Two Emails You Should Send To Every Customer

As an online marketer, you spend a lot of time and effort writing emails. You email your list, you email your customers, you email affiliates, you email potential JV partners, the list goes on and on. In short, a big part of your online marketing efforts is writing emails. It’s always been that way and it will continue to work that way. Today I want to take a minute to briefly go over two different types of emails that I always send to my customers, and I think you should too. Let’s see if you agree with me by the end of this blog post. 

 

Email #1 – Request Feedback & Testimonials 

 

I like to check in with my customers after a few days to make sure they were able to download the product ok and to see if they have any questions. From there, it’s easy to transition into another follow up email about feedback and finally requesting a testimonial. I find that my customers are more than happy to provide feedback and suggest future improvements. Sometimes that results in an updated product, but more often than not it gives me ideas for additional products to launch in the future. 

 

Now let’s talk about testimonials. You know this type of social proof is important and good testimonials can greatly improve your sales conversions. It took me a while to learn this, but you can’t wait for people to just send you a testimonial out of the blue. You have to ask for it. The best way to do this is face to face. The next best way is to ask for it via email. Write up that email and send it out to your customers. The responses you get back will make your day. 

 

Email #2 – Invitation To Promote

 

A few days after asking my customers for feedback and testimonials, I like to invite them to my affiliate program. Depending on your niche, you may want to tweak the wording on this, but particularly in the business-to-business niche, it’s a no-brainer to try to turn your customers into affiliates. This can work even if you don’t have an affiliate program. Simply ask your loyal customers to help you spread the word. In this age of social media, everyone has an online presence and the ability to send free traffic your way. Why not tap into that? Of course, this works even better with an affiliate program set up so you can pay your audience when they send new customers your way. 

 

Do you agree with me? Are these emails you’re already sending? If not, I hope it’s something you consider adding to the mix. Here’s a quick pro tip. You can create a simple little autoresponder series that goes out as soon as someone purchases your product. You probably already have an email going out that delivers the product. Why not add these two emails? It automates the whole process and you only need to write these emails once but will benefit from them for months and years to come. 

The Benefit Of Making Affiliate Offers To Your Customers

You put a lot of time and effort into growing your customer list. Why would you use it to promote other people’s products? I get it. We can feel pretty protective of our hard-won buyers, and we should be. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t promote other people’s products and profit from it. Let me explain. 

 

Think back on a time when you got into a new hobby, or when you first started building your online business. You didn’t learn from just one person, did you? You didn’t buy just one book on woodworking, or classic car restoration. You didn’t subscribe to just one magazine or YouTube channel. Instead, you bought a bunch of stuff. You bookmarked a ton of great sites, blogs, and forums. You subscribed to various newsletters and magazines. In short, you tried to learn as much as you could from as many different people or sources as possible. We all do this, including our customers. Why not help your people find what they need and benefit from it financially? Done right, it’s a good thing for all involved. 

 

It Benefits Your Customers 

 

Making affiliate offers to your list can be beneficial to your customers, provided you do your job to research the products, make sure they are high quality, and pay attention to your audiences’ need. Think of it as vetting or screening the products and services they are considering already anyway, and preventing them with the best options. You can even take it a step further by adding special bonuses or “how-to” instructions as a bonus when they buy through your affiliate link. Another fun option is to approach the product creators to see if they are willing to set up a special coupon for your customers. 

 

It Benefits You 

 

This one is pretty obvious. You are going to make more money. Think about it this way. Your customers are going to buy from other people anyway. You may as well take a cut in the form of an affiliate commission. Think about how it benefits the people who buy through your link if you’re feeling weird about taking money for a product you didn’t create. You’ll quickly get over those thoughts when you start to see the affiliate commissions coming in. 

 

It Benefits The People You Promote 

 

The nice thing about mailing out for a product of another online marketer like yourself is that you’re helping this person out. If you have an affiliate program yourself, you know how nice it is when those surprise sales start coming in. It helps them grow their reach and gets the word out about the work they do. Ideally it will complement yours, making this a win-win situation. 

 

Since you’re helping these fellow online business owners out by promoting them, they are more likely to recommend you and your products and services to their audience. That in turn benefits you again. Don’t you love how that works out? 

