MBA2435 Q&A Wednesday: How do I increase my email offer sales conversions?

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, giving you the insights you need to build the business you want with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And today is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Janet. And Janet asks, sending out email offers is how I make most of my sales with my online business. But in the past year, my sales conversions via email have dropped. Can you help me out?

0:46How do I increase my sales conversions via email offers? Solid, practical question, Janet. Love it. I got your back. I'm also a huge fan of email offers. Email is one of the best ways of marketing. Getting in somebody's inbox is a great way to get their attention. Email is something that people have to deal with. They have to read it. They have to archive it. They got to do something with it. They can't just thumb through it like a social media feed. In a lot of ways, our inboxes are our last sacred place on the internet. So having access to people's inboxes is a fantastic way to make offers and add value to your customers in a personal way.

1:26In today's lesson, I'm going to break down how to analyze your email marketing funnel and see where the bottlenecks are, see where you can do better, and how you can make some small tweaks to make some massive conversions. I'm going to show you where are the areas that actually move the needle and how by improving these areas, in my experience, can massively improve your conversions. In my case, it improved my conversions 3x. I was making three times as many sales after I made these changes. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Now we're on the same page. Email is a fantastic tool to sell, but we have to recognize that everybody's different when it comes to email.

2:07What I mean by that is that the way people treat email, the way that people read emails, the way people consume emails is different. There are people that read every word, every letter of the email from top to bottom, subject line, PS, everything. There are people that just skim through. There are people that read the first two sentences. There are people that read the subject line and then star your email and hope to read it later. There are people that click through your links and go through your pages. And there are people that don't click on anything at all. So you have to recognize this. And the reason why we have to recognize this is we have to change the way we deliver our content by email, understanding that people are different.

2:48And you want to treat people differently based on the way they consume email. This just mindset, this concept really was a game changer for me. And once I started thinking like this, I started to see massive changes. We're going to go through some small changes, some small tweaks to your strategy that are going to make a lot of difference. So the first strategy is you have to recognize that not everybody is interested in what you're offering. There's going to be a good number of people on your email list that is interested and are potential buyers. They are more likely to buy than other people on your list.

3:22So you need to identify these people because you want to go deep and you want to be able to treat them differently. You want to be able to deliver different kinds of emails. So the first type of email I like to send before I send any offers. So say, for example, I'm making an offer, I'm doing a sale, I'm doing whatever, a promotion. A few days before, even a week before, I'm going to send a different kind of email to my list. This can be my entire list. And this email is not an offer, but it's free, valuable content about what I'm selling. Let's say, for example, you're a basketball coach and you are selling a course on how to improve all aspects of your offensive game.

4:05Shooting, dribbling, passing, free throw shooting, you name it. OK, that's what the entire course is about. If somebody were interested in buying a course like that, what kind of content would they be interested in? Well, maybe it's something that has to do with a pain point or a problem that they're trying to solve around that area. So in this case, it might be free throw shooting. And you want to choose something that everybody can relate to. And free throw shooting in basketball is something that everybody can relate to because at some point you're going to get fouled and you're going to have to shoot free throws and you're going to have to, you know, sink those shots to help your team win.

4:40So I would send a very short email. I'm talking about two, three lines max with a link to a video on my website, teaching a quick tutorial on how to really improve the free throw shooting very quickly, whether it's a visualization exercise or whatever. The point here is, is that I'm going to send an email saying, hey, I got this great training that you want to check out to improve your free throw shooting by X percent. It's only six minutes long. Click here and start syncing free throws. Now, the reason why we want this email to be super short is because I'm not interested in them trying to read a long, long email.

5:16My whole goal here is that I need people that actually open the email to click the link. Why? Because I'm going to track, I'm going to tag people, whoever clicked the link, and you could do this with any email software tag based on if they click something in an email. And this lets me know they are interested in improving their offense in basketball. Okay. This is somebody who's interested and would be interested in buying my product. What I find when I do this exercise and I give a good week so people can have a chance to open this email and click the link and watch the video is that I get about 50 to 60 people on my email list that have opened the email to click the link.

5:53This gives me a great audience that I created in my email list. Now, these are the people I'm going to be promoting to. What do I do about the other people that never opened the email and never clicked the link? You might be saying, well, they're never going to get an offer. Well, not if they don't click the link. I only want the warmest audience. But I have an automation setup in my email marketing software. We use ConvertKit. We love it. They're not a sponsor of the show or anything. But you can create an automation inside your email marketing software to send this email to anybody who did not open it.

6:27So you can send a second or third version of this email. Say, hey, did you see this video? Hey, I got something for you. And usually I just do two follow-up emails. And again, in those emails, I have the same tag. If they click on the link, they get tagged with that tag. So that way I know they watched the video or actually they went to the page of the video so that they're interested in improving some aspect of their offense. Or in general terms, they're interested in what I'll have to offer in a few days. This alone is going to help you tremendously. One, it warms up the audience. It gets them interested in thinking about your product, your thing, your world.

7:03Basketball in this case. It starts getting them thinking about how they need to improve. They start thinking about investing in themselves and implementing some of these strategies. It also allows you to kind of get permission in a way to continue to talk about this because they have already proven that they're interested in this. Next, we're going to talk about the emails we're going to send to those people that clicked with the offer. Some people like to send one or two emails. Some people like to send 10 emails. Some people like to send seven emails. For me, my sweet spot is for any offer to send five to seven emails.

7:33Two of those emails are last chance emails on the last day. Now, I might send more emails if I'm opening and closing a program like we do with the$100 MBA, and it's only open at a certain period of time, and I will not be selling this program for an extended period of time, a bunch of months, five, six months. So it's actually really urgent for them and very important for them to sign up now because they won't have a chance later. But generally, let's say five to seven emails. You could choose what to put in these emails, but if you want to increase your conversions, you have to remember that people don't buy on the email.

