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Sabtu, 14 April 2018
Last Friday morning I received an email from Andrew.
This email was very much like any other many of us receive on what seems like an almost hourly basis.
A shameless attempt at getting a link shared because “your readers would really enjoy it” without any real benefit to you.
The funny part is that these emails are always formatted almost exactly the same. Why? Because of the slew of templates put out by high profile bloggers in an attempt to help you with email outreach.
What some people fail to understand, however, is that these templates are meant purely as an example. And by copying them, Andrew is only demonstrating to his clued up recipients that he knows how to copy and paste a script and add some links.
Today I’m going to share with you the email I received from Andrew, I’ll dissect the email and tell you what’s wrong, and in the end I’ll show you a better example that would work much better for Andrew.
The Email
Here is Andrew’s outreach word-for-word (with a few edits for anonymity) and the numbers I’ve added will become relevant in the next section:
“Hi ,
(1)I’m Andrew from Andrews Co.
(2)I came across your article on Copywriting: http://blogtrafficbuilder.com/blogging-resources/ , and I thought it was great.
(3)I’m emailing you because we have content you might find interesting. We create really cool cheatsheets about email marketing and this one in particular is about copywriting, and getting thousands of hits since it was published. I think your readers would really enjoy it.
(4)Here it is: https://andrewshamelesslink.com.
(5)Would you be interested in sharing our cheatsheet with your audience? We’d really appreciate it.
(6)If not, just let me know and I won’t follow up. Thanks!
Andrew
www.andrewsco.com“
(The real links have also been removed, as I’m not planning on doing Andrew any favours by sending him traffic)
The Problems
These kind of emails always follow a similar structure;
- Introduce yourself.
- Flatter the recipient.
- Offer proposition.
- Present link.
- Call to action.
- Leave on a high note.
This email was no different, and on the surface it seems like the perfect outreach email. So where did Andrew go wrong?
Let’s break it down;
1. The Email Introduction
“Hi ,
I’m Andrew from Andrews Co.”
Firstly, Andrew’s introduction is great.
He introduces himself right away and I know exactly who this email is from (even if I’ve never heard of him before).
But at least now I know who he is and who I would be responding to, before we’ve gotten to any of the important stuff.
Think about a real life introduction; you don’t meet a person for the first time and say “I’m a blogger at http://blogtrafficbuilder.com and also my name is Tom”, do you?
The only real issue here is he doesn’t address the email to anyone, so clearly he hasn’t looked at my blog enough to know the my name and my big red spam flag is now flying at half mast.
This is common for people using tools like Ninja Outreach, that haven’t taken the crucial few extra minutes to set it up properly.
2. The Flattery
“I came across your article on Copywriting: http://blogtrafficbuilder.com/blogging-resources/ , and I thought it was great.”
This is where it starts to go downhill for Andrew.
I’m used to seeing these emails so I know that most of the time, they didn’t really look that far into one of my articles before emailing.
Everyone loves to be flattered, and call me cynical, but it’s gotten to the point now where I just don’t believe it.
Most of the time people target resources pages because they know they’re more likely to get a link there, because resources pages are typically choc full of links.
However, in this case, Andrew had cited my blogging resources page as “great” but had referenced it as an “article on Copywriting”.
Aside from the fact that “Copywriting” is actually two words (Copy writers hate when you get that one wrong) the page he’s referring to has nothing to do with copy writing.
In fact, if the URL and title wasn’t enough, this only further confirms that Andrew hadn’t even bothered to visit the article in the first place.
It’s just too obvious.
3. The Proposition
“I’m emailing you because we have content you might find interesting. We create really cool cheatsheets about email marketing and this one in particular is about copywriting, and getting thousands of hits since it was published. I think your readers would really enjoy it.”
Andrew says he has content that I might find interesting. Andrew might be right – but unfortunately, we’ll never know because I’m never going to click his link.
At this point, Andrew also let’s me know more about what he does, and that he creates “really cool” cheatsheets.
He then proceeds to mention that YOU the reader may also enjoy his content.
Gee, I had never thought of that, thanks for bringing it too my attention, Andrew!
The proposition isn’t actually that bad, it mentions that the cheatsheet is already popular and that’s usually a precursor to other’s sharing it.
