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According to Martin Williams from UK Copywriting, email is the most powerful marketing tool at your disposal. But how do you create content that people want to engage with? Moreso, how do you create content that people want more of and will sign up to receive? Read on for expert tips on creating those website assets that have people ‘bouncing on their beds’ to sign up to!
Martin WilliamsUK Copywriting
:/Copywriting for technology companies
Time to get your assets into gear.
5 reasons why email continually defies those ‘email is dead’ myths and 10 irresistible bribes to create a tidal wave of sign ups from great website content.
Call them what you want... assets, lead magnets, gifts, giveaways, incentives. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger refers to ‘Content that’s too good to throw away’, others talk about ‘irresistible bribes’.
However you refer to them, without doubt 2017 is the year of the asset. Your assets are essential.
Why?
Simple - to build your email list.
Why build your list?
Because you’d be dumb not to. Email is by far and away the most powerful marketing medium you have at your disposal.
£1 invested - £38 out is powerful.
It’s true. Campaign Monitor says so.
Maybe that’s why the smartest marketers place email at the heart of their marketing efforts.
Why so powerful?
5 reasons:
- Reach
According to Kissmetrics there are nearly three times as many email accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined? That’s a whopping 2.9 billion.
Massive reach, massive volume too.
Facebook and Twitter combined make up just 0.2% of the number of emails sent each day.
Not including spam. And all the pages viewed on the entire web each day—including images and videos—use only a quarter of the bandwidth consumed by email.
- One to one
Email is incredibly personal - a 1:2:1 conversation. The original and still the best social channel. Focused, direct and free of scrolling social wall interference.
- Email is THE business channel
Still the undisputed champion of B2B communication. Sure you’ll also split your communications across other social channels but ask yourself… where does the real communication happen? The responses that convert? Email of course. Make it a priority.
- Direct and repeated
Direct access to the people’s ‘inner sanctum’ on a repeat basis. Reviewable later and if genuinely useful likely to remain in their inbox for future reference. Make your mails interesting enough and heaven forbid they may even be looked forward to.
- A state of mind
Recipients expect offers. They’re primed.
Less a flurry of Farmville, cats and indignant outrage - more a place where you can share the best you can be and ‘train’ recipients to expect deals. Less quick and frivolous dopamine hit more businessy longer term reward.
You get the idea… email’s great.
It’s the greatest.
But. And this is a supersized but - email’s only as great as your list.
And your list? Your list is only as great as your assets, your lead magnets, gifts, giveaways, incentives, bribes.
It’s a simple equation
No assets = no list building.
Sorry… you don’t think people will sign up to your blog do you?
Fat chance.
Be astonishingly useful, give them something compelling, bribe them with a must have, beautifully irresistible asset and they might, just might, hand over their email address.
Here are a couple of asset options:
Don’t sell yourself short with a glorified ‘me too’ blog dressed in PDF.
Give BIG.
BIGLY ? (bad joke)
Here are 10 bribes that if sprinkled with sufficient love, organisation and inspiration will have your readers bouncing on their beds to sign up to your website.
- Cheat sheet
Lead from the front with some quick, time saving smarts. A compact, concentrated triple espresso of business bling. Be generous. Thou shalt always kill... with kindness.
Take a look at Marketo or Git Tower - Smartblogger.com share the example of Brown Eyed Baker’s simple cheat sheet on how to measure butter in cups, a technique that has always been a mystery to the average baker. Delicious. - Template
“Something that serves as a model for others to copy,” I always but always use a copywriting briefing document for all my projects. Afterall as Drayton Bird’s Aussie pal Malcolm Auld says there are usually five reasons marketing fails
1.The Brief
2.The brief.
3.The brief.
4.The brief.
And ...
5.The brief
So in truth I’m missing a trick by not sharing my briefing doc as a lead magnet on my site.
So I shall share it as a lead magnet on my site.
And you never know. I may even have got around to it by the time you read this.
Do you have a template that could be of use? Share it too.
- Case study
In short - a success story. An ideal platform upon which to tell the story of your success. Hold a mirror to your prospects’ lives and stuff your study full of jeopardy, heroic problem solving, facts, figures, explanations. Case studies are a great way to team up with clients through interviews, classy photography and video even.
Your fundamental message?
Always …you are NOT alone.
- Check list
Atul Gawande is a surgeon and writer. He was flirting with Kirsty on Desert Island Disks in 2015. He’s also a checklist freak. Malcolm Gladwell reviews his book, The Checklist Manifesto here. Here’s the deal - Gawande believes that failure in the modern world is largely because we don’t make proper use of what we know and that checklists are the answer.
People love lists. Even experts. Especially experts Gawande suggests. Especially if lists make their lives easier or make them do their job better or make them more successful.
- Run a training course
Of course. Ambitious though. That said, potentially hugely rewarding.
Peep @ conversionxl.com recently ran one on using tags in Google Analytics. Brennan Dunn runs them on building a freelance business and marketing automation. Marie Forleo runs a time limited video series on the fundamentals of online marketing.
All do it well and all benefit. You might too.
Worth a thought.
- Guide/white paper
You’ve seen them. Hubspot’s bursting to overflowing with tons of gorgeous guides. Less of a commitment than putting together a course. Run them as a series of small chunks of info relating to specific problem solving. Moz and Wordstream do them well too - the higher quality, the higher the value then naturally, the more chance of a signup.
- Webinars
An action packed burst of thought leadership webinars are increasingly popular - the only content medium to package audio, video, and interaction simultaneously. Here’s KissMetrics webinar sign up page. Enticing huh? Brighttalk aggregate loads. - Tools
How might your products or even internal resources translate into tools?
- Widgets, plugins or apps
- Calculators
- Questionnaires or assessments
You’ll know your capabilities and you’ll know the sorts of things your clients might benefit from. Where there’s an intersection think about sharing a tool.
- Infographic
Poor infographics, they used to be the ‘go to’ device. So much so that their effect crushed under the weight of their ubiquity. Too often, too obvious, too cutesy, too meh.
That said, smart infographics, smart graphical representation can be an incredibly powerful way of sharing information - just take a look at some of the work over at Visualising Data .
Done well, infographics can work really well.
With rumours of their death greatly exaggerated infographics are still well worth a thought.
Can someone just draw me a picture?
- Evaluation
A free health check, a review, an audit, a competitor analysis, there are plenty of ways that you can entice your prospects to move that essential step closer.
Again, be relevant, be generous, be genuinely useful.
Relevant useful generosity like this - a Free Copy Audit.
Your sales copy.
Is it great?
Or does it?
We’ll tell you with a free sales and marketing literature review.
No really… you’re welcome.
So there you have it - 5 reasons why email is still THE best marketing medium and 10 irresistible bribes that’ll create a tidal wave
of sign-ups.
Time to make your prospects an offer they can’t refuse?
Time to get your assets into gear?
Too right. There’s never been a better time.
