MBA2435 Q&A Wednesday: How do I increase my email offer sales conversions?

Summary

The $100 MBA Show: MBA2435 Q&A Wednesday – Increasing Email Offer Sales Conversions

Release Date: February 28, 2024

Host: Omar Zenhom
Podcast Description: Awarded Best of Apple Podcasts, The $100 MBA Show delivers practical business lessons for the real world. Host Omar Zenhom shares insights from over 20 years of entrepreneurship, providing actionable strategies for building and scaling businesses with minimal resources.

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The $100 MBA Show, Omar Zenhom addresses a pressing concern from a listener named Janet: a significant drop in sales conversions from her email offers over the past year. Omar delves deep into effective strategies to revitalize email marketing efforts and boost conversion rates, drawing from his extensive entrepreneurial experience.

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Understanding Email Engagement

Timestamp: [01:11]

Omar begins by emphasizing the potency of email marketing. He states, “Email is one of the best ways of marketing. Getting in somebody's inbox is a great way to get their attention" ([01:45]). Unlike social media feeds, emails are more personal and harder to ignore, making them a valuable channel for reaching potential customers.

He highlights the diversity in how recipients interact with emails:

• Deep Readers: People who read every word from the subject line to the P.S.
• Skimmers: Individuals who glance through the email quickly.
• Selective Readers: Those who might only read the subject line and star the email for later.
• Action-Takers: Users who click on links and engage with the content.
• Non-Engagers: Recipients who neither read nor click.

Understanding these varying behaviors is crucial for tailoring email content effectively.

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Strategy 1: Segmenting Your Audience

Timestamp: [02:30]

Omar underscores the importance of recognizing that not all subscribers are equally interested in your offerings. He advises identifying the segment of your email list that is genuinely interested and more likely to purchase.

Quote:
“You have to identify these people because you wanna go deep and you wanna be able to treat them differently” ([02:45]).

Implementation Steps:

1. Initial Engagement Email: Before launching an offer, send an email containing valuable content related to your product. For instance, if selling a basketball coaching course, provide a quick tutorial on improving free throw shooting.
2. Track Engagement: Use email marketing software (e.g., ConvertKit) to tag subscribers who click on the links, indicating higher interest.
3. Follow-Up with Non-Engagers: Automate subsequent emails targeting those who didn’t engage initially, offering the same valuable content to warm them up.

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Strategy 2: Crafting the Offer Sequence

Timestamp: [04:15]

Once you've identified your engaged audience, Omar recommends a structured email sequence to maximize conversions.

Key Points:

• Email Volume: Send between five to seven emails per offer, including last-chance reminders.
• Direct to Checkout: Encourage immediate action by directing interested subscribers straight to the checkout page rather than the sales page. This reduces friction and accelerates the purchasing decision.

Quote:
“People don't buy on the email, they buy on your website” ([06:10]).

Best Practices:

• First Email: Announce the offer with a brief overview and a link to the sales page for detailed information.
• Subsequent Emails: For those who have shown interest, use a compelling call-to-action like, “If you’re sold, just click here to grab your spot” to direct them to the cart.
• Include Scarcity Elements: Incorporate deadlines and limited-time bonuses to create urgency.

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Strategy 3: Leveraging Scarcity and Deadlines

Timestamp: [08:00]

Omar discusses the psychological impact of scarcity on purchasing behavior. He explains that real deadlines compel action by tapping into the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Tools Mentioned:

• Deadline Funnel: A tool that creates personalized countdown timers embedded within emails and websites, signaling genuine urgency.

Implementation Tips:

• Countdown Timers: Embed these in your emails, especially in the final stages of your campaign, to visually indicate the remaining time.
• Communicate Consequences: Clearly articulate what subscribers will lose if they don’t act, such as missing out on bonuses or price reductions.

Quote:
“People have strong feelings towards loss aversion, right? People are more concerned about losing something than gaining something” ([10:30]).

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Strategy 4: Infusing Personality into Emails

Timestamp: [11:15]

The final strategy revolves around making emails more personable and engaging. Omar advocates for incorporating one’s unique personality, humor, and authenticity into email communications.

Key Suggestions:

• Personal Touch: Write emails in your own voice, share anecdotes, or include relatable experiences.
• Visual Elements: Use images of yourself or your team to humanize the brand.
• Interactive Content: Add emojis or informal language to make emails feel more conversational.

Quote:
“Personalization and humor and personality goes a long way” ([13:00]).

By fostering a genuine connection, subscribers are more likely to trust and engage with your offers.