Everyone wants to share great content and Andrew might just be doing us a favour by sending it directly to us.
4. The Link
“Here it is: https://andrewshamelesslink.com.”
There’s not much to say here, maybe Andrew could improve it by shortening the link or including some tracking to know if his shallow emails are converting though.
5. The Call To Action
“Would you be interested in sharing our cheatsheet with your audience? We’d really appreciate it.”
By now, Andrew’s given me pretty much all the information I need to make an action – all that needs to be done is seal the deal.
Andrew steps up by asking me to share his link – he’d really appreciate it!
I keep reading to see what Andrew’s going to offer me in exchange; maybe it’s a reciprocal share, maybe it’s a link, maybe it’s even a feature on their blog!
Nope.
Andrew’s only counteroffer is my peace of mind that he’ll go to sleep tonight feeling appreciative.
Now, as I mentioned before, everyone likes finding great content to share with their followers – and I’m no exception (believe it or not, I do try!).
But if you’re going to randomly email me, and ask me to do something for you, try to offer some kind of value other than “my readers may enjoy it”.
Offer me a link, a reciprocal share, cash, a Christmas card, a used coupon for half a gallon of milk – whatever. As long as there’s some kind of benefit for me (or someone like me) and not just you.
Right now I think this email is getting poorer by the character.
6. The End
“If not, just let me know and I won’t follow up. Thanks!”
Up until this point, my expectations of Andrew’s success have been steadily dropping.
However, Andrew seems to be clawing it back with his finishing statement.
At least Andrew has the humility to acknowledge that I might not be interested in his spam email and instead of helping him out, I could email back and tell him to get lost.
Lastly, But Probably Most Importantly
I know sending these emails can be tough to get right, and although I don’t do it that often, I have done it before with a very high success rate (we’re talking a 33% positive response rate).
Even if you can’t put together a decent outreach email, there’s one VERY important factor that you must remember, and that is to make sure you’re being CAN-SPAM compliant.
The fines for not doing so are up to $16,000 per email sent.
I’d imagine Andrew has sent this same email to hundreds or thousands of people, and so those fines would add up to a life-ruining amount pretty quickly.
Using a service like Ninja Outreach can help you with making sure your outreach is done compliantly.
Making your emails CAN-SPAM compliant is really quite simple (most email providers, including MailChimp do this automatically), you just have to include these 7 factors;
- You must allow people to opt-out/unsubscribe.
- When they do unsubscribe, you must honor it.
- You must make it clear who you are (at least Andrew has this one nailed).
- You mustn’t have a misleading subject line.
- If you send an ad, you must make it obvious that it’s an ad.
- You must include your physical location (this is where Andrew falls over).
- Be wary of third parties and monitor them if they send emails on your behalf as you’re still responsible for what they send.
See, it’s not that difficult, even Andrew has most of these covered, but the BIGGEST and most obvious one is the physical location.
The main concern is that Andrew just mentions that he’s “from” the company and so may be at risk of getting the company in trouble – oops!
I’m not the kind of person to report someone like Andrew for something like this, but you can bet your ass there are people out there that would.
So how should Andrew’s outreach email look?
Here’s my redraft of Andrew’s email given all of the points I’ve made above – but again, emails like this are purely templates and should be used as such.
Authenticity in email outreach truly comes from writing your outreach email in your own style with your own words using a template strictly as a guideline.
“Hi Tom,
I’m Andrew from Andrews Co.
I came across your blogging resources page: http://blogtrafficbuilder.com/blogging-resources/ , and I thought it was great.
At Andrew’s co, we’ve created some really cool cheatsheets about online marketing. This one in particular is about blog traffic, and has already received thousands of hits since it was published.
Here it is: https://andrewshamelesslink.com.
I was wondering if you would be interested in sharing this cheatsheet with your audience? We’d really appreciate it, and I’ve already taken the time to tweet your blogging resources page to our followers.
If not, no hard feelings, just let me know and I won’t message you again. Thanks!
Andrew
www.andrewsco.com
Andrews Co, #1 Andrews RD, Andrews City, Andrews State, ZIPCODE, USA”
See how I added at the end that Andrew had ALREADY done something for me, and so I’m now exponentially more likely to do something for him?
That’s what turns a solid fail campaign like Andrew’s into a 33% conversion success like some of my previous campaigns.
