It's easy as 1, 2, 3!

It’s easy as 1, 2, 3!

Hey there Rainmaker, today I’m going to give you a little bit of stolen merchandise…

Well, not merchandise, but an idea.

Have I told you lately that all my best ideas are stolen? The nature of direct marketing is that we generally want to follow what works. And short of testing every possible approach ourselves (impossible!) we start with what other people do that works, and test it for ourselves.

That’s why we read emails like the one I’m putting out to you today. So we can start with “best practices” and test away from there, once we’ve been successful with the best practices themselves.

Of course, I try to give credit where credit is due. And in cases like yesterday where I lose my source, it pains me to share without attribution. (Today I don’t have that issue.)

Today, a proven 3-step email follow-up sequence you can use immediately!

Where did I get it? Ryan Deiss. Now, Ryan may not be the most loved character in the internet marketing world. But I can speak to the quality of some of his teachings, including what I’m going to share with you today.

What I do know is that Ryan is an avid student of direct marketing, and is excellent at distilling core teachings down into an immediately-useful system you can test in your business.

And he’s written about a lot of email follow-up strategies, but there’s one I keep coming back to and referring to over and over again for my own use.

So, since it’s Web Wednesday and I need to talk about web stuff, I thought this would be very appropriate.

Here’s how useful this is…

The formula I’m going to talk to you about is definitely useful in the context of creating marketing campaigns. But it’s not limited there. If you’re doing email follow-up with prospects, it can definitely be used there — even if you’re a salesperson communicating one-to-one.

Any time you want to follow up with someone to convince them to take a specific action, you can use this formula.

It’s universal — and universally useful!

Okay, let’s get down to it…

Here’s the formula!

Ryan’s 3-step email follow-up sequence is built around three big buying motivations…

— Gain…

— Logic…

— Fear…

The idea is that you write an email around each of these three motivations, and send them out in succession, as a follow-up to your initial communication.

Let’s dive into each…

Your Gain email…

Okay, so you’ve presented your main offer to your prospects. Now it’s time to follow up with them for the first time.

The best thing you can do here is to restate the positives to be had by taking advantage of your offer.

You could, in a pinch, simply restate the core benefits of your product, and ask them to click for more info…

Or, you could highlight the biggest, most important benefit respondents receive from taking you up on your offer…

You could also set an expectation as to what the first benefit they should receive will be…

Or, even better, tell them what they need to do as soon as they start with your product or service to get the benefits faster…

Or, my favorite, is to tell a story or case history involving the benefits you offer, and use the power of story to underscore the gain they’ll get when they respond to your offer.

And yet, not everybody will respond to this first follow-up. And so your next will be…

Your Logic email…

While a surprisingly large number of people will respond based on the emotions of perceived gain, there are some who just won’t without logic to back up the purchase.

That’s fine — and that’s why you make that the focus of your next email.

Here’s where you lay out the rational case for responding.

You can explain the system behind your product, and why it works… Its mechanism for action…

If your product involves making money, you can show them how buying your product is equivalent to buying money at a discount…

You can use credibility or proof elements…

Maybe media mentions, or a positive review in a credible publication…

Or, even better, if you have a compelling demonstration of the product in action (study infomercials for perfect examples of this), find a way to capture that in the email…

Or, again, you can use stories, this time ones that highlight the logical, rational cases for buying…

And then, to get fence sitters off, use some of the negative emotion copywriting we talked about yesterday with…

Your Fear Email…

Here’s where you make them feel pain.

At the very least, this can be a limited-time, limited-supply, time-is-running-out email. Very simple, and not too “dark” for most marketers. Scarcity — WHEN REAL — is a great selling tool.

You can also tell the “prospect that didn’t respond” story — your version of the Wall Street Journal two young men letter, focusing on the person who didn’t take you up.

You can also do takeaway selling… “I don’t really need your business, and I’ll do fine without it — but you’ll miss having those benefits in your life…”

Get creative.

The idea is that you want to stir up a fear of missing out, or a fear of the consequences of inaction.

This 1-2-3 approach is a pretty dang good formula for hitting all the hot buttons and getting maximum sales…

There are a lot of reasons people respond to marketing, and many of them can be encompassed in this Gain-Logic-Fear email sequence.

Try it yourself, see how it works.

I know more and more when I need to come up with a quick follow-up sequence, it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

In marketing you don’t necessarily need to be creative — you just need to be right about what you need to do to get response. I think this is one of those things that’s pretty consistently right.

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr

Rainmaker Extraordinaire, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets