7 Steps to Create a 6 Figure Coaching Business (Part 1)

7 Steps to Create a 6 Figure Coaching Business (Part 1)

Guest Posts, Small Business, Tips and Tricks

CameronRobertsOnce upon a time I was a nobody. And in the past few months I’ve skyrocketed to fame and I think I can trace it all back to the time I appeared on Coach Cameron Roberts podcast. Okay, so maybe skyrocketed isn’t quite true. And maybe fame isn’t the right word. But I was on a podcast with Coach Cameron and it was awesome. Here’s why: He’s super smart. Coach Cameron runs a consultancy in Australia, is an Ironman athelete, hosts a podcast, and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs. He’s a multitalented digital renaissance man and I was honored when he agreed to write a post for the Monkeypod Blog.

The 7 Steps for Creating a 6 Figure Coaching, Consulting or Training Business in 6 Months or Less

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re in the coaching, consulting or training industry.

But are you taking advantage of the opportunity to capitalize on what is a $200 Billion Global Industry?

The sad fact is many coaches and consultants never really make serious money.

Most are struggling to make $40k, $50k or $60k per year…

So how do you quickly flip your consulting or coaching business around so you go from making $50k per year to $50k per month?

That’s a great question. Glad you asked.

To help you out – I’m giving you my 7 Steps for creating a 6 Figure Coaching, Consulting or Training Business in 6 Months or Less.

And it all starts with the most important step of all…

Step 1 – Adjusting Your Attitude

Being a leading sales coach and marketing consultant – I love studying the human mind and the truth is that most coaches and consultants are not “sold” on their own services. They don’t back themselves. The vast majority act like a personal trainer for business owners when they should be acting like the heart surgeon.

It’s a mindset shift – you’ve got to adjust your attitude.

attitude

I recently discovered that we have 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day and 98% of these thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday!

What’s more alarming is that 80% of these thoughts are negative!

So the first and most important step is to adjust your attitude.

The reason is simple: All success starts in your mind.

You must be able to believe it before you achieve it. (I know, corny, right?)

If you can’t see yourself being a 6 figure coach, consultant or trainer – you’re limiting your own income potential.

Many years ago I adopted the habit of writing my financial and business goals down daily and it’s served me very well. I’ll also take 5 to 10 minutes out of my day, to visualise these goals “as if” they have already been achieved.

Then I’ll “act like” I’m already the person I want to become!

You should do the same thing.

Take out a piece of paper and write down all the goals you are COMMITTED to achieving in the next 3 months, the next 6 to 12 months and the next 12 months and beyond.

These form your short, medium and long term goals.

The main thing here is to only write down the goals you are 100% committed to achieving. This is not some “big dream for your life” or “vision board” – do that somewhere else.

This is an execution plan for driving your business to the next level regardless of what you go through, what the economy goes through or what your competition throws out you. It keeps you on track.

You’ll also want to listen to positive speakers, coaches and trainers who inspire you. With 80% of our daily thoughts being negative – you’ve got to be proactive about inserting some positive thoughts into your mind.

Then invest big in coaching yourself.

Here’s the odd thing about some coaches…

They dream of making lots of money but they won’t invest in other coaching programs and mentoring.

How do you expect to charge your clients $1000, $2000 or even $5000 per month if you flinch about paying a mentor the same (or more) per month?

I’ve had coaches and consultants contact me asking for help to grow their business but then tell me they don’t have the “budget” for that level of mentoring…

Talk about a money mindset block!

Let me make this crystal clear – your income as a coach or a consultant is capped to the level you’re prepared to invest into your own coach or mentor.

Want to charge $5000 per month to your clients?

Find a mentor you can pay $5000 per month to show you how it’s done!

Do yourself a favour – find a coach, consultant or trainer who is already getting the results you want and them pay them whatever they want to show you how to get the same results.

It’ll be the fastest way to grow your coaching, consulting and training business.

Step 2 – Define Your Niche then Drill Down Deeper!

To succeed as a coach, consultant or trainer you must specialize. No-one wants to pay big money for a generalist.

Consider the difference in fees between a general practitioner Doctor and a Heart Surgeon – even though they are both “Doctors”, which one earns the big money?

You need to stop being the “generalist” and start being the “specialist” – you need to become the heart surgeon of a niche market.

Then once you define your niche market – you need to drill down deeper.

You need a niche within a niche.

When I was a teenager I had a passion for competitive swimming… and this is where I first learnt about becoming a specialist and competing in a niche within a niche.

