How to Sell More With Amazon's $10-Billion No-Tech Marketing Trick

Did you know?

Amazon spends over $10 billion on digital marketing every year.

And Amazon sells everything under the sun.

Which means, no matter what you're selling, you could learn a lot from Amazon.

Case in point: Take a look at what just popped up in my Amazon Prime account today:

See what Amazon did there?
 
Instead of promising to save me money on future purchases (Gain) Amazon showed me that I lost $142.04 by not using their credit card last year (Pain).

Brilliant.

Now, here's why this matters to you: Amazon does nothing on a whim.

Their marketing, like everything they do, is driven 100% by data. Which tells you something. The fact that Amazon is using pain rather than gain in their credit card offer means you MUST consider doing the same in the offers you make to your prospects.

And here's the best part: No technology is needed. This marketing tactic is 100% psychological, based on the fact that we humans will run faster away from pain than we will toward gain.

Now. 

Let's turn these ideas into action.

Step 1) What exactly does your ideal client miss out on every day they haven't hired you?

Example: Let's say that you're a consultant. And the prospect you just spoke to by phone wants to make sell more of her $79,999 coaching program. (No, that price is not outlandish. I recently helped a client sell $1.1 million of her coaching at that price.)

If she's getting 10 calls every week from prospects and only selling 1 of her coaching slots at $79,999, but you KNOW you can get her to at least 2 sales from those 10 phone calls every week, then she's losing $79,999 every week she hasn't hired you.

Step 2) How can you make that pain very real in your emails, web pages, sales letters and other marketing?

Example: You could include a phrase like this in your follow-up emails: "Had we started 4 weeks ago when you first contacted me ... you could have received an extra $319,996 from the same phone calls you're getting now."

Powerful, don't you think?

One more thing ...

If you own a business with clients (not customers), in the U.S. or Canada, and you're doing at least $1 million in revenue, you're invited to claim a Free Client Cloning Kit here.

Marketing Synergy: 1 + 1 = 6?

Synergy is what happens when the sum is greater than the parts.

Examples ...

• flour + water + yeast + heat = bread
• John + Paul + George + Ringo = The Beatles
• Email + Direct Mail = 6 ... as in it's possible to get 6 times more response using email and direct mail together, rather than separately.

That last example is Marketing Synergy.

Let me explain ...

Last year, the Canadian division of Staples did an experiment. To one group of people, they sent an email promotion. To a second group, they sent email plus a direct-mail letter.

The results?

The response rate was 6 times higher from people who got a direct mail piece and an email, compared to those who got only email, according to the study, done by Canada Post.

There are two valuable lessons here:

1) Multiple marketing methods can produce synergy. By combining email and direct mail ... or phone and email ... or phone, email, and direct mail ... you get MORE results than using one method by itself.

2) If a big bureaucratic company like Staples can produce 6x higher results with their marketing, imagine the results you can enjoy, if you're a small, agile, smart business owner?

Meanwhile, are you an entrepreneur with clients, not customers? Are you doing at least $200,000 in revenue, and want to do better? If so ...

... I can show you more "profit hacks" like the ones you just read in this article. Get them in my next Free Video Training Session. It's for $200k entrepreneurs ONLY, please.

Grab your spot here

Anatomy of a Winning Email Promotion

I LOVE getting emails like this from clients:

"We crushed it! Sold $115,000+ and 365 packages after 746 people tuned into the webcast! Unbelievable. I’m still in amazement and pinching myself! Mars said that I broke all sorts of records for a 'newbie' doing his first webcast launch. Your promotional emails and marketing advice helped us fill the webcast with attendees, and for that I thank you."

-- Michael Rozbruch, Tax & Business Solutions Academy, Studio City, California

How did we do it?

Lots of ways, but here are 3 keys to writing a winning email promotion ...


1) Start with a winning product or service
My client, Michael Rozbruch is a top expert in his field, his content is outstanding, and the guests he invited onto his webcast were top notch.

