The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (32 page)

of the moment to al or some of your list, depending on your goals.

Autoresponders are different. They also can be sent to some or al of your list but they

are preprogrammed to go out and are triggered either by a time interval or by an action.

For instance, when you subscribe to an online service or buy a product, you’l instantly

get an e-mail in your inbox with the transaction details. That’s an autoresponder

message, which is triggered by your subscription or purchase action.

No doubt you’ve signed up for some online software on a trial basis and from time to

time you’l get a message tel ing you about a neat feature of the software or asking you

to contact the company with any questions. Those autoresponder messages are

triggered by time intervals. For instance, the welcome e-mail can be set to go out

instantly upon the trial period commencing. Then another e-mail might be scheduled for

3 days into the trial period, asking, “How is it going? Have you had a chance to instal it

yet? Do you have any questions?” It’s typical for subsequent e-mails to be spaced apart

by a few days.

When someone decides to move from a trial subscription to a ful subscription, that’s

an action that can trigger the person to be taken off the trial autoresponder series and

instead moved over to the new-buyer series. Then another sequence of e-mails can

start, thanking the person for buying, directing his attention to special features for new

users, and so on.

Autoresponders are the bread-and-butter of the info products business. Even lousy

marketers use them, though their purpose is only to send a string of Buy Me Now! Buy

Me Right Now! messages.

Question: “But isn’t e-mail on the way out, and even considered
spammy?″

Answer: E-mail is most definitely not on the way out. Though it’s true that some

people use systems like Facebook to send messages to their friends, the modern

world stil relies heavily on e-mail. According to the Pew Internet and American Life

Project, 90 percent of U.S. Internet users have sent or read e-mail and 57 percent do

it as part of a typical day.

As for being spammy, that’s like saying you’l never read postal mail again because

you got some junk mail. Whether it’s postal mail or e-mail, both channels contain both

good stuff and trash. It’s your responsibility to be categorized as good stuff. That’s why I

now want to give you the fol owing:

FOUR TIPS FOR BUILDING PROFITABLE RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH

E-MAIL

Tip One: Segment for Success

Henry Ford once said about his Model T: “Any customer can have a car painted any

color that he wants so long as it is black.” Wel , in the twenty-first century it’s time to get

away from the one-size-fits-al mentality, especial y when it comes to your e-mail

communications.

It’s important to segment your list so each group gets e-mails appropriate for that

group. When you begin your lead-generation activities, people signing up for your free

special reports wil be prospects. Those people should get an autoresponder series,

which begins to cultivate a pre-purchase relationship.

For instance, you might have three or four e-mails each spaced 4 days apart, and

each one addressing a frustration that organic heirloom gardeners face. You could

describe the problem, offer a helpful suggestion, and then mention your info product at

the end. Just like your other sales material you earn their attention by first giving them

helpful information.

Once a person buys your product, you can remove her from your prospect

autoresponder and now add her to the buyer list, which, as I said before, now talks about

the product she just bought. That brings me to the next tip.

Tip Two: Encourage Consumption

Sometimes people buy a product, get busy with other activities, and forget about the

product for a while. They eventual y remember that they bought it but by that point they

think,
″Maybe
I don’t need this after al . Maybe I should just return
it.″
You didn’t do

anything wrong, but now they’ve mental y moved on to something else.

You can help these people by staying in their consciousness through e-mail. After your

welcome e-mail you can then create a quick-start e-mail, pointing them to something

easy in your product that they can apply right away. A few days later your next e-mail can

check in and ask how is it going, do they have any questions, and—by the way—they

real y should check out page 14 of your guide because many of your customers have

had success applying it with quick results.

This is a real win-win proposition because the sooner they use your product, the

sooner they’l get results. You benefit because they just might become raving fans of your

information and spread the word to their friends.

A great technique to use in your autoresponder series is to create a mailbag theme.

Every so often have an e-mail with a question or two from a customer and your answer.

What if you don’t yet have many customers? Then make up the questions! You don’t

have to say they were from customers, but you just say: “You may have this question

about using the CS-6000i. . . .″ Either way you’re delivering helpful information.

Over time you could consider segmenting your list in other ways. For instance, you

may have a group of users in one part of the country and they could benefit from slightly

different information from what you would send other users. The great thing about

commercial e-mail systems is that they make it easy to segment your list any which way.

Tip Three: Become a Welcome Guest in Their Inbox

The next time you fire up your e-mail system, I’d like you to try something interesting:

Look at the most recent 10 or so e-mails and closely notice your instant reaction to the

From name and the subject lines of each e-mail. I’m referring to the feeling you get the

instant you recognize what that e-mail is about or who sent it, even before you open the

e-mail.

I bet your reaction wil be along the lines of this: “E-mail 1: Ugh, the phone bil . . . . E-

mail 2: Double Ugh, another stupid Viagra ad. . . . E-mail 3: Oh Frank’s writing me back

with an answer to my question. . . . E-mail 4: Oh good, a note from Phil at school about

his travel
plans. . . . ″

Once you scanned your e-mails, you’l typical y go back over them and instantly delete

the obvious garbage. You’l then attend to the e-mails that looked more urgent and

maybe wil delay opening the bil s, and eventual y you wil deal with the rest.

My point is that you as a marketer want to generate the fol owing reaction when they

come across your e-mail:
″Hmmm,
he’s that tomato guy. I wonder what he might be

discussing this
time?″

No, you’re not in the true inner circle of best friends and urgent e-mails, but you’re also

far from being in the Ugh category. Instead, you’l generate a certain openness and

curiosity on the part of the reader.

If you’ve fol owed my advice and have avoided al the fake hyped stuff then you’re

probably already a welcome e-mail in the inbox. The way to continue to be welcome is to

vary your communications with a mixture of commentary, news, and product offerings.

It’s fine to continue to sel people through e-mail but you definitely don’t want to create

the impression of:
″Not
another e-mail pestering me to buy something
else!″
Therefore

don’t be so predictable. Once in a while you should send a broadcast message to a

segment of your list with pure, nonsales news: ″I just came across a great piece about

Schnauzers in Show Dog magazine. Did you see it? I didn’t know this but the Dutch have

developed this new flower-based shampoo for our breed that claims. . . .″ You then go on

to talk purely about the news article. You don’t even mention your product at al but take

on the characteristic of one dog lover e-mailing another about something you saw in a

magazine.

It doesn’t take too many of those type of e-mails to keep you in the welcome-guest

category.

Tip Four: Make It Two-Way Communication

Don’t just talk at your audience but occasional y ask them to talk to you. This wil

separate you once more from most other marketers who incessantly talk at you, as if