If you follow the points in this article, I’m 100% certain you’ll see more success from your email outreach campaigns.
Don’t spam. Don’t be an Andrew.
Email list subscribers are the biggest asset for any blog or online business. They’re your qualified sales leads. It’s much easier to build relationships, generate regular returning traffic and make repeat sales to your list subscribers as compared to normal visitors. It is a high priority to know how to grow an email list.
Despite the emergence of social media and other marketing channels, email marketing is still an extremely effective way of reaching your prospects.
Just look at some of these stats
- 66% of online consumers in the US, ages 15+, made a purchase as a result of marketing emails.
- 91% of consumers check their emails at least once a day.
- Over 70% of mobile purchasing decisions are influenced by promotional emails.
So how do you take advantage of this?
If your answer is email list building, you’re only partially correct.
Okay, so I know that title contradicts itself. How can paid advertising be free? And how can you use it to grow your email list?
Well, the answer is pretty simple – and today I’m going to show you how I’ve earned over 100 new email subscribers for free in the last couple of weeks with a pretty straightforward method.
Recently I decided to experiment with Google AdWords as a way to pick up new subscribers. Upon doing so, I suddenly remembered that I had unused ad vouchers in my hosting account.
These coupons are very common with hosting providers, and if you sign up at BlueHost, they’re included with your package. If you already have a self hosted blog, you probably already have one – so go check your dashboard now!
But why do they just give away money for their ad program? The real reason is that they want you to use it, be successful with it, then spend actual money on it.
Really, it doesn’t cost them anything when you think about it.
If you can exercise a little self control, and combine it with a dab of efficiency, then you can use these ad credits to your advantage to get free traffic.
Where that traffic goes is up to you, but if you can target it to an email subscription offer – like this one – then you can seriously grow your email list. For free.
Of course, if you’re really successful, and know how to make money from your blog, there’s no reason why you couldn’t use this method to generate subscribers with your own money.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Step 1: The Traffic Target
The first step is an obvious one. There’s no point getting this traffic, if you don’t have anything to offer those people when they get there.
I find that the best landing pages are a simple offer of a free download – usually an eBook, a resource or anything else that a visitor can download in exchange for an email address.
Here is an example of where I send my traffic.
You see how I have a simple proposition for my visitors? It’s free and possibly solves an issue they’re having.
There’s so much depth we could go into here about building the perfect landing page, split testing and optimizing your landing pages – but for you to try this method, you really don’t need to be an expert.
Just make it obvious what problem you are going to solve, and have an easy to use subscription form and download process.
Make a page (you can copy mine if you like) that you would be confident in sending traffic to from anywhere.
Step 2: Getting The Ad Code
Before you get going with Google AdWords, you need to get your ad code.
BlueHost makes this easy – as it’s right there on their dashboard.
Click the button and follow the instructions to get your ad code.
Step 3: Get Set Up On Google AdWords
Head to Google AdWords and start an account.
You can use your Gmail account (cmon, everyone has at least one!) or any other email you like.
Fill out Step 1 with your information, and then you’ll be taken to this screen:
Click on “Switch to AdWords”. Google has a platform now called “AdWords Express” which is geared towards small businesses and beginners, and is the default option when you first start an account.
However, AdWords Express is mainly automated, and is a surefire way to blow through your budget with minimal results.
Also, AdWords Express is based on your location and targets a specific radius. So unless you’re a town/city specific blogger, then there’s not much use in you using AdWords Express.
The next step is to create your ad!
I usually set a budget of $10-15 per day. This ensures that your ad runs for at least one week (if your ad credit is for $100 like at BlueHost) – don’t worry, you aren’t going to be actually spending any real money!
Next, you’ll need to pick your target location, network and keywords.
I usually target all countries and territories. However, if you are specific to one continent, country or even city; then pick that place.
For the networks, I usually pick just the Search Network. This means that you only show up on Google’s actual site. If you select search partners, you will show up in other places as sidebar ads and so on.
I use Long Tail Pro (full post on how to get keywords coming up next!) to generate all my keywords, but Google AdWords does actually offer some decent suggestions.
At this stage, you can add as many or as few as you want, and since you’re spending free money you can test how each keyword performs and play around with different settings.
