Web Podcast - Episode 35: Why You Should Use Email Automation

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Hey guys, Episode 35 today and we're talking about email automation.

So email automation is basically where we're automatically sending emails to people, keeping in touch with them and following up with them for jobs or making sure they're happy with our product of service. It takes out the manual labor we would normally do; typing up an email to someone and sending it. Now the beauty of automated emails is; the email looks like it IS from you even though it's still generated by a computer, so don't think of anything all fancy and design or all flash; no! It's just plain text in an email, looks like it's from you, it's signed off by you at the bottom - Kind Regards, Matt Reid, whatever your name is. And then it's sent to the client and they get it and they think it's a legitimate email from you, and it IS a legitimate email from you but the thing is you didn't actually write it, it was automatically sent from the computer.

So if you do fifty quotes in a month for example; how much time would you spend sitting there sending out fifty emails once a we--well every week, fifty emails following up those quotes or calling those fifty people once a week and saying "Hey, how you going?", "Do you still need a hand?" or "Do you have anything I can help with?" or "Is the quote okay?" or "Are you happy with the product we're supplying?", blah blah blah. This takes away that, this automates that process. Now what I'm saying is; don't sacrifice phone calling people and following up... still do that, but add in conjunction with that your email follow-ups. So you do a quote for someone, obviously you're best to still give them a phone call a few days later over a period of a couple of times, but if it feels abit cold and they're not really getting back to you; just keep your email automation going. So you'll setup an automatic email that goes out maybe once a week, once every two weeks, once every three weeks and just saids "Hey Bob, how you going?" "We did a quote for you for a new kitchen (for example)...awhile back" "Just seeing if you still need a hand". Now does this work? Damn-well does work! I use it in my business, I set this up for my business, myself about 2 years ago and I often have great success with these automated emails because I have people that actually come back to me a year later and they go "Um, Matt, we're actually ready to do that job now" "You're the only one who's actually kept in touch with us". Now obviously I haven't necessarily been manually emailing them but the beauty of the computer does it for you. So email automation really is there to help automate your sales process, and get new customers on board. Now, I'm not just talking about following up new clients or new potential jobs, you can also use it--and I more-so actually use it for following up my existing client database. So every 30-60 days I'll send out all of my clients a message saying "Hi John, Just seeing how you're going and if you need a hand with anything and..." blah blah blah. Just a nice, personalized follow-up email. And hey, probably 60-70% don't say anything and that's fine, that's good - I know everything's ticking along fine. But the 30% do reply, generally are always saying "Yeah, good thanks Matt" "Um, could you do this job for me?" and have a think about it guys; what does a new job mean? More income. So if you use email automation to keep in-touch to your existing customer database, then you're going to find you attract more repeat work from your customers.

Now, I've told you many times (if you've listened to my other podcast, and you've probably read it elsewhere), it's much easier to sell to someone who's already purchased from you before. So, you could go and spend $500 on a--well not even that, probably more than that; $1000 on a radio campaign or they go and spend $800 on Google AdWords advertising, or maybe they go and spend $500 on a little quarter-page ad in a magazine, or they sponsor an event for thousands of dollars to have their banner up on a wall. Businesses spend so much money tryna' get new business, when really if they spend that money on actually looking after their current customers and even just selling to their current customers (which pretty much cost nothing), they'd get more business. And by adding value to their existing customers; they'd actually attract more sales because they'd get alot more word of mouth. Where-as with all these business owners out there and they go around and they do a job, they give the invoice and you never hear from them again. There's probably, in my own personal experience; I've probably had maybe 5% of people I've ever dealt with actually follow-up with me and go "Hey Matt, is there anything else I can do for you?", and in probably 40-50% of those cases I would of said "Yes! actually I would like you to come and do this for me" or "I would like to buy this from you", but people don't do it! Everyone's mindset's based around in business "Oh, I got to sell to this new person, I've got to sell to this new person" and yes you do need to diversify your customer database, you don't want to focus on only two or three clients because if one or two of those clients leave then you're in trouble. But I'm talking about; looking after your existing clients and reselling to them again, so it's important you keep in touch with your existing customer database and hey!--You might find you only get 5% of them actually say "Yes, I'd like you to come in and do something else". But think about it; email automation cost next-to-nothing, in some cases I think you can get it for free. I've built my own system that you guys can have a free trial on and use but, there's lots of systems out there that do it and what you can go and spend $100 on Google Ads and get maybe one or two leads through the door only to find that your price's too expensive and they're getting quotes elsewhere. You don't want to waste time with that. Where existing customers, they're warm they're hot they're ready to go, and better yet; their referrals are ready to go aswell.

In business (take it from me) I've had plenty of word of month referrals come to me and say "Oh Matt, we heard you do websites and..." blah blah blah. "...and we want this and we want that, and where do we sign and get started?" They don't even ask me for the price, not that we're expensive at all; we're pretty well priced but, 'they're ready to go!' But then you get people and you guys might relate to this; you get people on Google Ads and they want to use your services, but again; "Sorry, we're actually getting multiple quotes, and we're going go for the cheapest option because that's obviously the best option"--when it's clearly not. But, anyway that's a different story. So, that's what you want to look after guys; you want to promote your word of mouth - your clients and promote word of mouth referrals because word of mouth is obviously free.