In swimming there’s over 5 freestyle events ranging from 50m to 1500m and there’s 3 form strokes (Fly, Back, Breast) that have 50m, 100m and 200m races and then you have the 200m and 400m Individual Medley. So in total there’s over 16 different races you can do and each require a very different type of preparation and training.

My old swimming coach use to say to me “Cameron – you can me a jack of all trades or a master of one, but you can’t be both.”

So I “mastered” the 200m breaststroke.

My sport was swimming. My niche was breaststroke. My niche within the niche was the 200m breaststoke.

I’ve down the same with every business model I’ve ever owned and operated over the last 15 years – and I help my clients do the same, because that’s where the money is.

breaststroke

It’s like drilling for oil – sometimes you’ve got to drill deeper to strike it rich!

Step 3 – Create an Avatar

Once you define your niche within a niche and you have a clear picture of your target market – you need to create an avatar of “who is your ideal client” within that niche market.

people

The truth is, you are not right for everybody in your market.

And not everybody is right for you!

So put pen to paper and describe your ideal client.

Who are they?

Where do they hang out? What do they enjoy doing? What are some of their character traits? What problems do you solve for them?

Get a clear picture of who your ideal client is – then create all your marketing messages, your sales dialogues and your business around them and for them.

It’ll stop you wasting valuable time taking on the wrong clients and you’ll be able to get better results for your ideal clients.

Step 4 – Build Your Brand

If you’ve completed the previous 3 steps then you’re ready to start building your brand.

Consider where you’re ideal clients hang out the most and be where they can see you.

Play hard on social media, Facebook, Google and Linkedin but don’t forget about some of the more traditional ways to network and build your brand.

Join traditional “offline” networking groups, attend business breakfast events, join community groups and even consider becoming part of a business group or chamber of commerce.

People want to do business with people they know, like and feel like they can trust.

The intention is not to sell your services to the people you form relationships within these groups – but to position yourself as the “go-to-guy” or “go-to-girl” for what it is you do so they can refer prospects to you.

We’ll be back in a few days with tips 5, 6 and 7. In the meantime, start mapping out how you can integrate this first four steps into your business growth plans. And as always feel free to ask any questions below!

If you’d like to contact Cameron Roberts, Australasia’s Leading Sales Coach and Digital Marketing Consultant, you can find him at:

Website: https://coachcameronroberts.com/

Follow Cameron on Twitter: @CoachCameron

 

 

Campaign Builder: Gotcha #3

Campaign Builder: Gotcha #3

Campaign Builder, Keap, Tips and Tricks

As you probably have gathered if you read the first and second post in this series, the campaign builder is a powerful tool.

But there are also some key nuances to it, which if you aren’t expecting, can totally catch people off guard and cause their fair share of grief.

So, in this third Gotcha I want to address one of the single hardest things for people to really grasp as it pertains to the campaign builder.

In fact, on two separate occasions I’ve seen Keap Certified Partners selling education on this exact topic in which they still get their facts wrong – or, omit a critical piece.

I’m talking about what you can expect to happen when you republish a live Infusionsoft campaign that has people in it.

First of all, you should know that republishing is a whole subject on it’s own, and there are so many “what if” type scenarios that it’d be impossible to cover them all here.

So what I’m going to address is specifically what people commonly refer to as “The Rule of 7 Days”, or as I like to call it “The 7 Day Shadow”.

(Note: The Rule of 7 Days was eliminated in an Infusionsoft update in Dec 2017.)

It’s also worth calling out that the Advanced Automations course from Keap Academy dives into this, and all of the other campaign builder nuances – so if you’re looking to really wrap your head around the rest of this topic, I’d start there.

But for now, here’s the module of that course that talks about republishing:

CB: Gotcha #3

In a perfect world, we’d all build our campaigns out from start to finish, we’d launch them, and we’d get it right the first time and we’d never have to go back and make any changes.

I remember talking with an event attendee once and they got genuinely frustrated when I said “Just don’t make any changes to your campaigns and you won’t have to remember any of this stuff.”

And of course I meant it in jest, but the reality is that the 7 Day Shadow, and any of the other republishing nuances ONLY come into play when you are making changes to a live campaign that has people in it.

UPDATE: As of December 2017 the Rule of 7 Days, or 7 Day Shadow is being removed. I’m leaving this section of the article here for historical context, but it may no longer describe the behavior in your app.

