How to Get More New Clients by Email -- 420% Better Results

This post could also be titled, "Anatomy of a Home Run," because that's how my client Earl described it when I spoke to him this morning.

Here's the story of how you can get more clients with your next email promotion, by doing just a few things differently ...

Background: Earl runs a travel agency in suburban Minneapolis. I won't use his full name here because I don't want all his competitors knocking off this success story. But you can still profit from it.

Earl's been in business for 16 years and, prior to sending out the email promotion I wrote for him, told me he was "lucky to get 3 to 5 responses" from his emails, sent to future brides to promote his travel agency as a resource for honeymoon travel and destination weddings.

He hired me to write an email promotion to a list of 2,291 brides, which he had emailed twice already ... with 0 response. So I wasn't exactly starting out with the odds in my favor.

(SIDEBAR: In my experience writing copy since 1998 -- backed up by the teachings of Gary Halbert, Clayton Makepeace, and my other mentors -- the most important elements of any marketing promotion are, in order:

1. the list
2. the headline of your ad/email/sales letter
3. the offer you're making -- what you're giving them in exchange for their money
4. your sales copy

Before I write one word of sales copy, I want to get the best "list" of prospects. The better, hotter, and more qualified the list, the better your promotion will do. END SIDEBAR)

Below is a partial screen capture of the email I wrote for Earl ...

Before I tell you about the 420% improvement, you should know the most important elements and how I came up with them ...

Three of the most important elements of this winning email are:

1. The subject line. Notice the "FW:" to start the subject. This makes the email appear as if it was forwarded to the recipient by a friend. How many commercial emails are forwarded to you? Approximately none. And how many commercial emails you do you open if you they are commercial emails? Approximately none. So I stacked the odds in my favor right away with this friendly looking subject line ...
   
2. The salutation. I didn't have the ability to do a mail merge and address each recipient by name, so I did the next best thing. Starting off with "Hi," is a non-threatening opening that disarms the reader. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This time, it worked ...
   
3. It speaks in the reader's language. As a 45-year-old man, I am the exact opposite of a young bride-to-be. I have no idea how those women think or talk. Fortunately, the answers are out there, revealed by RESEARCH. To get the tone of this email just right, I read about a half dozen bridal blogs and speed-read 3 books on weddings. I confess that I should have done about twice that amount of research -- and usually do -- but in this case, I knew I could greatly improve on the results of Earl's original emails.

There are MORE elements than these 3, obviously, including:

• the offer I created (with a deadline and free premiums for responding)
• the day and time the email was sent
• news elements inserted into the email, to make it timely (important!!)
• and the P.S. that I included at the end

So ... how did this do?

Here's what Earl said: "As of 3pm today, had 3 phone calls and 23 email requests for assistance from 2,291 emails sent for a 1.1% response rate. Far better response than we have ever had before. In recent years, lucky to get 3 to 5 responses. Great work!"

When you do the math, going from 5 responses to 26 is a 420% improvement on this email marketing promotion. Not bad.

Update: Earl ended up with 30 total responses to this email, for a 500% improvement. And one new client purchased a honeymoon to Tahiti. Imagine, selling a trip to Tahiti from an email. Not bad!

You'll find more ideas like these in my Free Report, Guaranteed Marketing.