Promote New Offers To Your Customers First

Your customer list is a valuable asset. These are the people whose trust you’ve already earned. Keep that in mind as you promote and be protective of your loyal fans. When you are coming out with a new product, they will be your first stop. In other words, make sure you always promote new offers to your customers first. In fact, I like to keep my existing customers in mind when I’m starting to think about a new product to create. What else do they need? How can I help them on the next step on their journey toward their end goal? 

 

By asking yourself those types of questions, you’ll not only please your customers and make them feel included in the process, you are also giving yourself a much better chance of creating products that will sell well. But that’s not the only big benefit of promoting your offers to your customer list first. Yes, it’s nice to feel confident about your new offer before you start promoting it, but there are two more great reasons for starting with your customers. 

 

Curious what those two reasons are? The first is that it gives you a chance to work out your sales process and test your copy with a group of people who like you and are more willing to forgive you if there are some little bugs like part of a download not working. You can get those worked out and then focus on split testing and optimizing your sales copy so you know it converts well when you start approaching affiliates or paying for traffic. Having conversion rates can be a huge plus when you’re convincing others to mail for your new product, and it can be a huge help when you’re trying to figure out how much you can afford to spend on advertising. Make sure you have good tracking in place and then use your customer list to start sending traffic to the new offer. 

 

The second and probably biggest reason why I like to promote new offers to my customers first is because it makes them feel special. They get first dips and often a special deal or an extra bonus. Your relationship with your loyal customer base is important. I can’t stress that enough. You want to take every opportunity to make them feel special and valued. Each product launch is a perfect opportunity to do just that. It helps you deepen that relationship and continue to grow goodwill with your loyal fans. They in return will reward you with amazing testimonials and priceless word-of-mouth advertising by talking about you and recommending you and what you have to offer to their circle of influence. They will share the results they are getting. They will share your social media posts. They will post a link to your latest video or blog post on Facebook. In short, they will become an important part of your overall business growth. That’s why I make it a point to ALWAYS launch a new product exclusively to my list of customers first. 

Make Backend Sales On Autopilot

How would you like to wake up to sales notifications every morning, or have them pop up in your inbox throughout the day, whether you’re working or not? Today I’m going to share with you how to make that happen without hardly any more work on your end. Best of all, this is a system you’ll be setting up once that continues to work for you going forward with only minor upkeep. 

 

To make this happen, we’re going to take advantage of the fact that people are more likely to buy from you again after the initial purchase. Your job is to simply give them more opportunities to buy. It’s called making backend sales. After the initial sale, the customer heads to the download page, and ideally, he will also receive an email with the purchase and download information. These are the first two places you want to take advantage of to make more sales. 

 

Start with the download page. Before sharing the link where they can download the product they just purchased, present them with a great offer for a related product. This could be something you’ve created, or it could be something you’re an affiliate for. The important part is that it is related to the original purchase and that it’s a good value. Promote it on the download page. 

 

Next, you promote the same offer in the download email and in a follow up email or two. Those emails don’t have to be pushy. Share a great tip for using the product they already purchased, or remind them to download it and put it to good use. Then casually mention the additional offer. 

 

If you don’t do anything else, make it a point to put these two strategies in place and start watching the additional sales come in. From there the sky is the limit. You can extend the auto responder sequence your customers receive indefinitely. Create a combination of helpful content to share and offers. Some of these offers will go out as solo emails, while others work well within the content or in the P.S. of one of your emails. The offers can be a combination of your own product offerings and affiliate promotions. Keep adding to this series of auto responder emails to expand your “backend” and continue to make more sales per customer. 

 

Remember the minor upkeep that will be required to keep this running smoothly for years and months to come that I mentioned in the beginning of the blog post? It simply means that you take some time every few months to look through those auto-responder messages and download pages to make sure the offers you’re promoting are still available and still a good fit for your target audience. Spend a few minutes at the end of your workday here and there to fix and improve part of your backend. If you’re feeling ambitious, you could even add a few more emails to make even more sales going forward. It’s time well spent. 

Create An OTO To Instantly Boost Sales

In the previous blog post, I shared my thoughts on the value of a customer list with you. Today I want to share a simple but oh-so powerful strategy with you to start taking advantage of the fact that your existing customers are your most valuable assets. To grow your bottom line, you only have a few options. You can cut expenses, you can get more customers, or you can increase how much money each customer spends with you. Getting customers to spend more with you without having to raise prices (and often lower conversion) is what the remainder of this 7-day series is all about. 