So, without further ado, let’s talk about The 7 Day Shadow. And I’ll even explain why I like this name better than “The Rule of 7 Days”. Here’s the way that it works: When you republish a campaign, the system will recalculate the steps in each individual sequence for each contact.

Steps that have already been processed, will not be processed again.

This means that if I change the timers, and an email that you’ve already received is now scheduled to happen tomorrow, it will NOT send that email, because it recognizes that you’ve already received the email. It also means if you change the content of an email, or the subject line, it will not resend that step to people who have already received it.

NOTE: Delay timers are the only timers affected by this. Field timers and Date timers ONLY run on the exact date (or during the range) for which they are scheduled.

Changes you made to the sequence can only impact Active or Queued Contacts that are in that sequence.

This means that if you make changes to a sequence, it can impact the people who are still actively receiving that specific sequence. Or, if contacts are still in that sequence and are queued (because they haven’t moved on) it could impact them too. But any changes you’ve made will not affect contacts who are “Done” (meaning that they’ve progressed into the next sequence, or they’ve achieved a goal to exit the sequence).

Any steps you’ve added that are scheduled for the future, will be scheduled as if they were always there.

If I’m receiving your 3 tips sequence, and I’m on tip number two and am scheduled to receive number three tomorrow (shown in blue), and you decide to come in and add an fourth tip (shown in red). When you republish it will schedule the fourth tip for the future, and I’ll receive it a day after the 3rd as intended. It’ll be as if it was there the whole time. FourTips

New or updates steps scheduled to occur in the past 7 days will process immediately.

This is the hard part for people to wrap their heads around. Think of it this way – if you add a new step, or you change the timing of the existing steps – the system is going to recalculate the whole sequence (for the people that are active and queued).

And if the new step you added, or any of the existing steps for which the timing been modified, happen to fall within the last seven days, then the step will process immediately. (In most of the examples I use I’m referring to emails, but the campaign uses the same logic for all sequence steps) Let’s take a look at a few examples using two of my childhood crushes to really wrap our heads around this:

Example 1:

Topanga Lawrence has been in your nurture campaign for exactly 9 days. Your campaign is structured to send an email every three days. So, she’s just received her third email, and is scheduled to receive email number four in exactly three days. She’d be waiting on the timer indicated in red below. (I’ve built it using that “snake” layout just to keep it all on one screen) Nurture Campaign 1 Okay, so now let’s say you decide that you need to change the sequence timing. And instead of sending an email every three days, you decide that you want to send an email every two days. So you come into the sequence, and you change all of the timers, and then you republish.

Here’s what you can expect: Topanga has still been in the sequence exactly 9 days. But now, with the new timing, it means that email four should have been sent yesterday. It’s scheduled to be sent 8 days after someone enters the sequence. And since Topanga has been in there 9 days, email 4 would have been sent within her last 7 days. So, it’ll process immediately.

After it sends email four, then Topanga will queue up on the blue timer below waiting for Email 5. Which is scheduled for 10 days after the start of the sequence, and would be tomorrow for Topanga. Nurture Emails 2 Are you with me so far? Let’s look at another example.

Example 2:

Let’s say Kelly Kapowski is in the same sequence. But she’s been in there for 45 days. That means that she has completed all the steps you had scheduled, but she hasn’t moved on. So she’s considered “queued“.

Now you decide to extend your nurture sequence, so you add another two day delay, and then a 6th email.

Well, when you publish this new step, the system is going to recalculate the steps in the sequence, and when it realizes there’s a new step, it’ll decide whether or not it should be sent to Kelly, based on where it falls with respect to how long she’s been in the campaign. Nurture Emails 3 Because the new step is scheduled to happen 12 days after someone enters the sequence, and Kelly has been in the sequence for 45 days, this step would not have been sent to her in the last seven days. And therefore, it won’t be sent to her at all.

Now, if you added a bunch of steps (every other day), giving you 22 total emails (over 44 days), so the last of which would fall 44 days after someone entered the sequence.

Now, when you publish Kelly WOULD receive email #22. Because it should have been sent in her last 7 days. It should have happened on day 44, and she’s been in there 45 days.

But here’s the catch, Kelly will also receive emails 21, 20, and 19. Because those emails would have been sent 38, 40 and 42 days after she entered the sequence.

So, because she’s been in there 45 days, all four of those emails are within her last 7 days. This is why I call it a 7 Day Shadow. As the contact spends time in the sequence, their shadow stays with them.

