How to get an 80% email open rate

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”

Bill Gates said he would always ‘hire a lazy person to do a difficult job’ at Microsoft ‘because a lazy
person will find an easy way to do it’

I take great solace in this because I’m lazy.

I spend a large amount of time working out how to do the minimum amount of work for the maximum result.

When I was a sales person I always had the least amount of customers and prospects but mine were consistently more valuable. It’s just easier to get someone to spend more rather than finding a new customer.

It’s because I’m lazy I love marketing automation.

I also love it because it works.

Marketing automation is technology that repeats repetitive tasks through multiple channels.

I use marketing automation on this site to generate leads, enquiries and opportunities.

It works like this:

In all there are 10 emails in the sequence. When the sequence has finished a subscriber gets weekly posts or interviews.

I wrote 10 emails and they get sent hundreds or thousands of times.

The content aims to be helpful and gives away ideas of how you can execute different strategies in your digital marketing.

Most people will either do nothing with them or implement a small number themselves.

Some will ask me to do it for them.

So what happens when you regularly send people helpful, actionable content?

They open and click. A lot.

If you don’t know much about email marketing the average email open rate is usually around 20% and click rates average 3%.

and the most responded to email in the sequence? It contains 10 words.

It’s personal and ‘expects’ a response.

How to get started with Marketing Automation

1. Choose a platform http://www.infusionsoft.com/ – powerful but complex and $$. http://www.activecampaign.com/ – cheap and simple. I use it.
2. Start an email list – offer something that people wan’t in exchange for their email address
3. Write 8-15 short, helpful emails. Don’t aggressively sell. Show your expertise and value.
4. Make occasional offers