 

The hardest part of making money online is to get people to spend those first few dollars with you. Once they’ve done that, they are more likely to spend money with you again and again. One of the best times to get them to buy from you is right after they’ve made a purchase. That’s where one time offers or OTOs come in. 

 

The idea is to present your customer with a great deal on a complementary product as soon as they finish buying. This could be a bigger version of the same product (so if you sold them 10 blue widgets on the initial sale, offer them 50 more widgets at a great price), it could be something related (an offer for 10 yellow widgets to go with the blue ones), or something that helps them make better use of what they’ve bought (a book on how to install those blue widgets). 

 

The best place to start adding OTOs to your funnel is with your best-selling products. What’s making you the most consistent sales right now? Or maybe there’s something you’re thinking of launching in the next few weeks that could benefit from an upsell offer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lower priced product. The volume of sales is more important than your actual profit on the initial offer, since customers won’t see the OTO unless they buy the first product. 

There are two reasons why one time offers work so well. The first is because people are already in a shopping mindset and comfortable buying from you. They just bought one of your products when they are presented with this upsell offer. The second reason is fear of missing out. The whole point of a “One Time Offer” is that it is only available “right now”. Once they leave the sales page, the opportunity to take you up on the offer is gone. This creates urgency and scarcity and with it the fear of missing out. Try it by creating an OTO for some of your best-selling products and see for yourself how much you can increase your bottom line by adding this to your overall sales funnel. 

 

Your Customers Make Up Your Most Valuable List

You’ve heard the phrase “the money is in the list”. In other words, your subscribers have value. Today I want to share one particular type of list with you that’s a lot more valuable than any other. That list is your customer list. These are the people that have spent money with you already. And guess what, they are the most likely to do so again and again and again. That’s what makes them one of your most valuable business assets. 

 

Over the course of the next seven days, we take a look at this sub-group of your subscribers, figure out how to get more of the, and I challenge you to look through your site, your emails, and your funnel and work on more opportunities to mail them regularly going forward. First though, let’s take a quick look at what makes these people so special to you and your bottom line. 

 

Customers are people that already trust you. If your product provides great value to them (which is should), they also like you. Over the course of consuming the product and being part of your funnel, they also get to know you better. In short, these are the people that know, like, and trust you the most when it comes to your business. This means that are more likely to buy something else you recommend. This could be your own product or something you’re promoting as an affiliate. 

 

When you mail an offer to your customer list, you can expect a much higher conversion than with any other list. With a regular offer, a 2% conversion of visitors to sales is often what you expect. When mailing to your list of subscribers, you can often double or even triple that conversion. With a customer list, you can expect to see conversions of 30% or higher depending on how targeted the product is. That’s a huge bump in conversion. It doesn’t take a lot of customers to make a food number of sales. That’s why this is the list you should work on growing the most. 

 

And the benefits don’t stop there. Customers are your most loyal audience. They are more likely to spread the word about you and defend you online. They aren’t afraid to sing your praises. Treat them well and you’ll have a steady supply of word-of-mouth advertising and testimonials to create valuable social proof. 

 

How do you get more customers? By adding a low-cost product to your funnel and constantly promoting it to the rest of your list. Make it your #1 goal to grow your customer list. Create something of value that relates to your opt-in offer and promote it on your “thank you page”, in your first few emails and occasionally throughout. Work on converting a portion of your email subscribers into customers right away. 

 

What can you do today to work on growing your very own customer list? 

Beyond The Sandwich – Mix It Up With Different Lunch Foods

When you think about packed school lunches, PB&J or ham and cheese sandwiches come to mind. While sandwiches certainly make for a nice school lunch, they are not your only option. Mix it up by fixing something different for your kids this school year. 

 

Make It A Wrap 

 

A quick and easy alternative to a sandwich is a wrap. Grab some tortillas and fix your child’s favourite sandwich as a wrap. Wraps are also great for adding lots of lettuce and extra veggies. Hummus and cucumbers make a delicious vegetarian lunch option. 

 

When you’re done adding your toppings, roll it up like a burrito and if desired, cut it in half. The wrap is good as is, or you can pack a small serving of salad dressing to dip. Ranch is always a favourite around here. Just make sure you pack it in a small, airtight container so your child doesn’t end up with ranch all over her lunch box (ask me know I know). 