It doesn’t matter if they’ve been in the sequence a year, if you add a step that falls 360 days after the start of the sequence, that step will process immediately for that particular contact. I know, it get’s a little hairy. Here’s one way to remember it.

If A is equal to the total amount of time that a contact has been in the sequence.

And B is the amount of time from the start of the sequence to the scheduled step.

If A-B is less than 7, then the step will process right away.

There are a few things to look out for here. If there is a long gap, and you add multiple steps, it’s possible that some contacts might get the last email (email 44 in the example above) without getting the in between email. It’s also possible that multiple steps could fall within their last 7 days, and so they could receive more than one step at the same time (which could also be confusing).

So, what do we do about it, right? That’s kind of the natural question here. It’s a little tricky, and of course you want to create the best possible experience for your customers, right?

Well, there are a handful of ways to handle this, and I dive into a few options in the third chapter of the CB: Trilogy course, but for the purpose of this post I recommend a tactic I call “switching the tracks”.

It works like this.

Switching The Tracks

When you want to make changes to a sequence that has contacts in it, and you aren’t sure what will happen. You make a copy of the sequence, and make all your updates to the new sequence.

Then, once it is ready to go, you just simple detach the original sequence, and switch the tracks to route new contacts into the new sequence you’ve now built. It’s not perfect, because you now have contacts in two sequences, and the folks in the original don’t get you fancy new updates, but this way guarantees that you know what your contacts will experience, and that no one gets emails out of order, or multiple emails at once.

So, that’s the 7 Day Shadow. I like this better than “Rule of 7 Days” because I think it’s clearer that the rule is on a per contact basis. I’ve heard people say that changes you make don’t matter after a contact has been in the sequence for more than 7 days. This is wrong.

I’ve heard people say that after a contact has been queued for 7 days, they drop out of the sequence. Also wrong.

What matters is how long the contact has been in the sequence. And how long after the start of the sequence the step is scheduled. That’s all. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Lemme hear those questions!

Where do I learn more?

The Keap Academy platform features a robust course, The Advanced Automations Complete Collection, covering the fundamentals for building campaigns, from basic to advanced features and settings.

View Course
Lead Magnet Tips

Lead Magnet Tips

Guest Posts, Marketing, Small Business

Dave ShermanIf you’ve ever met Dave Sherman, you probably noticed that he’s a genuine people-person. He’s a talented networker – but he doesn’t do it solely to be strategic, he does it because he loves people. He has a magnetic personality, one that naturally says “Come talk to me”. So, when I asked Dave to contribute to my blog, it only makes sense that he chose to write about attracting people to your business.

Attract More Prospects Today

If I were to ask a small business owner what he needs most in his business, more sales would probably be the most popular answer. However if he truly wants to grow a successful business, he needs to spend less time focusing on more sales and more time focusing on more prospects.

One of the most powerful ways to attract more prospects to a business is by creating lead magnets. Lead magnets focus on the idea of attracting people toward your business by providing them with value added information that can benefit prospects.

If you are like most small business owners, you tell everybody about the features of your business. How long you been in business, where you are located, who your best clients are, why you are so wonderful, etc.

Unfortunately, that is not what your prospects want to be hearing.

They want to hear how your business will directly benefit them.

Most people agree with this. You’re probably reading it, and saying “Yeah, that makes sense”, or maybe even “Duh”. But the reality is that acknowledging it, and executing on it are quite different.

When it comes to creating successful lead magnets, you need to focus on topics that will directly benefit your prospects. You need to focus on things like how they can avoid common mistakes, avoid competitor frustrations, achieve underlying goals, etc.

But how? That’s the million dollar question, right?

Based on those three topics, here are three templates you can use to generate a powerful lead magnet that will attract lots of interest from your prospects.

 

Avoiding Common Mistakes

  • Three mistakes most people make when___________________________.
  • Do you make these three mistakes when__________________________?
  • Three common _________________ mistakes you don’t know you’re making.

Avoiding Competitor Frustrations

  • Three questions to ask your ______________________________ before hiring them.
  • The three biggest problems with________________________________.
  • Three important things to consider when_________________________________.

Achieving Underlying Goals

  • Three things you absolutely need to know about___________________________.
  • Three keys to fixing your _____________________________ problem.
  • Three proven techniques to better_____________________________.

There are dozens of ways to generate a lead magnet – and as simple as it sounds, you may start with what your prospects are already asking. What questions do you answer on a regular basis? If you were in your prospects shoes, what would you want to know? What are the most common objections people have?