This is a great opportunity to learn how to use Google AdWords, or to test out keywords and parameters for an upcoming project before you start playing with actual money.
Here are the keywords I used for this particular campaign. Note that I’ve narrowed them down from a much longer list so that I’m only using the top performing/most economical mix of keywords.
This is the full list right now, but I’m chopping and changing and optimizing it on a daily basis (and you should do the same):
| blog traffic rankings |
| how to grow blog traffic |
| how promote blog |
| how to get traffic to your blog fast |
| how to check blog traffic |
| how to promote the blog |
| how to get traffic on your blog |
| how to get visitors to my blog |
| how to promote blogger blog |
| increase traffic on blog |
| promoting your blog |
| how to get traffic on my blog |
| traffic on blog |
| how to create traffic on your blog |
| how to promote blog |
| how to boost blog traffic |
| promote blog posts |
| get traffic to your blog |
| blog traffic tips |
| improve blog traffic |
| how to get more traffic on my blog |
| how to get more traffic to my blog |
| get more traffic to your blog |
| how to increase blog traffic |
| where to promote blog |
| buy blog traffic |
| grow blog traffic |
| how do i get traffic to my blog |
| how to gain blog traffic |
| how to increase blog traffic for free |
| promote a blog |
| how to increase blog views |
Notice that all of them are people looking for ways to get blog traffic; and what does my landing page promise? An eBook telling you how to get blog traffic.
It’s exactly what they expect to see when they click that link.
To start with, you should let AdWords pick your bid amount. This will ensure that you are competitive with bids and actually get shown for your keywords. If you decide that it’s costing too much or the keyword isn’t working for you, you can simply pause that particular keyword later on.
Next you need to create your ad.
This is one of the most important parts. You need to offer a proposition to searchers that will entice them, but also give them exactly what they expect on the other side.
Here is my ad:
This asks the searcher the question, and then confirms that by clicking the link they’ll be taken to a page where they can get a free eBook to help solve that problem.
You can create multiple ads and test them if you like. I actually started with 5 different ads, each with varying copy. This one was the top performing, and so I stuck with it for all of my future ads in this campaign.
The next page you’ll be taken to when you click “Save and continue” is for your payment information. Now, you will need a credit card to do this, but remember that this is purely to set up the account.
You can’t actually input your ad voucher code until your account is set up, so this is a necessary step.
Most of these ad credits require that you spend a minimum amount first in order to get the credit. In my case, I have to spend $25 to get a $100 credit.
Make sure you spend at least the minimum amount in the first few days.
This won’t charge you, because in fact, AdWords is set to only charge you when your account gets over $75 OR every 30 days by default. As long as you use your minimum in the first 30 days, and use your coupon before you get to $75 then you’re gravy.
For example, you would spend your first $25, then AdWords gives you a $100 credit, meaning they now owe you $75 to spend on more ads.
If you don’t want to spend any additional money, you simply have to stop the ads when your credit runs out.
Step 4: Use Your Ad Coupon
To use your coupon, click the grey cog in the top righthand corner of the AdWords dashboard, then click “Billing”.
Click on “Manage Promotional Codes” then go ahead an add your code – it’s that simple!
If you don’t want to spend any real money, make sure you monitor your account and make sure you’re not going over budget.
Step 5: Monitor The Crap Out Of It
The final step is to monitor and optimize the crap out of your campaign.
Check your keywords – are they being shown? Are they costing a good amount? Are they performing as they should be? Cut some, add some, test, test, test.
Try different ads with different copy and headlines. Different ads will perform better than others, and you won’t necessarily know why, but all you need to now is which ones work best and stick with what works.
With Google AdWords you can get clicks for as little as $0.10 if you get your keywords right! Combine that with a high converting landing page, and you’ll really be onto a winner.
My ad brought me in 103 new subscribers in just over a couple of weeks.
Another great thing about this method is that you can repeat it. If you have another ad voucher, you can simply create a new account and repeat this process to grow your email list.
Hosting accounts often give out ad credits for Bing, Facebook and Twitter too. As I mentioned before, I highly recommend BlueHost for hosting, and they 100% offer these kind of vouchers.
So that’s the method! What do you think? Let me know if you tried it, and if you haven’t subscribed already please do so using the form below!