 

Who Doesn’t Love Snack Food And Lunchables?

 

I have yet to meet a child that doesn’t love lunchables. But have you looked at the price of those found at the grocery store lately? Plus, I’m not the biggest fan of the food options. Why not make your own version instead with fresh ingredients and food you know your child will eat? Start with some sandwich meat and cheese cut into bite-sized pieces. Add some fresh raw veggies like sliced cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and baby carrots. Throw in some fresh or dried fruit and you have a delicious, healthy, homemade version. 

 

Of course, you can turn any of your child’s favourite snack foods including popcorn, trail mix, crackers, cheese, fruits and veggies and the likes into lunch. Grab a container with lots of little dividers (bento boxes are perfect) and fill them up with kid-friendly favorites. 

 

Healthy Salads For Lunch 

 

Salads are another great lunch option, particularly for older children. Get a container with a tight-fitting lid and add all your child’s favourite salad ingredients minus the dressing in there. 

 

Start with a bed of lettuce greens, add raw veggies, croutons, bacon bits, nuts and seeds and the likes. Top it with a source of protein like cheese, hard-boiled egg, ham or turkey, or even some grilled chicken. 

 

Pack dressing in a separate container along with a fork and napkin and lunch is done. You can assemble the salad the night before and store it in the fridge. The key is to make sure all your ingredients are very dry. If you’re washing your lettuce, use a salad spinner, or dry it on some paper towels before starting to pack it. Cutting everything into small bite-sized pieces will ensure that the lunch time salad is easy to eat. 

Get Creative With Bento Lunches

Have you heard of bento lunches and bento boxes? It’s a fun, fairly new trend in packed lunches that traces its origins to Japan. Bento is a traditional way for Japanese to pack single serve meals they can take with them to work or school. There they often consist of rice, fish or meat, and cooked or pickled vegetables. The container is usual rectangular with compartments for each dish. 

 

Bento boxes are traditional made of stainless steel, but you can also find plastic and even glass versions. These food containers with an international flair are usually square and have internal compartments that allows you to keep your food separate. This gives you a great canvas to get creative with food. 

 

Yes, with Bento boxes it’s ok to play with the food and come up with some fun and creative lunches for the kids (or yourself). Cut the sandwiches in cute little shapes, make some fun roll-ups, and get creative with fresh fruit, raw veggies, cheese and the likes as sides. 

 

If you are ready to get even more creative, do a quick search online for bento lunch ideas. You’ll find ideas from gourmet food to fun and quirky kid-friendly lunch ideas. Who knew that you could shape rice and make it look like an adorable panda? You’ll find entire Pinterest boards and Instagram accounts dedicated to creative bento boxes. 

 

Of course, there’s no need to go all out. You can make delicious and eye-pleasing bento lunches by taking just a little care with how you place the food in the boxes and taking advantage of simple little tricks like pouring gold fish crackers or raisins into paper or silicon cupcake liners. 

 

What I like best about bento lunches is that it gives you the opportunity to pack several small, snack like items into one lunch. Your child will have fun picking and choosing for lunch and you know he will still get a healthy meal. Plus, what child doesn’t love a bunch of colourful finger food for lunch. Heck, you may even convince your picky eaters to try new fruits, veggies, cheeses and the likes if you cut them into cute little shapes. 

 

Of course, these fun and delicious lunches aren’t just for kids. Order a couple of bento boxes and start packing your own lunch. You can go as simple or gourmet as you’d like. Or grab a few of your own favourite healthy snacks and call it lunch. The possibilities are almost endless with bento box lunches. 

Packing Hot Lunches For The First Cool Fall Days

After a long, hot summer, we all look forward to those first crisp fall days. And with it our menus change. Why not change the lunch you pack for your kids as well. Salads, wraps, and cold sandwiches are great late summer options, but when the temperatures start to drop, your little ones will appreciate a hot dish in their lunch box. 

 

Soup And A Hot Sandwich

 

One of my favourite school lunches as a kid was tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Who doesn’t love soup and a hot sandwich for lunch on a cool, crisp, fall day? If you thought those were outside your packed lunch capabilities, think again. All it takes is a small thermos, some aluminium foil and ideally an insulated lunch box. 

