NinjaHobo Guide to Email Marketing – Part II
NinjaHobo Guide to Email Marketing – Part II
The 100-year-old Mareketing tool that still works today
Email Ronin, the time for battle fast approaches.
Tomorrow, it will already be time for you to remove your sword from it’s sheath and engage in marketing combat.
Today, the Email Ronin course will provide you with the final training and weapons you need before charging forward:
What you’ll learn in this module:
– A nearly 100-year old marketing bible that top marketers refer to for their product names / book titles
– The content-to-sales pitch ratio that gets the best results (and fewest unsubscribes)
– The dreaded “Seppuku” list – use ANY of these words and you’ll finish yourself off long before the enemy does
You can find out what that is 100-year-old tool is on this very page.
In module one of the Email Marketing course, we covered WHERE to find the material you’ll want to communicate to your audience.
Armed with the tools in that module, you should have no problems creating the kind of content your list needs to flourish.
In module two, we’re going to cover the many ways in which to get your list’s attention once you have content you want to give to send them.
Before launching into the instructions, I thought it wise to kick things off with things you should NEVER do in email marketing instead of what you should do.
Why would I do this?
Because you could have the slickest email marketing campaign in place, ready to rock, but if you do any of the no-nos we’re going to cover now, you’re going nowhere other than the SPAM box.
I’m talking of course about using SPAM-trigger words, and believe me, there are many. In module three we’ll show you how Aweber gives you a hand with this.
But for now, here is a list of words to never, ever use.
Ever.
1. Excessive exclamation marks (!!!) – You have (to err on the side of deliverability), one exclamation mark for your entire email. Use it wisely.
2. Money symbols ($) – Pretty much same thing as exclamation marks. It’s perfectly alright to state a price inside of an email, but stick to the one-symbol rule and avoid putting it in your subject line.
3. Free – If you’re on the One Hour Startup mailing list, you may have seen this word now and again. If you have to insist on having a free item to offer your list, try your best to stick with the term “no-cost.”
4. ALL CAPITALS – What, are you like 12-years old or something? If you want to place emphasis by capitalizing ONE word, there’s nothing wrong there. But c’mon, A WHOLE SUBJECT LINE IN ALL-CAPS?
That’s just weird.
5. Bad credit
6. Double your income – let’s make things quick by adding all terms related this one that will send your email to the abyss of the SPAM folder: Extra income, Fast cash, Financial freedom, Eliminate debt, Join millions, Lowest price, Make money fast, No purchase necessary, Million dollars, Billion dollars, Opportunity.
Oh, and never put ‘Nigeria‘ anywhere in your emails (Just sayin’).
7. E.x.t.r.a. Punctuation – You might think you’re outsmarting the machine by doing this, but they’ve seen it all and are programmed accordingly. Simply put – it won’t work.
8. Gaps between L E T T E R S – See number #7.
9. Lose weight – if you’re in the weightloss industry, you have an uphill battle. Our best recommendation: Thesaurus
Now, What You Should Do:
Since you already got your source for material in module one, it’s now time to load up on the materials that will help you shape and craft that material into highly-intriguing copy.
Resource One: The First Hundred Million
One of the best-kept secrets in the publishing world, which may have to do with this book’s age.
We swear by it.
We also recommend this book to students of our Kindle course.
E. Haldeman-Julius sold hundreds of millions of his “Little Blue Books” and did so very largely on the strength of books’ titles. If his company released a new title and it didn’t perform well in stores, he’d re-release it under a new title.
This is easily one of the best tools to use for your subject lines.
Download the book here and save it in a safe place.
Time to Build a Swipe File
In the event that you’re not familiar with what a “swipe file” is, it’s merely a collection of what you should be referencing (not ripping off).
We’ve assembled a very large collection of some past winners. You access that collection here.
Some of the wording might be dated, but the message remains the same.
These ad samples are winners for a very clear reason – they successfully “spoke” to their target audience and addressed their needs, wants and/or concerns.
We’re almost ready to take arms now, but first, we must address the art of…
Getting Your Subscribers to “Stick”
Chances are that you’ve heard this before – if all you do is sell, sell, sell to your list and simply come to them whenever you want their money, you can be sure that your list will diminish a lot faster than it grows.
Just remember that the very reason someone gives you their email in the first place is because they expect to gain something of value.
So here are a few hard-and-fast rules to follow for your list:
1. Stay in front of your crowd as much as possible – You might have seen us do this with the One Hour Startup. Some weeks we might email every day of the week, while sometimes, it’ll be little more than two days out of the week.
The bottom line is, you have to make sure your subscribers do not forget who you are (and believe me, with all the information being blasted their way each day, it does happen).
Make a point of never letting a week go by where you don’t send at least one email (and that really is the bare minimum).
If your list gets less than one email a week from you, you’re at risk of being marked as SPAM.
2. When you prepare to introduce a paid product to your list, or promote a sale, there is a formula you should follow. Now let’s say you plan on sending out five emails starting on Monday and ending on Friday, the breakdown of your content-to-selling ratio should be along these lines:
Monday: 90 to 100% content (if you do make any mention of a pitch make it a very soft, subtle pitch)
Tuesday: 80 to 90% content (this is where you should ideally add your first soft pitch)
Wednesday: 80% content (lead in with a recap of the first two emails that lead into today’s content and then finish off with a slightly more elaborate soft pitch)
Thursday: 60% content (and by this point those subscribers who’ve read the first three emails will be ready for their first hard pitch)
Friday: as little as 40% content, with the main focus of the email being on the pitch.
Have any questions you’d like to ask?
Would you like to hear about even more sources of content research?