Remember, you’re the expert in your field. Your prospects want the knowledge that is in your head, you just have to be willing to put it out there!

People want to be guided by someone who knows what they are talking about, but small businesses are often to humble to really embrace this. Sometimes we get too close to the knowledge we have, so close that we can even forget that it’s valuable, and unique. You are an expert, and people want your guidance. Take the information that you have – turn it into a lead magnet – and share it with the people that want it.

By incorporating powerful lead magnets into your small business marketing, you will start generating much more interest in your business which will lead to more prospects in your funnel.

 

Always remember that people don’t care about your business. They only care about what your business will do for them.

Campaign Builder: Gotcha #2

Campaign Builder: Gotcha #2

Campaign Builder, Keap, Tips and Tricks

Last week I wrote a post about a gotcha that can trip people up as they’re building campaigns in Keap. Well, this week I want to tackle another common misunderstanding I see.

By default, what happens when a goal is achieved?

  1. The sequence before it is stopped.
  2. The sequence after the goal is started.

This brings us to gotcha number two.

NOTE: To cover this gotcha in with the level of detail it deserves, this blog got a little longer than I anticipated. So, I recorded a quick video overview as well, if that’s more your speed, scroll to the bottom for the TL;DR version.

Gotcha #2:

The key part of that question above is “by default”.

And the reason I’m emphasizing that phrase is because that isn’t always the case.

Keap has specific sequence settings, and goal settings that can affect the expected behavior, and can make number one or number two above untrue.

If you don’t thoroughly understand the different settings, then it’s really easy to think you have things figured out, and be totally caught off guard when something doesn’t work the way you expected.

First, let’s talk about sequence settings.

Have you ever noticed how each sequence in your campaign has a little badge in the lower left hand corner?

By default, it looks like a white flag on a blue background. This little graphic is the indicator as to whether or not this sequence will stop when a goal downstream is achieved, or whether it will keep going.

If you ever went to the dentist as a kid, you probably remember paging through Highlights magazine while in the waiting room – and if you were like me, you took great pride in your ability to dominate the “Spot the Differences” game.

You know, they’d show you two similar images, and your job was to identify that in one picture the kid had an extra freckle, or an untied shoelace.

Anyway, this is kind of like that. The campaign is identical, with the exception of the little colored badge on the lower left hand corner of the sequence.

In the first image the sequence WILL stop when Goal A is achieved, in the second sequence it WON’T stop when Goal A is achieved.

The reason this confuses people isn’t because it happens frequently. Most people have never clicked on that flag, and have never changed this setting:

I’m covering this here because it breaks the commonly accepted rule “sequences stop when goals are achieved”. When things break the rules we’re used to, it can get confusing.

Now, the natural question at this point is “Why wouldn’t I want my sequence to stop?” – and the best answer to that is that sometimes you’ve set certain expectations, and you need to deliver on what you said you’d do.

Like in this campaign here:

If we’ve set the expectation that we were going to send someone ten tips, well, even if they buy the upsell we’re offering, we still want to deliver the ten tips we’ve promised. (Yes, there are dozens of other ways to handle this specific scenario, but I’m illustrating a point here guys…)

If you find this type of stuff valuable, or you want a place to ask questions – then you might get a lot of value from our private community. Check out the OG Membership details here >>

Okay, let’s move on to the second half of this Gotcha. Goal Settings.

When a goal is achieved, a contact starts the sequence following the goal, right?

Well, yes. Normally. But again, there is a setting that controls this. You see, goals work either globally, or locally. By that I mean they can either be configured for all contacts anywhere, or only for contacts who are already in that campaign.

What this means is that you can build goals that are listening for anyone anywhere, but you can also build goals that are only listening for contacts already in that campaign to take an action.  The global goals are commonly referred to as “entry points”.

Trust me, this sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is.

Let’s look at a few examples:

We’ll start with a really easy one. In the above scenario, if any contact achieves Goal A, they will be added to Sequence 1. In this scenario, this goal is considered an entry point to the campaign because there isn’t anything prior to it.  So, if a goal doesn’t have a sequence before it, then it is automatically an entry point, and is fair game for any contact.

But for goals that are “landlocked”, they are not naturally entry points. Check this one out:

In this scenario, if someone requests my whitepaper, they’ll get the whitepaper delivered in the next sequence, and then they’re driven to purchase, and after the purchase they’ll get some sort of thank you.

But, if someone buys my coaching package who is not in this campaign, then they will not be added to the thank you sequence. The purchase goal is landlocked, and is not currently an entry point. So that means that the goal is only listening for purchases from the group that is already in this campaign.

