The surprising 2nd rule of selling by email

👉 the surprise is it's not how good your sales emails are

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

I suspect it’s the biggest mistake we make in marketing. Assuming something that happens just before a sale actually caused it.

You see it time and time again with “copy my launch email sequence and you too can have a six-figure launch” type promotions.

Someone will spend years building a really strong relationship with their audience, and then when their new product sells incredibly well we assume it was the 3 sales emails they sent rather than realising the real key was the relationship they built up.

Wrong wrong wrong.

If you’ve built sufficient credibility and trust, any old “5 day cash machine” email sequence will work for you.

If you haven’t, it doesn’t matter what’s in your sales email sequence, you’ll get disappointing results.

The 2nd rule of selling by email is that your sales emails aren’t all that important. At least not compared to the relationship you’ve already built with your potential buyers.

And the good news is that if you send regular, useful, interesting emails you’re halfway there.

But you can do a lot better.

If you think through what your ideal clients need to know and feel to be ready to buy from you, you can build those beliefs gently into your emails.

Google Dan Kennedy’s “Progressive Sequence of Agreements” or Billy Broas’s “5 Lightbulbs”. Or even just think to yourself “what do my ideal clients need to know and feel to be ready to buy from me?”.

Often it’s stuff like “they need to know they have a big problem that needs solving”. And “they need to feel that, without help or something different happening, they won’t be able to fix it themselves”. or “they need to know that I have something new to offer they haven’t seen or tried before”.

Noodle it over. Bounce ideas off some friendly clients willing to give you honest feedback.

And then think “how do I build that into my emails"?”

In the interests of space I’m going to leave the explanation of how I do it until next email. But here’s a clue…

…think about how Bond films promote Aston Martin cars.

It’s not overt. No one comes on screen to tell you how great Aston Martin’s are. And frankly, if they did that you wouldn’t believe them.

But nonetheless, Bond films work incredibly well to promote Aston Martin.

And it works the same with emails. I’ll explain next time.

- Ian