As part of Ready To Go Copy, we have strategic partners who are licensed to sell our content. As of right now, we only have a handful of these individuals. And I work closely with each of them to make sure they are successful.

Now, in addition to being business coaches, each of these individuals using the marketing system Infusionsoft for their marketing. Infusionsoft uses automation to help business owners grow. And each of these individuals is an expert in it’s abilities.

That’s why I had to laugh when I sent the first automated email to this list of partners and had over 60% of them respond.

This is what the email looked like:

Hi Taylor,

You may have seen the promotion we ran yesterday for our Christmas in July campaign. I included you in those emails on purpose. You see, I am trying to model possible selling opportunities for you.

You’re so busy doing what you’re doing that I feel it’s my responsibility to share my marketing tactics with you…

You get the idea. I wasn’t trying to make my contacts think that this was a personal email. But, even though they’re automation experts, some of them believed it was.

So what is it? What is the key to making automated emails feel personal?

The answer is…investing real time into each individual. You see, I put a lot of work into building my initial relationship with my partners. And I don’t waste their time with content that won’t directly serve them.

They know that. They know my primary concern is their success, because I demonstrated that desire through personal emails, a phone call, and invitations to “partner only” events.

You can do this with prospects, customers, partners, vendors. It doesn’t matter. If you want the kind of relationship that causes them to open even your automated emails, and respond to you, you’ve got to make sure that relationship has been established.

So how do you start that relationship? Especially if you have large volumes of people coming through your door? Make the calls. Write the one-off emails. And if you haven’t got time to do it yourself, hire someone to do it for you. Help this person to understand they are NOT a number. Not to you.

Far too many business owners have lost the human element. With systems that can automate marketing, they forget that consumers still want to do business with a human being. But even if you choose to automate a large portion of your follow up marketing, you need to schedule in the personal touches.

As you do, you’ll create relationships that deepen quickly and increase your revenue even faster.