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Timestamp: [14:57]

Omar wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of continuous experimentation and optimization in email marketing. He encourages listeners to view their sales pages and email strategies as dynamic elements that require regular testing and tweaking to achieve optimal results.

Final Quote:
“Your website, your sales pages. It's not a once and done thing. It's all experimentation” ([16:30]).

He emphasizes that through persistent testing and willingness to adapt, business owners can discover what strategies work best for their unique audiences, ultimately leading to increased sales conversions.

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Key Takeaways

1. Segment Your Email List: Identify and target subscribers who show genuine interest by engaging with your content.
2. Structured Email Sequences: Develop a strategic sequence of emails that guide potential customers from awareness to purchase, minimizing friction by directing them to checkout pages.
3. Utilize Scarcity: Implement real deadlines and countdown timers to create urgency and encourage prompt action.
4. Personalize Your Communication: Infuse your emails with personality and authenticity to build trust and foster meaningful connections with your audience.
5. Continuous Optimization: Regularly test and refine your email marketing strategies to discover what drives the best results for your business.

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Final Notes

Omar invites listeners to engage further by submitting their questions for future Q&A Wednesdays. He encourages subscribing to the podcast and interacting via email to receive personalized feedback and support.

Contact Information:

• Email: [e-mail]
• Website: https://100mba.net

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By implementing these strategies, entrepreneurs and business owners can enhance their email marketing effectiveness, leading to higher sales conversions and sustained business growth.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail].

[Unknown Voiceover Artist]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] got a 7am meeting.

[Unknown Employee]

On a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yay.

[Unknown Voiceover Artist]

Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.

[Omar Zenhom]

