After spending time & effort building your list of prospect emails you want to do everything in your power to keep them, after all every lost prospect means you’ve got to find another to replace them!
Some marketers who only think in the short term continually blast their promotions until they get results, or until their prospects start unsubscribing, whichever comes first.
If you’re going to do this, you’re going to lose a lot of prospects and at that point you’re back to square one with an empty list. It is far better to send a few useful emails instead of several which don’t provide any perceived value to your prospects.
The truth is today’s consumers want to make informed decisions for themselves, before they make a purchase. To do this they gather as much information as they can and develop relationships with brands they ‘trust’.
When it comes to turning prospects into paying customers you need to adopt a soft approach, their trust towards your business doesn’t come overnight! Nurture them over time & create a relationship with them. At each stage of the relationship send an appropriate email which eventually leads towards making a sale.
What to do with your prospects email?
Start the relationship
Start by making prospects feel welcomed early on; a good way to do this is to set up an auto responder which sends an email shortly after a prospect opts-in.
In your first email you don’t want to be to overbearing, just outline what they should expect from your emails & show off a bit of your personality.
Introduce yourself and start up the relationship with your prospect. It’s a good time to offer your help by answering any questions they might have too.
- Do keep it simple – The first question you want to answer is “What’s in this relationship for me”?
- Do be personal – It is a good idea to send your emails from an address your prospects can actually reply to (not “noreply@yourbusiness.com” )
- Do speak in a consistent way – Decide on a “voice” for your emails that sounds professional & approachable; as well as being appropriate to your brand & your target audience.
Once you have sent your welcome email you should then continue to develop a long term relationship with your prospects, keep giving them value & gradually draw your prospects closer to making a purchase.
Send them value!
The best & easiest way to provide ‘value’ to your prospects is to keep them sweet with free advice & information; as long as it benefits them in some way it’s helpful to the relationship.
Everyone loves something for nothing and continuing to send free knowledge or tips will instill trust in your business as a provider of authority, useful information.
It doesn’t have to be your content either, so long as it provides value it doesn’t matter where it comes from; as long as it keeps them from unsubscribing.
What should I send to my prospects?
- An insightful infographic
- A review of a product or tool
- An ‘exclusive’ offer just for your subscribers
- A giveaway, eBook
- Articles from your blog
- Useful tools or lists relevant to your niche
Make sure that your prospects know how they will benefit from each email, if there’s “nothing in it for me” I’m not going to click it..
Ask yourself these questions:
- Would I click on the email based on the subject line?
- At what point would I stop reading?
- Are people actually opening the emails? – Use analytics
- Are people taking advantage of the free information?
After sending some valuable free advice & guidance you can gradually start to draw your prospects further into your sales funnel & begin selling your products.
Again, at this point you should still make your prospects feel valued & appreciated, don’t start hammering them with sales promotions & lose all of the hard work you’ve put in.
Keep giving incentives until they reciprocate:
- Start with a 10% discount
- Then try a 15% discount etc. until your prospects reciprocate with a sale
Never stop sending value! Remember that it is far more expensive to regain your prospects than it is to continue marketing to them.