Story Telling With Email Marketing

Story-telling Email MarketingI’ve been studying about how to do story telling with email marketing – specifically reading Auto Responder Madness by Andre Chaperon.

At well over 300 pages, it is an ebook that I have had on my computer for quite a while and failed to read properly because of its length – indeed, I refer to it in one of my previous blog posts.

However, it is well worth taking the time and effort of ploughing through it because it gave me clarity about how to upgrade my email marketing efforts.

Your list building efforts will have a pitiful return on investment unless you get your email marketing right – my biggest failure to date is ‘list attrition’ i.e. not knowing how to properly develop a long-term relationship with my prospects and clients even though that was always my intention.  ‘Intention’ is not enough unless you deploy a few writing strategies

My email marketing has been relatively poor in the past – lacking proper structure, strategy and, yes, based on what I read in Autoresponder Madness, the content of my emails can be greatly improved.

There are 3 core tactics that are employed within Autoresponder Madness:

  • List Segmentation – i.e. to ensure that you send relevant messages to your list it is critical that you understand who is on your list and what they want.  List segmentation is critical to this.  Andre outlines a number of strategies and tools for achieving this.  It is not easy to do but it is very effective!
  • Story-telling – he delivers his content by way of stories in automated sequences – he calls them Soap Opera Sequences – to engage the reader and uses open loops and cliffhanger content to draw his reader through his emails.  These stories are in a strategic order to deliver an overall solution to the client but the client can be diverted onto sub-lists with new Soap Opera Sequences depending on which topics they show interest in.  Product Launches are delivered sparingly via broadcasts, perhaps once a month.  Each email has a ‘hook’ and ends in a cliffhanger.
  • He uses Jay Abraham’s Strategy of Preeminence in creating a strong relationship with his readers i.e. he works hard to become their trusted long-term advisor, which results in incredible conversion rates from small lists.

A surprising bonus at the end of the book was that he outlined the structure of his working day.  His work schedule is two 90 minute sessions in the morning with a 30 minute rest in between and then in the afternoon he works in Pomodoro sessions of 25 minutes each to reflect his shorter attention span in the afternoon.  As he lives in Spain, he takes ‘siesta’ time midday.

Within Autoresponder Madness, he refers to a product called Nano Lists which is not officially for sale.  I managed to get hold of a copy of this too.  This was also an eye-opener as to how well you can do with skilful list-building and email marketing i.e. adopting a smart strategy is crucial for success.

Together, both these products have made me realise that my email marketing needs to be upgraded in both strategic intent and content.  I have received a glimpse of how it can be done so much better and I now just need to take action on what I have learnt.

I wish I had read Autoresponder Madness a long time ago – possibly I wouldn’t have realised just how good the content is had I not first ‘failed’ with my email marketing!

This book and ‘Email Slick’ by Lee Murray should be required reading for any internet marketer who wants to get to grips with their email marketing.

If I can just implement the strategy of story telling with email marketing, it would be a massive improvement!