Note well: If you are selling crap, great advertising will only fan the flames that burn your butt.


2) Research to find the emotional "hot buttons" of your market
Michael knows his market of tax/accounting professionals cold, because he is a former CFO and tax specialist. As a result, we were able to come up with bullet points in our promotional emails that pushed all the right hot buttons and spurred prospects into registering for his webcast.

Here's an excerpt from one of the 11 emails I wrote for him:

Michael will show you ...

* the exact marketing strategy that took him to $23 million in sales (complying with regulatory and Circular 230 advertising restrictions) ...

* how to tap into a ready-made market of 12 million prospects across America who are desperate for your help (you prescribe and the “patient” says yes) ...

* how to stop writing off chunks of YOUR time and YOUR money to appease low-paying clients -- and double your hourly rates instead (with this secret pricing formula) ...

To cite just one example, accounting and tax professionals routinely "write off" chunks of time by providing services they don't charge clients for. This is a source of deep, hidden resentment for many of them ... which gives us a point of leverage in our email.

Always remember: People make buying decisions based on emotions, then use logic to justify those decisions. The more emotions you appeal to, the more you sell.


3) Do a complete selling job
Did you notice in that last section, where I said I wrote 11 promotional emails for this campaign? Had time allowed, I would have written more, but we had only 2 weeks to promote the webcast.

Still, by sending 11 different emails to promote his event, we probably sent 8 or 9 more than most marketers would have. Which may explain why Michael was able to rake in well over $115,000 from that one event.


Meanwhile, if you want to grow your business, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. It's not some cheapo download -- this is a real business-building kit you can hold in your hands.

How Do I Get My Emails Opened and Read?

Want to get your emails opened and read?

Watch to learn two simple, hard-won lessons that will be super valuable to you ...

Then, if you want to put an end to "feast-or-famine" syndrome in your business, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your Free Kit here, while they last. 

Nobody is Reading my Ezine. Help!

If you send out an email newsletter and you're not happy with your results, don't worry. There are a couple of quick fixes that can help.

Watch this video to learn more.

Meanwhile ... if you want to put an end to "feast-or-famine" syndrome in your business, my free Client Cloning Kit can help you. Grab your copy here, while they last. 

Bad NFL Refs. Great Marketing!

Last night, I got an email with this headline and HAD to open it:

Hate NFL replacement referees? Benefit with this special promotion from Daren Steneman at Da Vinci Restoration

Now, I didn't think I needed furniture restoration ...

... but because the NFL replacement referees have been ALL OVER the news the last few days, following their nationally televised debacle on Monday Night Football, the subject of this email cut through the clutter and got my attention.

So I opened it.

Now. Two questions for you:

1. How intriguing are YOUR email subject lines? Or the headlines on your web pages, sales letters, or postcards?

If they don't grab readers by the eyeballs, like Daren's headline, answer question 2 ...


2. What stories in the news can you tie your promotion to?

There's a very old copywriting trick from Robert Collier that urges you to always join the conversation going on in the mind of your prospect. The news gives you a boatload of opportunities to do this every day. FREE.

In the past, I've done hugely successful promotions tied to these news stories:

• monthly unemployment numbers
• the presidential debates
• the U.S. Central Bank

... to name, but a few.


In Daren's case, although there are several things about the language of his promotion that I would change, he got the big idea RIGHT. He got attention by entering the conversation going on around the water cooler of every office in America that has 2 or more men in it.

Did he lose out on a few female readers? Probably. But his response to this will more than make up for that, I suspect.

Here's a portion of Daren's email ...

If you want to read the rest of it, click here.

Meanwhile ... if you want to put an end to "feast-or-famine" syndrome in your business, grab your free Client Cloning Kit here.  

The 3 Most Important Email Marketing Tips I've Learned in 17 Years

Today, I want to share with you the 3 most-important things I've learned about writing effective email promotions since I began marketing by email back in 1994 ...

1) The SUBJECT is most important

If the subject of your email is not immediately intriguing, your email won't get opened and your efforts are wasted.