Again, the natural question is: “Wouldn’t I want the thank you sequence to go to all people who buy, even if they skip the whitepaper part?” And the answer is that “Yeah, you probably would”.

But what if you wanted to have some sort of specific follow up, and you wanted to craft your thank you message to be really specific. Something like:

“Hey, thanks for buying my coaching package. As you probably saw in the whitepaper, I’m really focused on three things, X, Y and Z. And this coaching package is the perfect way to take the methodologies I talked about in the whitepaper and translate them into results for your business.”

Well, the way it’s currently configured, you could be that specific because you know the only people who can get into the “Thanks” sequence, are those who also came through the whitepaper sequence.

GoalSettingsBut, let’s say for a moment that you didn’t want that. Well, if you click on the colored badge in the lower left hand corner of any goal, you can denote whether or not you want that goal to be an entry point. It’s called Goal Settings.

This one little setting is often overlooked, but it can be really useful for your more complex campaigns; where you may need to have multiple entry points throughout the campaign.

One thing to note, is that some goal types don’t permit you to make the goal an entry point.

For example, link click goals, and task completion goals don’t allow you to configure them as entry points, because in order for someone to achieve one of those goals they would have to have been in the sequence prior to the goal.

Additionally, if there isn’t a sequence prior to the goal, it also won’t let you set it as an entry point. It’s an entry point by default.

So, now that we’ve changed the goal setting, let’s take a look at that same campaign.

You should notice that the Purchase goal now has a visual indicator letting us know that it’s now an entry point. The little icon in the top right, a dude with a green arrow, shows us that contacts can achieve that goal, and be added to the campaign at that point.

Okay, so, here’s the last twist to all this.

When we talk about a “Campaign” – we’re talking about EVERYTHING that is on the same canvas. So that means if they are anywhere in the campaign, that all goals in that campaign are considered entry points. Even if they are seemingly unrelated, and there’s no connecting lines between them at all.

Here’s an example:

This is one campaign. Even though there are separate and parallel processes, because they’re built on the same campaign builder canvas, the system thinks of them as being the same campaign. So, if someone is in Sequence 1, and they achieve the Purchase Goal, they’ll not only stay in sequence 1, but they’ll also start Sequence Y.

Okay. Like I said originally, this sounds more complex that it actually is.

What I’ve found with things like this, is that it can be hard to understand these concepts before you actually need them because the information seems rather abstract.

So, that’s why I’ve included so many examples, with the hopes that if you come across one of these you’ll have an idea of what the expected behavior looks like.

But please, ask questions if you’re unclear on any of this. I’m happy to elaborate.

If you love this stuff, and you want to dive deeper, I strongly recommend checking out the Advanced Automations Complete Collection course from Keap Academy, covering the fundamental basics and bells and whistles – everything you need to know about the campaign builder.

Oh, and if you’re the type of person who prefers a video tutorial, here’s an overview:

Where do I learn more?

The Keap Academy platform features a robust course, The Advanced Automations Complete Collection, covering the fundamentals for building campaigns, from basic to advanced features and settings.

View Course
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Email Marketing Pet Peeves

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Email Marketing Pet Peeves

Guest Posts, Marketing, Small Business, Tips and Tricks

Paul Sokol, Data Scientist, Infusionsoft

Paul Sokol, Data Scientist, Infusionsoft

Back in the saddle this week is my friend, and Infusionsoft’s campaign builder Mad Scientist. For a more thorough introduction check out one of his other posts on the Monkeypod Blog.  Ladies and gentlemen, the man, the myth, the hair, Paul Sokol.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Email Marketing Pet Peeves

As a child, I remember reading about the “pet peeves” of the different ninja turtles in a book I had about the movie. This was a new term for me so I asked my mom about it and she explained “its stuff you don’t like”.

Nothing to do with your pets. Strange term but alright.

For the rest of my life, I’ve always thought about the ninja turtles whenever I saw the term “pet peeves”. So, when Greg asked me to write about my email marketing pet peeves, naturally I thought about those four turtle dudes.

Today, I’d like to have some fun and offer some actionable insights based on fictional characters. Think of it like fan non-fiction for your small business.

Here is what I believe would be the pet peeves of each ninja turtle if they used email today:

I’m going to start with my favorite ninja turtle because its my blog post and you can’t tell me what to do. Side-note: He’s the reason my favorite color is purple 🙂

Donatello ClearDonatello is the smart nerdy guy. He definitely understands the value of good working systems and how things interact with each other. This means he would definitely not enjoy too little too late transactional messages

A “too little too late” transactional message is when the company follows up WAAAY to long after they should have for some interaction.

