

To digress a moment; With All my many programs, I always try to "Put Myself INTO my prospect's body. "Let's see now. I'm the owner of a restaurant in a small town and I am concerned about many things. One thing I am concerned about MOST is...."How to get MORE diners into my place!"

So...."I take a gander at my incoming email, every day and....as I scroll down the "SUBJECT" column I see....lots of "enticements" to get me to open the email and read the sales letter, which I've become accustomed to finding it's a bunch of HogWash....so....I usually just scroll past all the stuff I think is Hogwash....HOWEVER....I then come upon a Subject that gets me interested enought to "STOP SCROLLING" and Click IN!

Now....here is why many of the Restaurant Owners I send emails to will STOP and ....Click IN!

It's the WORDS! "DOUBLE YOUR DINERS!"

Now....these 3 words appeal to a strong emotion called "OverWhelming CURIOSITY!"

THEN....it is now MY job to carry my prospect further down into my Sales Funnel! However....I have gotten my potential customer/client....INTO the opening of my Sales Funnel where I can carry him along to a CLOSE!

Now....the whole idea here is to....GET THEM IN ....IN THE FIRST PLACE.....which hardly any program sales include...so....think about using a "BIG BENEFIT" in your email SUBJECT LINE to get prospects to SEE YOUR Sales Letter!

Don Alm....going back for more "Mince Pie".
#email #secret #success
  • Profile picture of the author Sue Bruce
    Many of us are going to owe you a beer for this one! Enjoy your pie.

    Sue
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  • Profile picture of the author sodomojo
    Double your diners? Am I the only one that subject line screams "scam" to?

    Why in the world would you say that when you have absolutely no idea what his current numbers are and if he can even realistically do this or even needs to do this?

    If I received an email saying "double your clients" I'd immediately trash it because the person that wrote that clearly is right off the bat selling me something before they know my business. They are so conceited and poorly trained that they have this incorrect pre conceived notion before even meeting with me.

    Sorry Don, I think you are a bit off base here.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnrone
    Unfortunately, that phrase "DOUBLE YOUR DINERS!" sounds like a spam to me as well.

    Yes, it somehow arouses my curiosity for the moment, but it also triggers
    skepticism about the veracity of this email, and its content.

    I think I've received and read emails with a subject like this a bunch of times. But, sorry to say, it just goes to my spam folders.
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    • Profile picture of the author Greg guitar
      Well, I say if it works for you, then keep using it, regardless what other Warriors think. You said it's been working, and who am I to argue with success? I would have thought it sounds like a typical come-on (difficult to believe-too good to be true), but if it works, it would be dumb to stop using it until you find something that works even better.

      While I understand the objections of my fellow Warriors who think you should know something about the business before making claims like "double your diners", and indeed, the message might not be appropriate for restaurants that are already full to capacity (although even more demand might help them decide to open a new location), the fact is, it will be appropriate for some, and if you can deliver, it would be life changing.

      Since there are fixed costs like rent and heat that change little or not at all with increased business, that means if the restaurant doubles their sales, their profits will more than double; perhaps far more, depending on how much of the original revenues went to pay those costs.

      If like many businesses selling things people can live without (like going out to eat) a restaurant has been hit hard by frugality, it might be barely pay it's bills, doubling that restaurant's sales could quintuple their profits, which would obviously make you an angel in their eyes.

      Keep doing what works, and keep helping small businesses survive and thrive; what could be better than making yourself money by helping others go from struggling to kicking butt?!
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Solem
    That particular subject line may certainly appear "spammy" to most of us here, but the main point to take away from this is that your Subject line is the equivalent of a headline used in a good direct response ad and your only goal with that is to get them to open your email and get them to the next line, with the goal of each line being to keep the readers interest and get them to keep reading.

    It's important to remember though that "you are not your prospect" and the only way to know for sure what subject lines work best is to test a few and measure your results. While many of use here have seen it all when it comes to emails and spam, for the average restaurant owner, something like this may just get them to open an email.

    Cheers,

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Sue Bruce
      I have 200 restaurants within a four mile radius and email addresses plus phone numbers for most of them. I'm thinking a week to test this out. Let you know.

