← The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
*SALES EMAIL SUMMIT* Kennedy– how to make sales in the middle of your launch by doing the unexpected
00:15:22
Alright, email nerds and biz mavens, this episode is an absolute banger! We sit down with Kennedy, a true legend in the art of the sales email, to drop truth bombs about breaking that dreaded “launch valley” you know, that snooze-fest slump in the...
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Transcript5 lines
- [00:01]
A
What up? Liz Wilcox here, the host of Sales Email Summit. Before we get into this interview, I just want to let you know that this summit is sponsored by list gadget. ListGadget.com is how you can turn every email into a growth machine. We've got embeddable polls, leaderboards, referral programs and more. And I know this sounds crazy, but you can do it in about 30 second startup time. Now right now we are offer $10 off the starter plan to make it just $9 a month. So if you're into adding email polls, reactions, subscriber leaderboards and more to your email newsletter, head on over to list gadget.com all right, let's get into this episode. Okay, Kennedy, my favorite email marketing hero. What is the most interesting or most exciting sales email you have sent out in the last months?
- [01:06]
B
So the problem with most sales campaigns, whenever you're about to like do a launch, whenever you are doing a launch, there's always the very first email. Everybody talks about that first email or even the pre emails to get people excited. And then you have the first email when you open the cart and you get that initial bunch of early adopters and they're wonderful, excitable people who come in and grab what you've got. Then at the end of the campaign when the offer is closing or the program's about to start, you're shutting down registrations, basically the offer is ending. We have this additional extra, usually pretty big search. What a lot of my clients and I think a lot of people struggle with is what happens in the middle. Usually we get this small peak at the beginning, then we get the ultra peak of sales at the end of a sequence, at the end of a campaign. But in the middle there's this massive valley. So what we have to do when we are looking at the strategy of an email campaign of any launch, any offer opening and closing, is we have to do what I call campaign choreography. We have to create additional events, different things that we might hold back at the beginning and then introduce later. Or we're going to have at the beginning, but we're going to take away partway through a launch. But the really important thing here is you have to, have to, have to plan these things before the launch even starts. Otherwise you end up in the situation like when people come to me and they're part way through a launch going, oh my gosh, the numbers weren't what I thought they were going to be. Can I hire you to help me come in and save this thing? It's usually Because. Because they haven't done this campaign choreography stuff ahead of time and really looked at what are all the beats they're going to hit throughout. And one of those things, I was working with a client just this year and this is what I recommend they did because it worked really well for me just a few months ago. And I call this the X reasons to not buy email. So one of the things you want to be doing as we go through a launch is we need to be very, very acutely aware with about what are people expecting? What is the pattern of thought that they are falling into? So what are they expecting? Well, people in your world, in my world, in everybody's world, are expecting you to sort of open up the launch and then have some social proof in the middle and some case studies and some stories and maybe do some lives or something like that. But one of the things we've got to do is we've got to keep their attention. We've heard over and over again that we live in the attention economy. What we're really doing to do something about this attention economy. So what we've got to do is look at opportunities partway through launches to reset attention, to do things and say things which they are not expecting. And the best way to do that in improv theater, what they teach us to do is do the opposites, is play a game of opposites. Okay? They're expecting this. What's the exact opposite of that thing? So this is a perfect example of that. And I think that's one of the reasons it works so well. No one's expecting it and it is the opposite. And this is what happens. They just think about the context. This is really important. The context is important for all psychology and for all sales psychology in email in particular, because we're dealing with people's inboxes, their emails are flashing, with their phone distracted, they've got all these other apps, all these other things, right? So what we do is, okay, we've told them how great our thing is, we've told them all the benefits, we've told them all of the emotional outcomes, all the obvious marketing 101 things that we all do in every sales campaign ever. What they're not expecting us to do then is show up and tell them some reasons to not buy. And that's what this campaign is, right? That's what this not even campaign. So this email in particular does so at the point when you realize audiences, you know, your open rates are dropping, your click through rates are starting to dwindle. A little bit partway through the launch, part way through a sequence, you're going to drop this email where, I mean, my first ever version of this was actually a sales video I introduced partway through a launch of a book I was releasing in another niche. And I was telling you all the benefits, all the features, all the things going to get from the thing. And then I actually put a sales video together and then an email that contained the same information which was 11 reasons not to buy my new book. So this could be six reasons to not enroll in the program. Now what these are not, these are not the, this is who it's not for. This is not that obvious stuff. You know, stuff that one puts on their sales page where they're like, don't buy this if you're looking for get rich quick. Like that's all obvious stuff. And again, anything that's obvious becomes invisible. Anything that's expected becomes invisible. So the point of this, this email in this campaign is not be invisible, is to reset attention and maybe we'll go, oh, this is different. This is freaking great. So how do we do that? Well, what we're going to do is we're going to give them a list of sarcastic, funny ways of saying how good your thing is, but in a way that's obviously tongue in cheek and not taking yourself too seriously. So I'll give you an example. So the book I was releasing was a book, the very first time I did this was a book of, I think it was 52 different magic tricks I'd invented for this niche, right? I was teaching, I was selling magic tricks and inventing magic tricks and stuff for magicians and I was doing consulting