A common offender is when restaurants have a little card for you to join their email list for monthly offers and such when you are paying the bill. Then you completely forget about it. Then, months later, you get an email that thanks you for joining the list.

“Um, what? Oh yeah, I ate there in March…”

This is bad for a few reasons. First, it puts you at much higher risk for spam. If someone doesn’t remember signing up because you waited too long, you aren’t a welcome visitor in their inbox. Spam button activate!

Next, this actually is demonstrating your lack of concern for the inbox relationship. If I owned a restaurant, I’d be unreasonable about adding all new emails that I got every night after closing. By waiting too long, it reduces the impact of your welcome message. And if you wait for much too long, it basically conveys the message, “Oh yeah, you gave us your email huh? Well, here you go I guess…”

Doesn’t leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling at all.

Lastly, it actually puts your lack of systems front and center for your customers to see. As a consumer, I’d expect to be added to the list within a week at the most. By waiting too long, it just shows that you really don’t have your shiz in gear behind the scenes. So what does that mean is going on behind-the-scenes in the kitchen…

I know I used a restaurant example this whole time but this is something to avoid for any business. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve signed up for a newsletter, never received a confirmation email, then months later I get something that I don’t recognize. Know what happens then? I unsubscribe and mark as spam.

Raphael ClearRaphael was the hot head; the guy with a temper. Really, he’s a super unique guy and expects to be treated as such. This is why being treated the same regardless of inbox interaction would be his biggest pet peeve.

Here is what I mean: In this day and age, with how advanced email marketing technology is, there is simply NO EXCUSE to treat everyone the same. For every email, there are (primarily) three outcomes. First, someone can never open the email. Second, they could open the email but never click through. Third, they could open the email AND click.

Why should you treat those three types of people the exact same? You shouldn’t. And that’s the point.

In fact, consumers today are hyperconnected and expect to be paid attention to. If you have an important email going out that someone really needs to read, you would be remiss to assume they have read it. Its easy enough to track open rates, so if they need to know this information, re-send it but ONLY to those who didn’t open. If you really want to let people know you care about the inbox relationship, address the fact they didn’t open the email. Don’t be creepy and big brother-ish about it, but by being authentic and up front about it can only bolster the relationship.

Here is one final example that, I hope, will drive the point home. Let’s say you create an event on Facebook and invite a bunch of friends. Then, lets say after a week you have a group of people who said they are going, a group who said maybe, and a group who said they couldn’t go. Would you really send the same message to all three of those groups? When you aren’t paying attention to inbox behavior, this is exactly what you are doing.

Michaelangelo ClearMichaelangelo was the cool guy. The laid back party dude. Just because he is a chill guy that doesn’t mean you can assume his interest which is why I believe his biggest email pet peeve would be assumed opt-in just because you are on the list.

Doing launches and promotions are great. They get important products and services into the hands of customers that can benefit from it. Quite often, introducing new products/services can be done to your exist email list.

There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is when you ASSUME they are interested.

If you have a whole email series ready to go, just because someone is on your list doesn’t mean you can assume their interest. Meaning, you can’t just start hammering them with emails without putting yourself at a severe spam risk and, more importantly, hurting the existing relationship.

Even worse, sometimes I’ve seen people do a reverse opt-in. Someone will send an email that effectively says, “Hey I’ve got this launch coming up and you’re going to be getting those emails. If you aren’t interested, click here”.

I can understand why someone might want to do that, but from the recipients standpoint its the wrong side of the coin. Rather than assume interest, tell people about it and have them take some action to choose to receive it.

You know who does this? Some more elite A-list marketers out there. Frank Kern is selling stuff all the time, but if you aren’t clicking and opting into his new stuff, you’d never know. Its all behind the scenes stuff. He NEVER assumes you are interested in what he has to offer even though you are on his list. And I’m pretty sure Michaelangelo would appreciate that 🙂

Leo ClearLeonardo was the fearless leader. He got things going and kept everyone safe. When it comes to email, the subject line can definitely be thought of as a message leader which is why I’m pretty sure he would be against useless preheaders.

Most email clients will show a small snippet of the email’s body after the subject line. A preview of the content.