Hey, welcome to the $100 MBA show giving you the insights you need to build the business you want with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm and today is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me [e-mail] Today's question is from Janet and Janet asks. Sending out email offers is how I make most of my sales with my online business. But in the past year my sales conversions via email have dropped. Can you help me out? How do I increase my sales conversions via email offers? Solid practical question Janet. Love it. I got your back. I'm also a huge fan of email offers. Email is one of the best ways of marketing. Getting in somebody's inbox is a great way to get their attention. Email is something that people have to deal with. They have to read it, they have to archive it, they got to do something with it. They can't just thumb through it like a social media feed. In a lot of ways, our inboxes are our last sacred place on the Internet. So having access to people's inboxes is a fantastic way to make offers and add value to your customers in a personal way. In today's lesson, I'm going to break down how to analyze your email marketing funnel and see where the bottlenecks are, see where you can do better, and how you can make some small tweaks to make some massive conversions. I'm going to show you where are the areas that actually move the needle and how by improving these areas, in my experience, can massively improve your conversions. In my case, it improved my conversions 3x. I was making 3 times as many sales after I made these changes. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Now we're on the same page. Email is a fantastic tool to sell, but we have to recognize that everybody's different when it comes to email. What I mean by that is that the way people treat email, the way that people read emails, the way people consume emails, is different. There are people that read every word, every letter of the email from top to bottom, subject line, P.S. everything. There are people that just skim through. There are people that read the first two sentences. There are people that read the subject line and then star your email and hope to read it later. There are people that click through your links and go through your pages. And there are people that don't click on anything at all. So you have to recognize this. And the reason why we have to recognize this is we have to change the way we deliver our content via email. Understanding that people are different and you want to treat people differently based on the way they consume email. This just mindset, this concept really was a game changer for me. And once I started thinking like this, I started to see massive changes. We're going to go through some small changes, some small tweaks to your strategy that are going to make a lot of difference. So the first strategy is you have to recognize that not everybody is interested in what you're offering. There's gonna be a good number of people on your email list that is interested and are potential buyers. There are more likely to buy than other people on your list. So you need to identify these people because you wanna go deep and you wanna be able to treat them differently. You wanna be able to deliver different kinds of emails. So the first type of email I like to send before I send any offers. So say for example, I'm making an offer, I'm doing a sale, I'm doing whatever, a promotion. A few days before, even a week before, I'm going to send a different kind of email to my list. This can be my entire list. And this email is not an offer, but it's free, valuable content about what I'm selling. Let's say, for example, you're a basketball coach and you are selling a course on how to improve all aspects of, of your offensive game. Shooting, dribbling, passing, free throw, shooting, you name it, okay? That's what the entire course is about. If somebody were Interested in buying a course like that, what kind of content would they be interested in? Well, maybe it's something that has to do with a pain point or a problem that they're trying to solve around that area. So in this case, it might be free throw shooting. And you want to choose something that everybody can relate to. And free throw shooting in basketball is something that everybody relate to because at some point you're get fouled and you're going to have to shoot free throws and you're going to have to, you know, sync those shots to help your team win. So I would send a very short email, I'm talking about two, three lines max, with a link to a video on my website teaching a quick tutorial on how to really improve the free throw shooting very quickly, whether it's a visualization exercise or whatever. The point here is that I'm going to send an email saying, hey, I got this great training that you want to check out to improve your free throw shooting by X percent. It's only 6 minutes long. Click here and start syncing free throws now. The reason why we want this email to be super short is because I'm not interested in them trying to read a long, long email. My whole goal here is that I need people that actually open the email to click the link. Why? Because I'm going to track, I'm going to tag people, whoever click the link. And you could do this with any email software tag based on if click something in an email and this lets me know they are interested in improving their offense in basketball. Okay, this is somebody who's interested and would be interested in buying my product. What I find when I do this exercise and I give a good week so people can have a chance to open this email and click the link and watch the video is that I get about 50 to 60 people on my email list that have opened the email to click the link. This gives me a great audience that I created in my email list. Now these are the people I'm going to be promoting to. What do I do about the other people that never opened the email and never clicked the link? You might be saying, well, they're never going to get an offer. Well, not if they don't click the link. I only want the warmest audience, but I have an automation set up in my email marketing software. We use ConvertKit. We love it. They're not a sponsor of the show or anything, but you can create an automation inside your email marketing software. To send this email to anybody who did not open it so you can send a second or third version of this email, say, hey, did you see this video? Hey, I got something for you. And usually I just do two follow up emails. And again, in those emails I have the same tag. If they click on the link, they get tagged with that tag. So that way I know they watched the video or actually they went to the page of the video so that they're interested in improving some aspect of their offense or in general terms, they're interested in what I'll have to offer in a few days. This alone is going to help you tremendously. One, it warms up the audience, it gets them interested, sort of thinking about, you know, your product, your thing, your world, basketball in this case, it starts getting them thinking about how they need to improve. They start thinking about investing in themselves and implementing some of these strategies. It also allows you to kind of get permission in a way to continue to talk about this because they have already proven that they're interested in this. Next we're going to talk about the emails we're going to send to those people that clicked with the offer. Some people like to send one or two emails. Some people like to send 10 emails, some people like to send seven emails. For me, my sweet spot is for any offer to send five to seven emails. Two of those emails are, you know, last chance emails on the last day. Now I might send more emails if I'm like opening and closing a program like we do with $100 MBA and and it's only open at a certain period of time. And I will not be selling this program for an extended period of time. You know, a bunch of months, five, six months. So it's actually really urgent for them and very important for them to sign up now because they won't have a chance later. But generally, let's say five to seven emails. You could choose what to put in these emails. But if you want to increase your conversions, you have to remember that people don't buy on the email, they buy on your website. And this is something that once I figured out and perfected, really skyrocketed my conversions. So you have to remember that there are a lot of different ways people could buy. They can go to your website, they can go to the product page itself, they can go to the checkout page where, you know, that's it, they're in the cart. So where do you send them in this email? I'm bullish on getting them in the checkout in the cart right away, meaning I'm not really interested in getting them to hit the sales page. Because the sales page can be quite long and detailed and there's videos and there's testimonials and all kinds of stuff. And yes, it could help. And you may want to send them there early on in your email sequence. But really, most of the time what I find works the best is sending them straight to the cart where after they've clicked the buy button, that next page where it's like checkout, they put their information and they check out and buy. Why? Because I'd like to use the email to sell and then have the call to action to like buy now. Now, in the first email, you might want to just announce, hey, doors are open. We are selling the product. Here's a quick overview what you're going to get. This is the deal. If you want all the details, here's the sales page with all the details. Go ahead and read it. Offer ends so and so. That's usually my first email. I don't send them to the car. I send her to the sales page so they have more context and they have more time. There's gonna be people who are gonna buy right off there, but most people won't. My second email and following emails, I like to start my first line of the email with, hey, if you got my last email and you know about this offer and you're sold, just click here to grab your spot to grab this offer. This goes straight to the car. Some people are just like, I'm gonna buy anything you sell. They're, they're huge fans of you. Some people, they've already read your email before they've solved the sales page, they're convinced they just needed a reminder. They're gonna click, save them the time, have them go straight to checkout. After that line, you can then, you know, continue to talk about the offer, talk about what is included, why they need it, the scarcity, all that kind of stuff. More about scarcity later. But this is huge. Okay? That one liner made a huge difference for me because some people don't have time to read the whole email. They're just interested, they want to buy. I even throw in a line says, money back guarantee. You know, just let them know that, hey, if they just make a decision to buy right now, there's no risk. They have 30 days, all that kind of stuff. And in all the following emails, I just send them straight to cart. And then in the PS line, I can say, hey, if you are not sold yet and need more convincing, check out our detailed sales page and that will be hyperlinked. The next strategy that has increased conversions for me tremendously is deadlines is scarcity. Real scarcity, real deadlines. I really believe in them because people take action when they do miss in the past an offer. I know we all have experienced this, whether it's Black Friday sales or E commerce sales or a coupon that expired that we forgot to buy something, do it. It works in your business. And there's a lot of great tools for this. I mentioned Deadline Funnel before. Great tool. There's other tools as well, but I've used Deadline Funnel before and it's a great product and basically it creates countdown timers and deadlines specific to each subscriber on your email list. It's a real deadline, it's not a fake deadline. It's not scammy or anything like that. It's actually legit and it expires. And when the offer's over, the offer's over and they can't get it. It's pretty nifty. It's pretty simple. And you can implement it easily with your email software and your website. Now, what's great about this is that you can embed a countdown timer right inside the email so they can see when they open. Wow, this is how much time I have left. I got to get going now. You don't need this timer, in my opinion, in the first initial emails, but especially the last few emails when there's like a day or two left, they need to know, hey, time is ticking. You need to take action and let them know what happens if they don't take action. They need to know. People don't know. Just a timer alone is not good enough. So, for example, you will not be able to enroll until, you know, six months down the line or this offer is going to end and you're going to have to pay full price and you're not going to be able to save X amount of dollars or you're not going to get all these bonuses outside this offer. Let them know what they will lose. People have strong feelings towards loss aversion, right? People are more concerned about losing something than gaining something. So you might think you're convincing them by saying you're going to get this and this and this bonus and a discount and all these great things. But the reverse is actually more compelling. You won't be able to get these things, These things won't be on offer. They'll be taken away from you if you don't take action. So scarcity works. Time scarcity and of course the bonuses and all the great deals that they're going to miss out on.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail].

