Email marketing is a huge and profitable tool for the sales process and feeding qualified prospects into your sales funnel.  How you go about building an effective email campaign is as important as what you choose to offer at any given time to your list. You never want to alienate anyone from your mailings if you plan to harvest that list for financial gain repetitiously.

The key is building a segregated list for a particular campaign is to first qualify those on your list for whatever you are wanting to offer.  This is done through a well written email campaign.  An effective email campaign builds the credibility of what you are doing to your audience without actually pitching them on the product or service directly.  If you want an effective email campaign to do this, you will want a short series of educational mini-infomercials, using the EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) approach as the way you educate and inform your audience.

HINT: Bookmark the following link for future reference. It will allow you to refine almost every sentence that you write to someone for any campaign that you do, but use it especially in your subject line for maximum affect. http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

When considering an email campaign, determine exactly what you want to see happen in detail by writing it out. If you can verbalize it articulately, you can better structure an effective strategy to accomplish whatever your goals are for your campaign.

I recommend looking at every email campaign as a business in and of itself – a stand alone entity. This way you begin to see it from a business professional’s perspective, and as such will do the due diligence to plan things out. Planning points for an email campaign include:

• Vision for campaign - The best place to start is by writing the vision you have for your campaign as you see it in an ideal world. The vision is the big picture navigational tool for your project.
• Campaign’s mission statement - Write out the mission statement for your campaign. The mission statement is the daily guiding light that keeps you focused on what you need to be doing daily to stay on course with your goals to accomplish the vision you have for your company, i.e. in this case your mailing campaign.
• Title of campaign – This is an internal name for filing and retrieval purposes.
• Goals of campaign – Be articulate in what you are wanting to accomplish in your campaign, considering as you write out your goals, how your campaign might affect the relationship you have with the individuals on your contact list .  If a campaign has the potential to alienate your contacts from future campaigns, refine your campaign goals so that you do not damage relationships by setting goals too high.
• Outline of campaign messages – Every email message you send has a purpose.  Each one is to build upon the previous one and take a prospect through a logical, but emotionally engaging process, i.e. Emotional Marketing Value.

–> Rapport building – This is where you reconnect and determine a level of interest which might include an opt-in option to further protect your prospect from unwanted email for your campaign, i.e. “I have something that I am working on and am really excited about that I think you might appreciate.  Before I sent you more information, I wanted check and see if you are open to learning more about [state subject, i.e. "a way to eliminate your grocery bill"]. Would something like that interest you? If so, please click the link below to learn more that says, “I would like to learn more about eliminating my grocery bill.”
–> Background of issue – This is where you share how you came to learn about it, why it was intriguing to you, a little about the company or product and why you are recommending it or suggesting they take advantage of it.
–> Education on issue – Address any statistics surrounding the product or service or purpose of your email, i.e. a charitable cause, relief effort, or general information on why what you are sending them information on is important to them.
–> Compelling purpose or reason – This is where you engage them personally on how important what you are doing is or what you are offering is to their success and why. You MUST connect emotionally on as many levels as possible. I was once told that if you can make a person get angry, be inspired, cry, and laugh in the same time frame that statistically the prospect will be much more likely to identify with  and commit to a course of action with you.

• Campaign pre-close – This is the foundation laying for your close. It addresses the personal benefits, the potential impact, and the promises you can offer them if they are willing to consider your offer seriously.

–> Benefits – This is where you clearly point out the benefits to them personally of what you are offering or sharing  to them personally.
–> Potential – Expounding upon the potential that will come from their positive decision to be involved or to act upon a specific course of action is vital, in that they need to see not only immediate need or desires being met, but also how it will affect them in the long term as well.  This helps avoid any suspicion of what you are doing being only a short term fix or short term endeavor with you, if the natural process of things in your offering should allow for a long term benefit.
–> Promise or guarantee – This is where you bring assurances that what they are doing will make a difference in their lives and the lives of those they care about or love or feel loyal to, and/or where you state guarantees if any that you can offer or promises that you are willing to make that you can keep no matter what happens should something go wrong or not turn out well for them.

• Campaign close – This is the systematic, logical and emotional appeal to your prospect for responding to your offer.