You know what’s annoying? Seeing the dreaded “Can’t read this email. View in Browser” as the email preview. Giving people a different way to read the email is not a bad tactic. Its a good one. But its not the best way to leverage that exclusive preheader real estate.

I tend to think of things in terms of classic direct marketing. The subject line is the headline. You know what the preheader is? The sub-headline. The whole point of those two elements are to get the viewer reading further.

Use your email preheader as an extra nudge to get people to even open the email. Just like direct mail, if nobody opens it, it doesn’t matter how good the content is.

The preheader should further bolster the promise of the subject line while still remaining intriguing enough to get people to open and read.

This one tactic alone can boost open rates dramatically when done right. So why not make Leo proud and give it a shot?

What do you think? Can you relate to some of these? Let me know what you think in the comments below, cowabunga!

Campaign Builder: Gotcha #1

Campaign Builder: Gotcha #1

Campaign Builder, Keap, Tips and Tricks

The Campaign Builder is the single most powerful marketing tool I have ever seen. For me, there’s no question about it.

It can solve so many problems, and can work for so many different businesses.  But the very nature of having a tool that is this robust, is that there is a level of complexity associated with learning it.

I want to highlight three of the most common “Gotchas” that I see with the Keap campaign builder. I chose the to use the term “Gotcha” carefully- these aren’t bugs.

They aren’t myths. They’re just intricacies for using the campaign builder, and once you understand them, things will work a lot more smoothly for you.

Gotcha #1:

Goals start and stop sequences. Most people know that, right? But their impact can extend beyond the sequences to their immediate left and right.

Let me show you what I’m talking about.

This is a pretty basic scenario here. If you have contacts in Sequence 1, and they achieve Goal A, they’ll go into Sequence 2. No brainer.

Now let’s step our game up just a little bit. Have a look at this one:

This is effectively the same scenario, with just one twist. Sequence 1 is not directly connected to Goal A.

It doesn’t matter.

If someone is in Sequence 1, and they achieve Goal A, they’ll jump over Sequence 2 entirely, and they’ll be added to Sequence 3.

This is because, by default, goals stop everything “upstream” from them. So, if the contact is in this campaign, and the sequence connects to the goal (directly or indirectly), then by achieving that goal, the contact is extracted from their current sequence and added to the appropriate new place downstream from the goal.

Let’s try this one more time. Check this one out:

So, now things have gotten a little more complex. But the logic doesn’t change one bit. If you’re in Sequence 1 (red) and you achieve Goal B (blue) you’ll be removed from Sequence 1 and added immediately to Sequence 6 (yellow).

The reason this works is because these two icons are connected. I know there isn’t a line connecting them directly, but they’re indirectly connected. Sequence 1 connects to Sequence 2, which connects to Goal A which connects to Sequence 4 which IS connected to Goal B.  Right, kind of a round-about way, isn’t it?

Think of it this way. Goals are things we want our prospect to do. And sequences are the things we do in order to encourage them to achieve those goals.  So, if someone is in Sequence 1, and they achieve Goal B, the campaign builder just says “Oh, okay, great. We don’t need sequence 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. We can just skip all that jazz and push them into Sequence 6.”

In the above campaign, they could be in any of the first 5 sequences, and if they achieve Goal B, the outcome will be identical. It’ll stop them where they are, and will add them to sequence 6. If it helps, you could draw lines connecting Sequences 1, 2 and 3 to Goal B, but functionally the campaign won’t work any differently, and aesthetically it’ll be…um, painful.

I’ve been mentally preparing this post for a while now, but this facebook post, and an awesome conversation with Christopher Sutton this morning was just the impetus I needed to finally write it.

Here’s the reality: The campaign builder has quirks. Nuances. Intricacies. Call them whatever you like. If you’re going to use it, you’re bound to come across them from time to time. The only solution I know to prevent frustration is to arm yourself with education. Once you know how it works, even if you don’t agree with it, you can at least plan for it.

If you don’t educate yourself, then there’s a higher likelihood that you’ll think something is a bug, simply because you don’t understand it. Or you’ll hire someone to build something for you, but not be able to use it because you don’t understand how it was built. If you’re looking to understand the campaign builder from the very basic fundamentals, to the more advanced features and nuances, there are a number of ways to do it – start with the Advanced Automations complete collection from Keap Academy.

Dig this? I’ve got Gotcha #2 ready for ya right here. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on this one!

Where do I learn more?

The Keap Academy platform features a robust course, The Advanced Automations Complete Collection, covering the fundamentals for building campaigns, from basic to advanced features and settings.

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