Tip: I usually start an email subject with RE: so it appears to be a reply to something the recipient sent.

Your email is never the only one in somebody's in-box; there are usually dozens more competing for attention. Only a few subjects begin with RE: so if yours is among them, your email stands out.

And I never capitalize every word -- friends don't write email subjects like this: "See You At The Twins Game Sunday!"

Finally, work hard to pique curiosity. The following subjects all had open rates above 25% for me:

RE: Thank you!
RE: Friday's unemployment news explained
RE: job search help

2) The FROM line is nearly as important

By "from" I mean ... who is the email from?

If your "from" looks personal and non-commercial, your email has a better chance of being opened than a "from" from a business.

Prove it for yourself -- which of the following emails would you be more likely to open?

FROM: Kevin
FROM: MLM Success International

Do what it takes to configure your email so it appears to be from a real person and not a faceless corporation.


3) Reference something in the NEWS

Ideally, the content in your email should either offer news readers can use ("Here's what the latest jobless figures mean for you") or reference a breaking news story ("Were you affected by those tornadoes on Sunday?").

The more timely your news reference, the higher your readership and the better your response will be.

Tip: Certain news stories occur with regularity, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly job reports. Write your email promotion to tie into an event you know is coming up, then send it that same day.

Another Tip: Anyone clicking through to visit your sales page ought to get value from simply viewing that web page, whether they buy or not. So, try to educate or share your expertise while you sell.

The best-performing emails I've created in the last 17 years -- in terms of open rates, click-throughs, and sales -- had all three of the above: an intriguing SUBJECT, personal-looking FROM, and a NEWS angle.


Mini Case Study: An email promotion with the SUBJECT "RE: LinkedIn" that was FROM "Kevin" got a 30% open rate among 7,472 recipients, with a 47% click-through rate to the sales page.

Of those 1048 unique clicks, 4.7% purchased a $49 product.

The NEWS angle? How people are using LinkedIn to find jobs now, despite the current unemployment rate.

I hope you find these 3 tips useful in your email marketing!

Of course, writing winning emails is something I do nearly every day. If you'd like me to create a money-making promotion for you, please look at my catalog of services.

Bio: Kevin Donlin can help you grow your business and enjoy the breakthrough results your hard work deserves. If you're interested in boosting your revenues and profits, please click here.

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.

Market Your Service Business Better by Researching Better

Marketing is everything you do to find, get, and keep clients.

In other words, everything you do is marketing, starting with the first words in your next email, sales letter, phone call.

With that in mind, here's an excellent "research as marketing" tip from an Inc. Magazine article: 10 Ways to Support Your Best Customers.

Know the competition

In Inc.'s series of sales tips from the world's toughest customers, Kathy Homeyer, director of supplier diversity for UPS, gave a helpful tip on what not to do. "The biggest no-no is not knowing our competition. People will say, 'I've got this really exciting proposal I want you to look at.' I'll say, 'Go ahead; send it to me.' Then they send it to me by FedEx. It happens every day. Just be smart. Know the company you are pitching to and know their likes and dislikes. You get such brownie points with me when you come in with a UPS envelope and have an account all set up. It's just the little things like that, the icing on the cake."

So true. And so easy to do -- there's this web site called Google. Have you heard of it?

You can find out almost anything you want to know about a prospective client and their competitors by searching News and Blogs, in addition to standard Google searches.

And don't forget LinkedIn.

Whenever I want a callback from a prospect, I research them on LinkedIn (most people are there), find one tidbit on their profile, then send an email like this: "Joe Blow said something important on your LinkedIn profile -- please give me a call 612-555-1212 when you have 5 minutes to discuss!"

(More ideas like these in the Free Report, Guaranteed Marketing for Service Business Owners.)

Email Marketing in a Down Economy at The Mainstreet Chamber

I attended "Email Marketing in a Down Economy" today, a Mainstreet Chamber Lunch & Learn session with Jeff Ferrazzo from ConstantContact, at Buca Di Beppo in St. Paul.