 

Make the soup the day before from scratch, or heat up some canned soup in the morning, right before school. Get it piping hot, and if possible, run some hot or even boiling water in the thermos first to get everything as warm as possible. Pour the soup in the thermos and sit it in the insulated lunch box. Don’t forget to pack a spoon. Lastly, make the hot sandwich. Grilled cheese, or grilled ham and cheese are always a favourite around here, as are any type of Panini. Fix the sandwich as usual and then wrap it in several layers of aluminium foil. If you’re worried about the bread getting soggy, wrap it in a paper towel first, then the foil. Keep the sandwich in the insulated lunch box and everything should be staying toasty warm for hours. Mix and match the soup and sandwich combos for endless portable lunch possibilities. 

 

Chili and Stew

 

Of course, you’re not limited to just soup. A nice hardy stew or a bowl of chili with some corn chips or a side of fresh cornbread make a nice addition to any lunch box. Make a batch of your favourite chili or stew and put it in your kids’ lunch boxes for the following days. 

 

Another great option is to freeze it in smaller portions and take them out as needed to add to lunch boxes. This is also a great time for you to take lunch to work or keep a bowl at home to reheat at lunch time. As with the soup we talked about earlier, you can get a short thermos, run hot water in it, and then fill it with the piping hot chili or stew. That will keep the lunch warm until well past lunch time. 

 

Leftovers Galore 

 

Last but not least, don’t forget about leftovers. They make for great lunch box additions. There are wide mouthed thermos out there that can hold a variety of leftover food from pasta dishes, to things like fried rice, or anything you can think of that would work well put in a bowl. 

 

If your child has access to a microwave, you can pack just about any leftover that can then be heated at school. Find a few microwave-safe plastic containers that work well and fit your child’s lunch box and you’re good to go.

Simple Tips To Get Organized And Make Fixing Lunches Easier

There is nothing worse than running late in the morning and then desperately trying to figure out something you can put in your children’s lunch boxes. If you find yourself flustered, or end up buying school lunch because packing it seems like too much of a hassle, take a look at the tips below. They will help you get organized so fixing lunches becomes quick and easy. 

 

Start With A List And Go Shopping 

 

Start by sitting down with your kids and come up with a list of lunches they like. This could include sandwiches and wraps, or even homemade lunch-able, but it doesn’t have to stop there. If you add a thermos to the mix, you can suddenly pack reheated leftovers, homemade soup and the likes. The key is to find lunch foods and snacks that your kids will eat that are also easy to pack. 

 

Make sure you have appropriate containers, and then head to the grocery store to pick up everything you need for the week. Don’t forget about snacks and drinks as needed. The list should make this much easier. Once you have several different lunch ideas your kids like and will actually eat, you can simply rotate through them and make the ingredients part of your weekly shopping trips. 

 

Prep What You Can As Soon As You Get Home 

 

When you get home from the store, keep lunch foods out and see what you can do to prep things ahead of time. Instead of putting that bag of grapes away, go ahead and wash and store them in little bags you can grab and toss in the lunch box. The same goes for things like carrots and even salads. Slice cheese as needed and just thing about what you can prep as soon as you get home. 

 

Pack Lunches The Night Before 

 

Mornings are busy and not always the perfect time to have to worry about packing lunches. Try making them the night before. Try packing them after dinner at night. Get the kids involved and have them help with lunch prep and clean-up after. You can store cold items in the fridge and have everything else sitting in the lunch box ready to go. It won’t take you long to get into a rhythm of preparing lunches while you’re cleaning up after dinner. You’ll appreciate this new habit in the mornings when all you need to do is grab a couple of things from the fridge and toss them in the lunch boxes. 

 

Get In The Habit Of Cleaning Lunch Boxes As Soon As The Kids Get Home

 

To make lunch prep even easier, get the kids into the habit of cleaning out their lunch box as soon as they get back from school. Even the youngest can help with this. Have them toss any uneaten food and bring the containers to the sink to be washed. Older children can easily clean their own containers, while you’ll probably have to do the washing for your youngest. Having everything clean and ready to go will make it easier to pack the new lunches later on in the day. 

 

Stick to these tips and it won’t take you long to get into an efficient lunch packing routine that will make it a snap. Don’t forget to get the kids involved and put them in charge of much of the preparations. Not only will this make your live easier in the long run, it will give them a sense of ownership over their lunch.