The Main Reason Why You Should Sell Via Email. If you’re reading this article, you are probably still on the fence as to why you should put up with building a mailing list. Well, you surely have heard of the old saying, “the money is in the list.” If you are anywhere like the average normal online marketer, you probably have also rolled your eyes when you came across that phrase. I hardly blame you. It’s very easy to become skeptical of all the marketing hype and common sayings out there.
Still, there’s a tremendous amount of truth to that saying. How? Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you bought anything from a complete and total stranger? It doesn’t matter how much money is involved. Maybe just a dollar, maybe it’s five hundred dollars, the dollar figure doesn’t matter. Chances are, your answer would be, “absolutely never.”
Again, I can’t blame you. You worked hard for your money. The last thing that you would want to do is to entrust it to somebody who’s a complete and total stranger.
Trust
People always buy based on trust. That was true before the internet, that is true now, and will probably continue to remain true hundreds, if not thousands, of years from now.
Trust is absolutelly essential to any kind of commercial transaction. If you want to sell anything, you have to get people to trust you. And it turns out that one of the best ways to do this in an online environment is through email marketing. Really.
Every marketing survey after marketing survey of heavy-duty online marketing firms and digital agencies, email or list marketing almost always comes out near the top five, if not the top slot. The reason for this is actually quite obvious. People always buy based on trust.
Why do people sign up?
When people sign up for your mailing list, they trust you enough to at least want to talk to you. They may not trust you enough to buy from you, yet, but they think that you’re credible enough to at least give the benefit of the doubt to.
When you send them update after update, you get them to become more at ease. When they read your emails, they get the impression that you at least know what you’re talking about in these emails. This level of credibility increases as they read more and more. Sooner or later, you are able to direct their attention to certain sets of problems.
In other words, they feel that you truly know what you’re talking about and at least give you the benefit of the doubt as to what solutions you talk about. They’re still not buying from you, but they like you and feel that they know you enough to want to keep receiving your emails. This is crucial to the email marketing sales process.
The LKT Process
To sell something to somebody, being it on- or offline, you have to go through the LKT process. First, you need to get people to like you enough for them to keep listening to you. Next, you must get these same people to feel that they know your solution enough for them to keep focused on it. Finally, when they think that you know enough about them and their problems, and that you truly care, they would trust the recommendation you gave them.
What follows next, of course, is the sweet point of conversion. That’s when you make the actual sale. Believe it or not, all sales transactions go through this same LKT process. You just need to say certain words at the right time or you need to be a certain type of person, and it’s a done deal. Other people require a lot more time for the LKT process to totally unwind and work its magic with them.
The great thing about email marketing is that you’re able to work with people regardless of their timeline. Some people just need to receive one email, and they are convinced you’re the man. Other people may take a lot more convincing. It may take them months to get off the fence and whip out their credit card and buy something from you.
Regardless, when you are able to communicate with them through email because they signed up for your list, you are able to let the LKT process work for you and your business.
The Best Part About Email Marketing
As you can well imagine by now, in an offline setting, the LKT process takes a lot of work and attention. You’re basically going to have to keep calling or visiting the prospect, develop a personal relationship with them, take them out to drinks and ballgames, and otherwise keep working on them until they close the deal at some point in the future.
With email, this can mostly take place on a pre-scheduled, automated basis. When somebody signs up for your mailing list, you can set up your autoresponder software to send an email based on a specific preset schedule.
Maybe you can send them email once a week or every other day or even every day, it doesn’t really matter. The important point is that all of this takes place on an automated “set it and forget it” basis.
That’s what’s so awesome about doing email marketing. You can be selling to thousands of people at the same time by sending them different scheduled emails and you don’t even have to break a sweat. You don’t have to lose any sleep. Or you can be traveling halfway around the world and your mailing list can be converting these people while you’re on the way.
Sounds awesome, right? This is the main and number one reason why you should really, really consider selling via email.
The tools and knowledge needed
There’s always a “but” somewhere, of course, and this article is no different in any way. In order for you to do email marketing, you’ll need to know a few things, and have a few things.
First, you’ll need a clear picture of the process and how the small moving parts work to make it so awesome. It’s mostly technical, but you have to know it. There can be a lot of these moving parts around, and some will make you trouble in the beginning. We’ve all been there. 🙂
Second, you’ll have to have appropriate tools to make it work. At the base of every email marketing there is a software called an autoresponder – it’s a piece of software that actually takes email addresses from people and stores them somewhere, in order to leverage them. After that, you can program it to send automated messages to them. These can be informational, offering people some value (very important!), or pure marketing. Getting to the perfect ratio between these two is the magic that will most probably take most of your leaarning time. It depends completely on your list. This is why your numbers are so important. You simply have to know how your list responds to certain messages and act upon this.
Of course, I left the best for last. You have to have the right mindset. Without this, you’ll end up hanging everything up pretty soon, believe me. If you don’t switch your mind around and start thinking like you should, it’s just a hobby and you’ll get bored at some point without anything to show for.
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