How you can make money from email marketing with EASE

Imagine preparing an email, sending it off, and watching the sales roll in. Is there anything more satisfying than that?

Well, actually, yes there is. It’s far more satisfying, not to mention lucrative, to set up a series of emails once and watch your sales roll in every day automatically.

All over the Internet, people will send millions of emails in umpteen different markets today. They’ll do it again tomorrow, too.

We know a thing or two about getting return on investment from email marketing and we’re going to share the method with you.

You don’t need a big list of subscribers or complex software to start seeing results from email marketing. All you need is a plan.

The Plan

Here’s how it works.

Each email we send has one of five purposes:

1. Educate
2. Engage
3. Ascend
4. Segment
5. Engage Again

That’s why we called this post “How you can make money from email marketing with EASE.”

Know that each stage depends on the previous stage, creating 5 stages of email marketing.

Your competitors almost certainly aren’t using all five stages and this could well be a costly mistake.

Once you have grasped the five stages of email marketing, you can create a couple of autoresponder series (or maybe an Engage series or an Ascend series) and create a new revenue stream.

N.B.: Your prospect can’t be engaged until they are educated. And they can’t ascend until they are engaged, and so on and so forth. Is this making sense?

This is how to maximise profit through email marketing; send email with purpose, progressing existing customers and prospects from one stage to the next.

Now let’s go through these five stages in turn.

1. Educate

The first step is always to educate. You need to teach your new prospect about you and your organisation. You need to educate them.

• Who are you?
• What do you stand for?
• Why are you different?
• What should they expect from you?
• How often?
• What should they do next?

Your new prospect will only receive the Educate series once. It’s a preamble to the EASE series, which entices them to buy.

2. Engage

Engagement emails are all about converting prospects into customers. They make offers.

A shopping cart abandonment series is a staple for retailers who are smart about eCommerce.

Your business can see big gains by simply creating an Engage series.

Once you’ve engaged your audience, it’s time for an Ascend series.

3. Ascend

This is where the big money is made.

For every offer you make, there is a percentage of buyers that would buy more.

Every buyer acquired through an Engage email series should receive an Ascend series.

What do you do when customers and prospects say no to the Engage or Ascend series you send them? Simple. Change the message until they respond.

4. Segment

The aim of the Segment series is to make your prospect raise their hand (open, click or opt in) and show interest in something you sell. When they do, they are placed in the appropriate Engage series.

Clicking on any of the offers in the Engage series displays interest and segments the list. You simply add the prospect to the relevant Segment series.

Sending a single Segment email to your mailing list can set off a chain reaction of further sales.

5. Engage Again

Now let’s look at the simplest (and often the most impactful) stage of email marketing.

What happens when customers and prospects stop opening and clicking on your email?

If your answer is nothing, you’re leaving big money on the table.

Setting up an Engage Again series is the easiest of easy wins. It just makes good sense to create an autoresponder series to re-energise disengaged subscribers and bring them back into the fold to buy, otherwise known as the Engage and Ascend series.

This is only half the benefit, though. Leaving disengaged email addresses on your list does enormous damage to the deliverability of your email. By re-engaging subscribers that have strayed from the pack, you’ll avoid the Spam folder.

How can you use email to re-engage and win back customers and prospects?

How do I get started?

First, start by understanding that the 5 stages of email marketing exist.

Next, determine where you can make the most impact on your business.

• Can an Educate campaign produce more engaged prospects that are eagerly awaiting your next email?
• Should you build an Engage series to revive an old product or service?
• Could you squeeze more ROI from your customers with an Ascend series?
• Can you make relevant, high-converting offers to your list by sending a Segment email?
• Would an Engage Again series bring 5, 10 or 15% of your list back to buy?

The answer is yes on all accounts.

Originally published at PENNInk Productions.