8:09They buy on your website. And this is something that once I figured out and perfected, really skyrocketed my conversions. So you have to remember that there are a lot of different ways people could buy. They can go to your website. They can go to the product page itself. They can go to the checkout page where, you know, that's it. They're in the cart. So where do you send them in this email? I'm bullish on getting them in the checkout, in the cart right away, meaning I'm not really interested in getting them to hit the sales page because the sales page could be quite long and detailed and there's videos and there's testimonials and all kinds of stuff.

8:46And yes, it could help. And you may want to send them there early on in your email sequence. But really, most of the time, what I find works the best is sending them straight to the cart where after they've clicked the buy button, that next page where it's like, check out, they put their information and they check out and buy. Why? Because I'd like to use the email to sell and then have the call to action to like buy now. Now, in that first email, you might want to just announce, hey, doors are open, we are selling the product. Here's a quick overview what you're going to get. This is the deal.

9:17If you want all the details, here's the sales page with all the details. Go ahead and read it. Offer ends, so-and-so. That's usually my first email. I don't send them to the car. I send them to the sales page so they have more context and they have more time. There's gonna be people gonna buy right off there, but most people won't. My second email and following emails, I like to start my first line of the email with, hey, if you got my last email and you know about this offer and you're sold, just click here to grab your spot, to grab this offer. Just go straight to the car. Some people are just like, I'm gonna buy anything you sell.

9:54They're huge fans of you. Some people, they've already read your email before. They've saw the sales page. They're convinced. They just needed a reminder. They're going to click. Save them the time. Have them go straight to checkout. After that line, you can then continue to talk about the offer, talk about what is included, why they need it, the scarcity, all that kind of stuff. More about scarcity later. But this is huge. That one-liner made a huge difference for me because some people don't have time to read the whole email. They're just interested. They want to buy. I even throw in a line that says money back guarantee, you know, just let them know that, hey, if they just make a decision to buy right now, there's no risk, they have 30 days, all that kind of stuff.

10:32And then all the following emails, I just send them straight to cart. And then in the PS line, I can say, hey, if you are not sold yet and need more convincing, check out our detailed sales page and that will be hyperlinked. The next strategy that has increased conversions for me tremendously is deadlines, is scarcity. Real scarcity, real deadlines. I really believe in them because people take action when they do miss in the past an offer. I know we all have experienced this, whether it's Black Friday sales or e-commerce sales or a coupon that expired that we forgot to buy something. Do it. It works in your business.

11:07And there's a lot of great tools for this. I mentioned Deadline Funnel before. Great tool. There's other tools as well, but I've used Deadline Funnel before and it's a great product. And basically, it creates countdown timers and deadlines specific to each subscriber on your email list. It's a real deadline. It's not a fake deadline. It's not scammy or anything like that. It's actually legit and it expires. And when the offer is over, the offer is over and they can't get it. It's pretty nifty. It's pretty simple. And you can implement it easily with your email software and your website. Now, what's great about this is that you can embed a countdown timer right inside the email so they can see when they open, wow, this is how much time I have left, I gotta get going.

11:47Now, you don't need this timer, in my opinion, in the first initial emails, but especially the last few emails when there's like a day or two left, they need to know, hey, time is ticking, you need to take action. And let them know what happens if they don't take action. They need to know. People don't know, just a timer alone is not good enough. So for example, you will not be able to enroll until six months down the line, or this offer is gonna end and you're going to have to pay full price and you're not going to be able to save X amount of dollars or you're not going to get all these bonuses outside this offer.

12:19Let them know what they will lose. People have strong feelings towards loss aversion, right? People are more concerned about losing something than gaining something. So you might think you're convincing them by saying, you're going to get this and this and this bonus and a discount and all these great things. But the reverse is actually more compelling. You won't be able to get these things. These things won't be on offer. They'll be taken away from you if you don't take action. So scarcity works, time scarcity, and of course, the bonuses and all the great deals that they're going to miss out on.

12:52To wrap up today's Q &A Wednesdays question from Janet, these are the three strategies that have really propelled my conversions on email. But I want to give one more, and that's personality. I like to personally write my own emails and insert my own personality, my own humor, maybe even some antidotes, some emojis, maybe even a quick one-liner about what I did this weekend or all the work that it took for me to put this product together, this offer together, or even an image of me and my team or whatever it might be. Make it personal. People love to correspond with a human being, right? In a world of AI and people like getting ChatGBT to produce all these different forms of copy, personalization and humor and personality goes a long way.

13:40So take the time to write them and insert and infuse your own personality. Even if you get somebody to run them for you, edit them so that they sound like you. Have fun with them. Make them your own. Janet, thanks so much for asking this question on Q &A Wednesday. If you've got a question you want to ask, don't hesitate to email me over at omar at 100mba.net or you could just subscribe to our newsletter over at 100mba.net or download one of our templates and reply to any emails that I send you, I will reply personally. Don't worry. I actually love to reply to email. It's the way I like to connect with our audience.

14:15It may take me some time, but I will get to it. And of course, I'd love to answer your question that you submit right here on Q &A Wednesday. If you'd like, I can give a shout out to your business and your website. Just let me know. If you loved today's episode, don't forget to hit follow on your favorite podcast app, whether you're using Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now, hit subscribe, hit follow so you get our next episodes automatically. It's the best way to show your support for the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Email, your website, your sales pages. It's not a once and done thing.

14:46It's all experimentation. It's all tests. It's all taking a look at what works, tweaking, improving, trying new things, leaving it for a little bit, coming back to it, improving it. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of experimentation, but that's how you know it works. That's how you know it's getting better. And if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have discovered the things I shared with you today on this episode. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

15:34Thank you.