      Sue
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  • Profile picture of the author EMaria
    I think this phrase seems spammy to an internet marketer. An actual restaurant owner may take a look at the email. Some will, some won't. It all boils down to a numbers game.
    As to if a restaurant already has enough customers, I don't believe you will find many that couldn't stand to get more.

    I agree with Midasman09 that it's important to put yourself in a potential customers' shoes and how they may perceive your subject line. But the only way to know for sure is to test out subject lines and see which ones get the most response. There's just no way to predict if a particular headline (subject line) will appeal to someone.


    As for spam, sometimes to see if my email may be tossed into the spam folder, what I do when using email to get leads, is to send it to 2 or 3 emails to my own email accounts first and see if it lands in the spam folder. I have had a yahoo account go through fine, where a gmail account will land in the spam folder. So that's a crap shoot too.

    Testing is the name of the game. It's the only way to truly determine if you have a winning headline. That's the bottom line.
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    • Profile picture of the author sodomojo
      Business owners get a lot of spam too. A lot. People on this forum are constantly saying how business owners always get cold calls and cold emails. Its true that they do and its easy for them to weed out crap like this. They aren't dummies. I agree with that it is important to test however I'm not gonna waste my time testing crappy email subjects.

      Don't waste your time sending out individual emails. Get on the phone and close some businesses. If you are going to cold email don't waste your precious time doing it have a va do it for you and test subject lines, test content, test time of day, test open rate, test ctr, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew J
    I regularly do cold email. Here are the tactics that have worked best for me. As always your mileage my vary.

    1.)My subject lines are usually some variation of "Quick Question", "Recent Follow-Up", or just plain "Hey..."

    Reason Why: Two things... First off I REALLY don't want this to look like spam. I want it to look like a general personal email. My theory is that if it looks like an ad it will probably get deleted.

    Secondly... That's President Obama's approach. Seriously. I'm not going to get into politics here (I'm a moderate), but his campaign has been brilliant at grass roots fundraising, largely coordinated by the internet. I made sure to get on his email list simply because I wanted to study what he sent.

    Consistently all of his subject lines are VERY personal. Everything from the subtle "hey" to the not so subtle "This Is Urgent... I Need Your Help..." - The one commonality is that all the subject lines were personal.

    2.) I make it look as much like a personal email as possible. This is not a sales letter. We're trying to open a conversation, not close a sale.

    Reason Why: The moment our prospect opens the email they'll make a split second decision as to whether they want to delete it or read it. The moment it feels too "salesy" they'll delete it.

    This means no big-a*s headings, no stationary, no images, no crazy font colors, and limited amounts of bolding. I do tend to make my fonts bigger to improve readability.

    I usually start out by saying "Hey, I'm not sure if you're the right person to send this to. If not, could you please forward it on? I'd really appreciate it" - This has had VERY positive results for me. I've had my emails forwarded to entire departments...

    3.) For this kind of work, I always use a Gmail account.

    Reason Why: Services like MailChimp are great, but they're not designed for what we're trying to do.

    Ideally the prospect should think you sat there and wrote out an email specifically to them addressing their specific needs.

    The problem is that the spammers have made it bad. Just to be clear, we're NOT spamming. If the email is perceived as spam, we're doing it wrong.

    So MailChimp and just about every other mass email provider put a big-a*s "UNSUBSCRIBE" and "REPORT SPAM" button at the bottom of every email. This is a dead giveaway that your email is NOT personal and that your prospect is free to delete it.

    Also, I've yet to figure out how to make Mailchimp let me send just a "plain email". They keep forcing me into a template, which isn't what I want.

    4.) I make great usage of Gmail's "Canned Responses" feature.

    Reason Why: The problem is that we don't have time to personally type out all these emails. The canned responses feature is part of Google Labs and has to be turned on manually.

    Basically it lets you save pre-fab emails and send them with just a few clicks. There's also a plugin for Chrome called "YesMail" that I've been playing around with and so far am impressed with.

    Another service that does this is Tout, but it's way overpriced IMO.