for TV and all that sort of malarkey, right? So it was 52 magic tricks. So one of the emails, so this email, sorry, said here's 11 reasons you should buy not means you should not buy my brand new book. And then the name of the book, it was like number one, there are 52 different tricks in. Which means it's got 320 pages, it's very big, it's very heavy to carry around. Number two, these tricks are so good that you'll want to, I didn't say so good. I said something like, something like you'll have, you'll want to rewrite your entire act from scratch and put some of these, this new material into the, into your show. It was all these, basically I looked at all the benefits and all the things they want to do and then what becomes a pain? What's A real pain in the ass. Like when this thing is good, right, and you're doing it sarcastically. So if your offer is in the, in some way helps someone make more money, make more sales, grow their business, then it's going to be like, oh, you might, yeah, you know, you might have to spend more time with financial advisors to figure out how to invest your money or just whatever it has to suit your personality. The whole point of it is, is it is clearly and obviously sarcastic. Secondly, it is very much the opposite of what anyone's expecting and it gives a little chuckle, a bit of light relief part way through what usually a very, we're moving, we're motivating, we're pushing people towards a sale. And it's that light relief that in it, in that email and then the regular sort of sales email that comes in the day after, that's what really gets people to repay attention. It resets attention right in the middle and it works really, really well. Great way of sharing your personality. And it's, I mean, you just think about how many funny ones you can write or how many tongue in cheek ones. Don't try to make them too funny if you're not actually funny. Don't, don't try and make them funny. Just try and do the opposite of what you would say is a benefit for every single one of them. So if you are in the weight loss space, for example, one of yours could be, well, you know, unfortunately you're gonna have to, you know, you're gonna have to brave going shopping because none of your clothes are gonna fit. You're gonna need a new wardrobe. And number two, you're gonna be that friend who enjoys, who enjoys salads and doesn't feel like they're being forced to, to them. And you know, all these, all these types of things. So whatever your niche is, it's very possible to do this. And as I said, it really resets attention. It's really creative. So it's not what they're expecting. It's not the obvious normal stuff that any sort of basic market is going to do. That's why it works.
- [10:05]
A
Kennedy, this is so genius. I cannot wait to see what people do with this email and how it can help them. Like you said, in that valley of the launch, you know, we get a lot of sales at the beginning, we get even more at the end. So in that middle, using this email, so, so genius. And I think the real gem that you dropped was, you know, anything that is obvious is invisible. So this email is going to be so, so fun. So in case people want more genius from you, why don't you let us know how we can sign up for your email list and lear amazing sales email marketing tactics and strategies from you?
- [10:51]
B
Well, just before I share that, I wanted to just squeeze in a little bonus idea for everybody, and that is to remember the true meaning and the true purpose of email marketing. Right? The true purpose of email marketing is not to get emails opened. It's not to build an email list of any size, small, medium, large. The point of email marketing is to make sales, right? That's what we have to do. And so the whole point of all of our emails is to get people into the right frame of mind from our email to then go and see the link in our email and click and go and have a look at the next step. Whether that's to look at the application form, to fill out the calendar, booking, to go purchase or enroll in a program or a prerecorded program. It's to get them to take the next step. And one of the things I think a lot of people put way, way, way, not enough, whatever the phrase is, like, nowhere near enough emphasis on and enough thought into is actually getting people to click the links in their emails. If people don't click the links in your emails, they're no closer to buying from you, right? It's like it's the next step on the journey. They have to take that next step. And I've realized this with my private coaching clients who I work with, that a lot of them literally will just put like a line of text in, which is like, click here to go check it out. The problem is these days we're all so blind to that. Like, we just sort of scroll past it. Like, we've heard of banner blindness and ad blindness with TV and with meta ads. The same is true because we've all been so overexposed to links and emails. And so what I did about five years ago is I went into this strange zone where I was like, how do I reset the attention? Like, let people actually see the links in my emails? And I actually came up with, wow, I think about 15 or 16 different ways that I actually present the call to action the link in my emails to make them stand out, to make people go look, you know, to really grab them by the eyeballs. And what I thought I would do is I would share those things with you. I've created a resource called Click Tricks. And it's cool, fun ways of presenting the links in your emails so that when You've spent all of this time making a great email, agonizing over a great subject line, working on your email deliverability when you did all the hard work to then not get people to click the link to go to the next step is this big tragic wah wah. So I've put together that resource. So if you go over to email marketingheroes.com Liz Liz or Liz email marketingheroes.com/liz I've made it so that you guys can all get that resource completely for free so you can get more people not just reading your emails, but clicking the links in your emails to take that next step. And there's some really ridiculous things in there. There's some psychology based ones, there's some imagery based ones. There's some really unusual ways that I found massively up the number of people who take the next step. Click the link in the email and take the call to action that you asked for. So just go to emailmarketingheroes.com Liz okay.
- [14:34]
A
We'Re all joining Kennedy's email list right? Right now. If you want Kennedy's email, don't forget to grab the Steal these Sales Emails Template pack. Remember, this is a plug and play collection of every single email from this summit, including the one you just listened to. And they are rewritten by me into simple templates you can customize in minutes. No decoding, no guesswork, just copy tweak sent and make sales. Just like tenity in this summit. It's $35 a total steal. Get it? Get the Steal these Sales emails template pack 35 bucks link in the show notes.