The Most Important Email in Your Autoresponder

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It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with another McMethod video session and in this video, I want to talk to you about email number one. This is one of the most important emails in your Autoresponder sequence. Here’s why: It sets the stage for everything to come. If you screw this up, if you mess this up, the other emails are going to be far less effective. If you said the wrong things or you don’t say the right things, people aren’t going to be opening your emails in the future. They’re not going to see you in the right light. This email number one is your chance to set the frame for everything else to come.

Marketing is again largely about frame control. The person with the strongest frame wins. That’s the topic that we get to talk about in hours and absolute hours. Email number one: Let’s talk about what you should be doing with this email. Here’s what I do. Email number one, first I say, “All right. You’re in. Welcome to the family. It’s great to have you. First thing before we do anything else is I want to talk to you a little bit. I want to ask you three things, two things.” It could be anything. “If you have a minute, hit reply and tell me, number one: What is the biggest, most painful problem you’re going through right now in relation to email marketing, in relation to weight loss, in relation to getting fit.” You get the idea.

Question number two, “Up until now, how hard has it been to get an answer to this problem, to this question?” Question number three is, “How would it make a difference in your life if you had an answer to this today? How would it feel?” What you’re really trying to tap into is you want to understand them, what’s bothering them right now in regards to whatever market you’re in; how hard has it been for them to solve a problem and then what would it look like. You’re going to use these insights and you’re going to build those insights into the rest of your marketing. You’re going to get insights on what products you can create; what emails you can write in the future; what sales copy you need to write to make them buy stuff.

After that, I say, “In these emails, you’ll discover …” So I’m setting a stage for what’s coming up. I’m going to tell them, “All right, you’re going to hear about this, this and this,” and I’m teasing them. Instead of saying, “You’re going to head about AIDA, an old advertising formula,” I’m going to say, “You’re going to hear about an old advertising formula that all the gurus use.” I don’t give away the cake. I tease them and I force them to open my future emails. You want to do stuff like this. Another thing you do and this is really important as well is you want to tell them to add your address to the address book. Most people aren’t going to do it, but some people will. This is very helpful for the Gmail promotion step. Once you get dragged across from the promotion step into the inbox, you’re going to hit the inbox all the time. Also, if you can get someone to reply to your email twice, you’re going to start going into the inbox.

All these things in that email, when I’m asking them to reply, that reply is telling Gmail and telling the ISPs that they want to receive, that the subscriber wants to receive my email, therefore Gmail is more likely to put my email in the inbox instead of the promotion step. That reminds me of email number two. In email number two, get them to click a link. Find some way to put it in there a link to your page; it could be a sales page. It could also be an article about something, something helpful that they’re going to want to click on. You’re building this engagement into your sequence so that you’re more likely to end up in the inbox and then later on, at a later date, the more emails you get in there, they’re going to get more open to it. But you do want to cultivate action and cultivate response in your email marketing. So that’s email number one and a little bit about email number two. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder guy and this is the McMethod video sessions.