–> Call to action 1 – This is when you first present your offer and ask them to commit or to take action.  Like every email in the campaign pre-close, you will have the link to your sales page.
–> Time limit – Establishing a time frame for a person to act will generally place a subconscious imperative upon them which will push them to think through all that you have said or shared with them to date.
–> Sense of urgency – People typically procrastinate by nature. If you provide them with a sense of urgency as to why they should act NOW and not wait, they tend to respond more quickly.  I am not talking about manipulation or subliminal mind control tactics here, but simply sharing the understanding and wisdom of why acting now instead of later makes sense to them logically from an intellectual point of view.  People (well, most people) are not idiots, so they will know if you are trying to do the shady used car saleman’s push to buy.
–> Call to action 2 – This is a reiteration of the benefits, the potential, the promise or guarantee, and a renewed sense of purpose as to why their involvement is good and why their lives will be improved because of their decision. You want to appeal to their intellect, but on a ‘spiritual’ level.
–> Special incentives to act – If appropriate, this is where you make an initial special incentive to act on your offer. It might be something like a free eBook or study course, or maybe free coaching or an extended warranty.  It might be special discounts on something of great value that you know they would be interested in. Whatever you use, make sure you can fulfill your commitment to deliver what you say you will give them.
–> Reiteration of benefits, potential, and promise or guarantee – In this email you will provide an emotional hook and appeal to their feelings about their decision and how it will make them feel. You want to appeal strongly to their emotions, whether it is the fear of loss or the great hope of gain, it must have an affect on their emotions in a way that leads them to see that what you are offering is good for them, good for others, and a meaningful positive event in their lives.

•  Final call to action – The compressed overview and direct engagement for their response to your call to action.

–> Added incentive – If you have it, this is where you roll out the big guns, throw in the kitchen sink, your girl friend’s cat (or boyfriend’s dog that terrorizes your cat).  Give them a compelling offer that really is just too good to pass up – based of course on what you know about them and their needs. Remember…. it is ALWAYS about fulfilling our prospect’s needs and desires, and not our own.
–> Final offer – This is a recap of your entire offer in bullet point format with a final time table and final price within that time table, and your final promise and guarantee.  This is not a beat you up until you buy session, but the well outlined point by point of your entire campaign and why it is good for them to act.

• Campaign follow-up maintenance – This is the prospect protection process that allows you to ease any unspoken tensions, any unspoken objections or criticisms either of your campaign or of you and what you do.

–> Thank you – Whether they buy or not, you ALWAYS follow up with a message of thanks and reassurance of your loyalty to them, their success, their cause, or their needs always being a top priority to you. This smooths out any rough edges to your interaction with them.
–> Inquiry and prospect assessment of offer – This is a survey that allows for constructive criticism to be shared. If you have a prospect that you have been nurturing and being of benefit to through your regular correspondence in the past, they will most likely be willing to help you better understand why they did or did not buy, or why they did or did not act – let’s say for a fundraising campaign, a political call to action or community outreach. This lets you assess your progress in the relationship with your prospect and if they are increasing in value or decreasing.

• Campaign redirect – This is where you get your prospect pointed to something else that is free and valuable to them, so that you can keep your communication open with them.

–> Maintenance campaign for relationship – This amounts to a continued interaction with your prospect on a regular basis where you do NOT offer anything to them but your ongoing growing effort to build the Know, Like, and Trust Factor in your relationship with them.  It might be funny photos, a video link, maybe a recipe for a new dish you tried or a shout out for someone else that you are not directly profiting from.
–> Something of value for free for their benefit – After a few weeks of even a month, send them something of value that they can benefit from.  The benefit need not cost you anything. It could be a mail forward on a Groupon or LivingSocial offer, or a link to a freebie that you just took advantage of.  Anything of value that they would appreciate from you or that would help them in their success – personally or in their business, whichever is applicable.
–> Interim updates on your original offer – This is a revisit to your original offer to see if their circumstances or opinion has changed on the subject.
–> Interim invitation to learn more on original offer – This is where you might share some updates on your offer and why the updates are important to them or have become a game changer based on their feedback about the offer in the beginning, i.e. the price, the benefits, the guarantee, the improvements, etc.

• Campaign assessment and evaluation – This is an internal process that you conduct with your campaign to see where the road blocks or obstacles popped up in the process that kept you from being successful with each prospect or your list as a whole.  It includes examining your campaign opt outs and when they took place in your campaign, as well as video presentations and where a prospect stopped watching.  It also includes your objective findings from direct interaction with your prospect to determine what it was that made them say no to your offer or postpone their taking action.
• List refinement – List refinement is most important to any serious email marketer that does not want to lose contacts or alienate potential customers from future interactions.  It is where you sort your list based on updated understanding of needs, wants, desires, and financial buying strength. This is what will allow you to get the highest rate of return on your marketing campaigns, and allow you to build a very strong and lasting brand for yourself, your company, your cause or organization.

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