Jeff spoke for an hour and answered a boat-load of questions from entrepreneurs and business owners in search of the latest, best tips on email marketing.

Most of Ferrazzo's talk focused on email newsletters: what they are, what they aren't, and how to use them to build your business -- even in today's tough economy.

I've been selling via email since 1994, when I marketed one of the first ebooks on Usenet (there was no Web). So email marketing is a topic I was eager to learn more about. And Ferrazzo didn't disappoint.

Here's a summary of his seminar, based on my notes ...

First, what is email marketing? A professional communication piece with reliable information, sent to an interested audience.

On average, it takes 7 "touches" to build enough trust with prospects for them to buy from you. An email newsletter allows you to automate this crucial follow-up process.

On the other hand, some people will buy immediately. Good new? Not entirely -- these customers are probably procrastinators who put off buying whatever it is you sell until they had no choice. They will likely do so again and buy from somebody else when their need is again too great to ignore -- unless you stay in touch until their next purchase.

Here are best practices for monthly email newsletters:

• Use an easy-to-read template that's easy for you to update each week/month.
• Reinforce your brand by matching the color scheme and fonts to your web site; include logos and other related items.
• Manage your subscriber list carefully -- bounces, removals, and complaints.
• Track opens, clicks, and delivery rates (to know what works and what doesn't)
• Segment your list into prospects and buyers; send different messages and promotions that are relevant to each. For even greater results, segment your buyers and target them accordingly, to move them along the sales continuum.
• Good open rates for an email newsletter range from about 25% to 35%
• Never assume your customers know everything you sell. It's not their job to remember. Educate readers about your entire product line before they buy from a competitor.
  

Key #1: Build your list with permission

• How? Ask people to sign up via your service/sales calls, email signature, in-store guest book, trade show booths, and every page on your web site (not just the home page -- you never know where Google will drop off a visitor to your site).
• Maintain permission by remaining a trusted sender -- remind readers why they are getting your newsletter, offer a one-click unsubscribe button, and don't email too frequently.

Key #2: Set your objectives for promoting, informing, and relating to prospects/clients

• Promote: offers, discounts, coupons, etc.
• Inform: provide value, educate readers, offer research, etc.
• Relate: acknowledge individual readers (a contest or client of the month can work well), offer "insider" specials

Key #3: Choose appropriate format and frequency

• Tip: we may not read newsletters at the same time as our customers do ... but we are not our customers. Test and track to find your best delivery time for opens and clicks. Ferrazzo found, after much trial and error, that 8:00 Saturday morning was the sweet spot for sending out his email newsletter. (I tend to have good luck with Sunday morning.)
• 60% of people say the "from" line is the main reason they open an email. Depending on which has a bigger reputation with your readers, use your name (Sally Smart) or your company's name (ZYX Technology) in the from line. 
• Tip: try to use both names, to brand both (From: Sally Smith, ZYX Technology).
• 30% of people say the subject is the main reason they open an email. You have 30-40 characters (5-8 words) to work with. Telegraph an immediate benefit readers will get from opening. 
• Avoid spammy subjects, like "HUGE SALE!!" (In my experience, adding "RE:" to the subject increases open rates, because the email appears to be a reply to something sent by the reader. Example: "RE: Thank you" Sneaky? Not if I have something of value to send.)

Key #4: Create compelling content that positions you as an expert

• A simple link to a trade journal article (or your opinion on that article) can make you look like an expert in the minds of readers, because you're the one who told them first. 
• It's not about you, it's about what you know. Your prospects and customers want valuable information. Find it, then deliver it to them. 
• (Tip: Use Google Alerts to find news and blog postings each day that will interest your readers. In about 2-3 days, you will have MORE than enough material for your next email newsletter.)

Did I miss anything? Please comment below! 

And, because I practice what Ferrazzo preaches about offering "news you can use," I invite you to download my Free Report based on 17 years of marketing online and offline, Guaranteed Marketing for Service Business Owners.