    The cool thing about this is that you can quickly modify the email before blasting it off. So if you know something about the prospect (and you should), you can take 10 extra seconds and personalize it a bit further.

    5.) I send a maximum of 20 emails a day.

    Reason Why: First off, I'm not a spammer. I'm very carefully selecting the prospects I want to receive these emails. I'm not casting a wide net. Those 20 emails are carefully targeted towards people I know are decision makers.

    That means doing some research. Research takes time. Once I've identified a prospect, it doesn't take that much extra effort to learn a bit about them. This lets me personalize each email.

    In other words I take a QUALITY over QUANTITY approach. I feel that 20 well targeted, personalized emails are better than 2,000 generic emails thrown into the wind.

    Plus, keeping the number of emails down decreases the likelihood that Gmail will deactivate your account due to SPAM concerns.

    Most days I don't do 20. Many days I just do 1 or 2. It depends on how much time I have. Which brings me to my next point.

    6.) Cold emailing is not my only prospecting activity. It's one thing of many that I do.

    Reason Why: I prefer approaching a small pool of well qualified prospects from different angels as opposed to trying to hit an entire army at once.

    I've had better luck exposing a smaller number of people to frequent contacts from a variety of mediums as opposed to hitting a massive unqualified pool with a single medium.

    7.) I always end with a soft call to action.

    Reason Why: This is something else I picked up from Obama's email campaigns. Every email ended with a call to action. In his case it was usually "Donate $5", "Sign Up to Volunteer", or "Sign This List to Make Your Voice Heard"...

    In our case we have to be careful because, as I said before, we don't want to scare off the prospect. My calls to action are usually either "Give me a call...", "Check out our website", or "Send me a quick reply".

    ---

    Thanks for reading. I hope this was beneficial to someone! :-)
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    • Profile picture of the author celente
      Originally Posted by Matthew J View Post

      I regularly do cold email. Here are the tactics that have worked best for me. As always your mileage my vary.

      1.)My subject lines are usually some variation of "Quick Question", "Recent Follow-Up", or just plain "Hey..."

      Reason Why: Two things... First off I REALLY don't want this to look like spam. I want it to look like a general personal email. My theory is that if it looks like an ad it will probably get deleted.

      Secondly... That's President Obama's approach. Seriously. I'm not going to get into politics here (I'm a moderate), but his campaign has been brilliant at grass roots fundraising, largely coordinated by the internet. I made sure to get on his email list simply because I wanted to study what he sent.

      Consistently all of his subject lines are VERY personal. Everything from the subtle "hey" to the not so subtle "This Is Urgent... I Need Your Help..." - The one commonality is that all the subject lines were personal.

      2.) I make it look as much like a personal email as possible. This is not a sales letter. We're trying to open a conversation, not close a sale.

      Reason Why: The moment our prospect opens the email they'll make a split second decision as to whether they want to delete it or read it. The moment it feels too "salesy" they'll delete it.

      This means no big-a*s headings, no stationary, no images, no crazy font colors, and limited amounts of bolding. I do tend to make my fonts bigger to improve readability.

      I usually start out by saying "Hey, I'm not sure if you're the right person to send this to. If not, could you please forward it on? I'd really appreciate it" - This has had VERY positive results for me. I've had my emails forwarded to entire departments...

      3.) For this kind of work, I always use a Gmail account.

      Reason Why: Services like MailChimp are great, but they're not designed for what we're trying to do.

      Ideally the prospect should think you sat there and wrote out an email specifically to them addressing their specific needs.

      The problem is that the spammers have made it bad. Just to be clear, we're NOT spamming. If the email is perceived as spam, we're doing it wrong.

      So MailChimp and just about every other mass email provider put a big-a*s "UNSUBSCRIBE" and "REPORT SPAM" button at the bottom of every email. This is a dead giveaway that your email is NOT personal and that your prospect is free to delete it.

      Also, I've yet to figure out how to make Mailchimp let me send just a "plain email". They keep forcing me into a template, which isn't what I want.

      4.) I make great usage of Gmail's "Canned Responses" feature.

      Reason Why: The problem is that we don't have time to personally type out all these emails. The canned responses feature is part of Google Labs and has to be turned on manually.