Now, what you want to do is; you want to setup 'sale automation' - you want to setup different types of emails that go out to people. So follow-up emails is what I spoke about before but you can also do other things; you can setup sale automation where a customer gets a follow-up after you've done a project for them. Let's say you've built them a new deck - you're a builder; you've build a deck for them, you can setup sale automation that goes out a week after the job, a month after the job, six months after the job, maybe even twenty-four months after the job. The 24 month email could be one saying "Hey Bob, we've built that deck for you two years ago, just checking it's algood, do you need it stained, do you need it painted?" "Have you found that you need maybe new benches?" or "...a new style of fencing put up, (do) you want glass panels around it?"--I don't know any of this stuff but you know what I mean? Keep in-touch with them, it's not even necessarily just the thing to say "hi" a week later, you can do it twenty-four months down the line, you can do it thirty-six months down the line. Just set-up the rule and then it does the job for you you don't have to be doing anything. Next minute you'll get an email two years later from--hopefully from Bob saying "Yes, I actually would like some--I've got a bit more money now, I'd like some nice glass paneling around my deck outside". So that's what you wanna do; you'd want to setup emails that go out and follow-up on projects. And what I've found in my businesses aswell being a service-based system is where we--people come to us for little jobs here-and-there throughout the month; is doing an email that goes out just before the end of the month and it saids to people "Hi, how are you?" "Just seeing if the work we've done for you this month was satisfactory or if there's anything you're still waiting on". Because you'd get sometimes people--yeah, and I'll happily admit to it, you'd do all this work and you'll find you've missed something and then you'd invoice the customer and they'd come back and they'd say "Actually, this wasn't done properly Matt" or "You haven't actually finished this piece off yet" or "This is not what I meant". That's where those emails are great because before you end up invoicing them and doing all your paperwork; the customer can say--well most of them always say "Yes! Thanks Matt, it's algood everything's mint; thank you", but you'd get the one or two that actually say "No sorry, you have missed this" or "This hasn't been done yet". You can follow-up, get it done before the end of the month so when you bill them it's all sorted. So that's just a another little one there guys um, that I've personally integrated probably a month or two ago now. And it's been real helpful.

And then finally there's the 'up-sell emails'. Like I was saying before; you can sell to your existing customers, don't do it too often but just keep in mind that every now-and-then you can flick them an email, flick an automated email out that saids--try and sell them something that's specific to what they have. So if they do Google Ad's offer them perhaps a special campaign setup fee; "We're doing campaigns for half price this month". Or if you're a mechanic you might up-sell them and send off to those customers at winter time an automatic email saying; "Hi Paul, you're a VIP customer of ours and we'd like to offer you a free winter checkup for just $50" or a free winter checkup, whatever it might be if you can; obviously depending on what business you get through the door. But you can send up-sell emails to people and you'll find it's easier to sell to them than the advertising I ranted about before.

In my business I'll up-sell to people and I'll up-sell things like; Google AdWords or I'll up-sell even little things like; Hosting Upgrades or SSL Certificates lately, just little up-sells that you can sort-of put a little bit more money in the bank for the month by selling more to your customers. Now, I'm one to hate it and I'm sure you are too, we don't want to bombard our clients because you can send them too many emails and it starts to piss them off, excuse my french. So make sure when you do it, you really only do it max maybe once a week or really even once every two weeks, and if you are sending them often; try and also combine just more generic emails in with them which you can do through MailChimp - more informative emails like "These are the 5 trending designs at the moment" or "These are the two new products just released that you might be interested in" or "Your website's not performing because of this, this and this" or "Your website is performing because of this, this and this" or "Here's 5 new laws that you need to take note of because your business falls into this industry which is affected by these law changes". Give people free, informative information that they can utilize, don't hold back, don't worry about people stealing or getting free info - that's just irrelevant. Be the leader in your industry and give information out to people where they require it and you can do that through email automation, because obviously you don't want to sit there, every night sending 50 emails out to your customers giving that specific information. You can just sit down, one afternoon--one Sunday afternoon and say "Okay, this is all of the stuff I'm gonna do, these are all the templates I'm gonna write out for my follow-up projects, these are the up-sell email templates" and then you can just schedule them to all of your existing customer database and schedule all of them new one for your quotes that are outstanding perhaps, and you can start getting people through the door on those.

And finally guys, another one that I like to use is a 'happy birthday email'. If you do get people's birthdays you can setup an automated email that goes to them on their birthday; it looks like it's from you (sounds abit deceiving)--looks like it's from you and it's saying hi, how are you...James, I'm making all these names up "Hi, how you going James? Happy birthday, hope you're having a good day, hope your not working too hard, kind regards - Team @ (whatever your company name is)" and people I find to respond to that all the time and they appreciate it.

Anyway guys; that's alot to digest there, but give email automation a go. I've got a few of my clients using it already, but not enough people understand it really, to actually know the true benefits of it. So, if you have used email automation before that's great. If you've not, go to my software company website I own which is 'zulusys.nz/priority-trial' and that'll give you I believe a two or three month free trial (I think it's three month trial) and give it a go. Sign-up there and if you need a hand I'd happily give you a hand getting it setup, but you can basically import all your customers into there, import all your contacts, import all your leads and prospects and you can start setting up, right now some email templates that can start going out tomorrow and getting you more business, and making your customers more loyal to you.

Anyways guys, that's Matt from the RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast and I hope you enjoyed it, Cheers.