[Unknown Voiceover Artist]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra default [e-mail] got a.

[Unknown Employee]

7Am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yay.

[Unknown Voiceover Artist]

Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.

[Omar Zenhom]

To wrap up today's Q and A. Wednesday's Question from Janet these are the three strategies that have really propelled my conversions on email. But I want to give one more and that's personality. I like to personally write my own emails and insert my own personality, my own humor, maybe even some antidotes, some emojis, maybe even a quick one liner about what I did this weekend or all the work that it took for me to put this product together, this offer together, or even an image of me and my team or whatever it might be. Make it personal. People love to correspond with a human being, right? In a world of AI and people like getting ChatGPT to produce all these different forms of copy, personalization and humor and personality goes a long way. So take the time to write them and insert and infuse your own personality. Even if you get somebody to write them for you, edit them so that they sound like you. Have fun with them. Make them your own. Janet, thanks so much for asking this question. On Q and A Wednesday, if you got a question you want to ask, don't hesitate to email me [e-mail] or you could just subscribe to our newsletter [e-mail] or download one of our templates and reply to any emails that I send you. I will reply personally. Don't worry. I actually love to reply to email. It's the way I like to connect with our audience. It may take me some time, but I will get to it. And of course I would love to answer your question that you submit right here on Q and A Wednesday. If you'd like, I can give a shout out to your business and your website. Just let me know if you love today's episode. Don't forget to hit follow on your favorite podcast app. Whether you're using Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now, hit subscribe, hit follow. So you get our next episodes automatically. It's the best way to show your support for the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this email. Your website, your sales pages. It's not a once and done thing. It's all experimentation. It's all tests, it's all taking a look at what works. Tweaking, improving, trying new things, leaving it for a little bit, coming back to it, improving it. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of experimentation. But that's how you know it works. That's how you know it's getting better. And if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have discovered the things I shared with you today on this episode. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

[Unknown Announcer]

And we're back, folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

His next meeting is in two minutes.

[Unknown Announcer]

The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time? He's going for it. Is that his phone? He's snapping a pick. He sex in ramp. Jim is fast, but this is unheard of. That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.

[Unknown Voiceover Artist]

On ramp, expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.