      Basically it lets you save pre-fab emails and send them with just a few clicks. There's also a plugin for Chrome called "YesMail" that I've been playing around with and so far am impressed with.

      Another service that does this is Tout, but it's way overpriced IMO.

      The cool thing about this is that you can quickly modify the email before blasting it off. So if you know something about the prospect (and you should), you can take 10 extra seconds and personalize it a bit further.

      5.) I send a maximum of 20 emails a day.

      Reason Why: First off, I'm not a spammer. I'm very carefully selecting the prospects I want to receive these emails. I'm not casting a wide net. Those 20 emails are carefully targeted towards people I know are decision makers.

      That means doing some research. Research takes time. Once I've identified a prospect, it doesn't take that much extra effort to learn a bit about them. This lets me personalize each email.

      In other words I take a QUALITY over QUANTITY approach. I feel that 20 well targeted, personalized emails are better than 2,000 generic emails thrown into the wind.

      Plus, keeping the number of emails down decreases the likelihood that Gmail will deactivate your account due to SPAM concerns.

      Most days I don't do 20. Many days I just do 1 or 2. It depends on how much time I have. Which brings me to my next point.

      6.) Cold emailing is not my only prospecting activity. It's one thing of many that I do.

      Reason Why: I prefer approaching a small pool of well qualified prospects from different angels as opposed to trying to hit an entire army at once.

      I've had better luck exposing a smaller number of people to frequent contacts from a variety of mediums as opposed to hitting a massive unqualified pool with a single medium.

      7.) I always end with a soft call to action.

      Reason Why: This is something else I picked up from Obama's email campaigns. Every email ended with a call to action. In his case it was usually "Donate $5", "Sign Up to Volunteer", or "Sign This List to Make Your Voice Heard"...

      In our case we have to be careful because, as I said before, we don't want to scare off the prospect. My calls to action are usually either "Give me a call...", "Check out our website", or "Send me a quick reply".

      ---

      Thanks for reading. I hope this was beneficial to someone! :-)
      I like matthew J approach here, sort of a bit more slow and sleek and looking for the quality clients.

      If you have a cold emailing for a plumber lets call him A.J. Plumbing I will usually send a SUBJECT line along the lines of "AJ Plumbing your website has just been banned by google" hit em in the nuts approach and get your emails read. Then link that to what you are selling. It has worked ok in getting customers.

      Cold email is just one thing that I do but you really gotta get in their head, first. And I agree on trying to get a bit of research done and personalize things. But also, we have tested, and tested some more...and you work out what works, and what doesnt.

      There is not secret, but TO TEST and keep doing what works. Simple as that.
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      • Profile picture of the author Matthew J
        Originally Posted by celente View Post

        There is not secret, but TO TEST and keep doing what works. Simple as that.
        Here here! I agree!
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      • Profile picture of the author Greg guitar
        Originally Posted by celente View Post

        If you have a cold emailing for a plumber lets call him A.J. Plumbing I will usually send a SUBJECT line along the lines of "AJ Plumbing your website has just been banned by google" hit em in the nuts approach and get your emails read. Then link that to what you are selling. It has worked ok in getting customers.
        You might want to rethink that subject line unless you think the FTC is kidding in the wording on their site regarding the "CAN-SPAM's main requirements".

        The second point of seven is: "Don't use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message." (their emphasis; I only pasted).

        Until I finally re-read the act earlier today, I had been under the impression CAN-SPAM restrictions didn't apply to emailing businesses, but that was just a wrong assumption or faulty memory on my part. Many on the WF seem as misinformed about that as I was.

        This is also from the FTC document: "The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email - for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line - must comply with the law."

        So I guess I take that to mean, if you have any doubts that you might be spamming, get legal advice before you continue, because if you are found guilty of spamming, "Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly."

        They don't mention a time frame for the emails someone might have sent in violation; I would presume that if they can be found, they can be prosecuted. Imagine sending 20 a day for a month; not excessive, but that's a total of 600. If they all are in violation of CAN-SPAM, according the the FTC, you could be fined $9.6 million. That could take a few months to recover from.
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        • Profile picture of the author celente
          Originally Posted by Greg guitar View Post

          You might want to rethink that subject line unless you think the FTC is kidding in the wording on their site regarding the "CAN-SPAM’s main requirements".

