This week, I completed 6 more automated follow up messages for each of the following groups: the prospects who opt-in for our samples, prospects who we have manually added to our database, new customers that buy content, new customers that buy my ebook, referral partners, and strategic partners.
That’s a lot! And if I plan to stay in continuous touch with each of these groups, 6 weeks from now, I’ll have to write more messages.
Now, as a copywriter, I can write emails quickly. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I don’t know who the heck I am writing messages to.
Let’s start with one of my groups – referral partners. Anyone who comes to the Ready To Go Copy website is invited to sign up as a referral partner and receive a 20% commission on all sales and future sales for the people they refer. The problem is, those referral partners could be anyone.
They could be seasoned business coaches. They could be business owners who randomly came across our site. They could be busy dads looking for a second source of income. They could be my mom.
And here’s the crazy thing…all of these people are my target market. One of the rules of marketing is that you identify your target audience. Theoretically, if you can identify that one person you would like to have as a customer, your content becomes more streamlined and effective.
But what we’ve discovered from our time as business owners, is that we’re just as likely to get leads from our professional acquaintances as we are from friends and family. So who do I “target”?
How about this? How about, instead of targeting a specific person, you target the end goal?
For example, a referral partner is on my list for what reason? So they can send people our way and earn a commission. Easy as that. So what if my emails revolved around that end goal – how they could earn more commissions?
With that idea in mind, I can now write emails with a list of resources to help them sell, selling techniques we’ve found to be effective, an offer to let them “give away” a sample of our content, an inspirational quote to get them motivated when they haven’t sold anything, etc.
Does it matter if I really, truly understand the person on the other end of the email? Probably not. Would it be nice if I could say, “Hey, you’ve got a lot of clients to help, but don’t forget that a single mention of our site could pay you X number of dollars, forever.” Sure, it would.
But unless I make the big effort of sending out an email and asking my partners to tell me more about themselves (and expect to get a 25% or less response), then I won’t know who my partners are. And I don’t want to “speak” only to one and not another.
So, when possible, keep the email focused on the end goal rather than the contact.