          The second point of seven is: "Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message." (their emphasis; I only pasted).

          Just so you know, I was giving an actual dummy example of an offline plumbing business and also a dummy subject line. I do not condone any sort of spamming. There are smart ways to go about this and wrong ways too as you stated above.


          Our best subject lines that do get the best results are not really what I class as spammy. You have to do some research on your target and find a nice way to create curiosity. You only have a few seconds to do so, otherwise its just another deleted email.

          again...anyone just relying on cold emailing for their business or to get leads, is missing out on alot.
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          • Profile picture of the author Irish Intuition
            Originally Posted by celente View Post

            again...anyone just relying on cold emailing for their business or to get leads, is missing out on alot.
            Exactly. Missing out on a whole lot....
            Signature




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          • Profile picture of the author Greg guitar
            Originally Posted by celente View Post

            Just so you know, I was giving an actual dummy example of an offline plumbing business and also a dummy subject line. I do not condone any sort of spamming. There are smart ways to go about this and wrong ways too as you stated above.


            Our best subject lines that do get the best results are not really what I class as spammy. You have to do some research on your target and find a nice way to create curiosity. You only have a few seconds to do so, otherwise its just another deleted email.

            again...anyone just relying on cold emailing for their business or to get leads, is missing out on alot.
            I understood that the example wasn't real, but nonetheless, of the type which you stated you "will usually send a SUBJECT line along the lines of".

            If you were joking, I missed the joke. I took it as a hypothetical example of the kind of subject line you thought was pretty good, since you said something like that has worked well for you in getting new customers.

            Even as a hypothetical, I felt it appropriate to mention that if someone followed the general idea of the example, to grab attention using the shock of a fake scare about the recipient's website being in trouble, they could find themselves facing massive fines. The threat is real, so I think it's best not to suggest strategies that to follow would be a crime with serious consequences.

            Saying you don't condone spamming is nice, but I'm confused, because in your earlier post, you suggested that something has worked well for you which the FTC quotes clearly spell out as spam. I don't know how that isn't condoning it, but I am glad to hear that at least you know it's something to be avoided. Other than sarcasm, which is nearly impossible to pick up from printed words, I can't imagine where you were coming from that's congruent with not condoning spam.
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            • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
              Originally Posted by Sue Bruce View Post

              I have 200 restaurants within a four mile radius and email addresses plus phone numbers for most of them. I'm thinking a week to test this out. Let you know.

              Sue
              200 isn't enough to get anything from usually. Usually a list of 2,000 you will get something from though.

              Anyway, back to the OP... this may have worked a while ago, but the truth is that the word "Double" itself, sets off a lot of spam boxes. I know this from over 100,000 emails sent with a similar subject line, and different variations. The only similar word was double. Say hello to the blacklist.
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              • Profile picture of the author celente
                Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

                200 isn't enough to get anything from usually. Usually a list of 2,000 you will get something from though.

                Anyway, back to the OP... this may have worked a while ago, but the truth is that the word "Double" itself, sets off a lot of spam boxes. I know this from over 100,000 emails sent with a similar subject line, and different variations. The only similar word was double. Say hello to the blacklist.
                iAmNameLess is right.

                Lets say you are a killer conversion-ist and good email copy, which means at best you your conversion rate on 200 emails would only be 1 or 2 sales or a few replies. Now 2000 or 3000 yes, that is where you will see some sort of results.

                And there are websites that show you the words which sets spam boxes off, words like DOUBLE, FINANCIAL, MIRACLE etc and that sort of thing, that will set them off. Again it all comes down to testing.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sue Bruce
    Hey Don,

    I sent this to my restaurant list Monday and have 2 sales and 3 appts next week for the sales guys. I was using mamby, pamby subject lines but this one got their attention.

    The reason I was almost sure it would work is because my own email subj. lines are so boring, I delete most of them before opening.

    Thx,
    Sue
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