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Should An Email Be Salesy to Sell? · Master The Inbox

• 0:00
  Are you worried that your emails are too salesy? Do you want to sell more with email, but you think that your sales emails need to look in a certain way? I have good news for you, and in today's episode, I'm going to help you overcome one of the biggest misconceptions creators have around using email to sell.
• 0:30
  Welcome to master the inbox, the podcast where creators, coaches and consultants can learn how to sell with email marketing in a non spammy, non aggressive way.
• 0:41
  I'm your host, Monica Badiu, and for the last few years I've been coaching creators and I've been writing emails for creators and this is the most often reaction I get. So you're telling me a sales email doesn't have to look like a sales email for it to convert.
• 1:02
  So whether it's in a coaching session or whether it's a new client, looking at my emails, I always get this puzzled, confused reaction.
• 1:13
  It's like, but I thought this is supposed to look different. So how come it's possible that you can sell with email without being salesy? And when I say salesy, you know what I'm talking about.
• 1:29
  I'm talking about the emails that sound something like, congratulations, you've just received a discount.
• 1:36
  Now make sure you use this discount to save this amount on this course. This is the best course possible and you'll be able to get instant access to thousands of hours of content and join our community of 100 or 1000 or 10,000 happy students. Click the button below to get your savings while there's time. So this is like a very basic version of a sales email. But if you think about it, the only thing that that email has communicated is a very basic sales pitch. There isn't even a lot of mention about what's in it for you if you get it, apart from the discount. So you can write sales emails that don't sound like that, but they will still convert. And today I'm going to share with you a couple of the elements that these other emails have. Now, a sales pitch doesn't have to be punch in your gut kind of thing for it to sell. In fact, the art of selling is an art, which means it's a lot more delicate, it's a lot more discrete, but it's just as effective. Now, there is a question here, and the question is how do you want to make your audience feel? Do you want them feel taken advantage of? Or do you want them feel like you're a partner and you're someone who completely understands what they're going through and you have just like one of the many solutions out there.
• 3:10
  Yes, you're selling your solution and often you also have discounts. But that doesn't mean that you can deliver your pitch in a very salesy or aggressive way. You can gear your message to talk to your audience, to walk them through the different problems they might have so they can see what else is there when they do decide to use your solution to solve their problem or to get closer to achieving their goals. And the idea is this, if your baseline for sales emails is what you're seeing in your inbox, and in most cases is something that doesn't really make you feel good about actually opening that email or even clicking the button to go to the sales page, then it is normal to think that sales emails have to be salesy for them to convert. But once again, you don't have to do things like that. There are better ways to do it. And I'm going to give you some of the pointers of one of these better ways. Okay, so emails that convert, they have a sales pitch, but they're not salesy.
• 4:16
  One of the most important thing is that they don't just talk about the offer, they actually create a conversation with the person who is reading this. And from the first lines, from the subject line, from the first lines of the actual email, the person who's reading that content, they're going to know exactly why they're looking at your email and what's in it for them. And no, we're not just talking about the discount. The discount and the urgency are secondary or third on the list of priorities when you have a sales email because for someone to buy something, they need to understand why and how it helps them. Or at least that's how I do it. Because I would rather people make an informed decision about what they buy rather than just buy stuff because there is stuff to buy. So this is what I do with the sales emails I write for other clients.
• 5:12
  One, I walk people through a journey. This is called buyer journey. And I will go more in depth into this in a future episode. But for now, it's important to understand where your audience is at at the moment they're receiving that sales email because you can't expect every subscriber to be in the same awareness state they were when they first joined your email list. Life happens. They're going to forget about you if you're not regular with your emails, if you haven't done a really good job of positioning your brand in the marketplace and even in the mind of your user. They're going to have a hard time to even recognize what you're all about. So I create a journey. And that journey walks the reader from the assumption that yes, they are a subscriber and yes, they are opening my emails, but they're not in the same problem awareness state as they were when they first joined my email list. So I'm going to start those sales emails talking about the problems, the problems that this audience has at this specific moment. And this does a couple of magical things with your sales emails. Again, it justifies why the reader should be paying attention. Why should they give from their time to read your email and then go to the sales page?
• 6:29
  Because that's the whole idea. So these emails should do this, they should be contextual and they should be relevant and they should walk your reader from problem aware to solution aware to product aware.
• 6:44
  And this allows you to create a very seamless journey where you're not aggressive because you have enough time to pitch in every email in a way that is not in their face. And this leads me to another element of this, like selling with emails without being salesy. So lots of people, they just pitch and run and if they follow up, they maybe follow up once or twice and it's basically the same message. And they do this because they are simply afraid of the unsubscribes, of the hate email, of the rejection. So I totally get why people do that. But when you take a longer time to deliver your self speech and you create this journey of individual emails that walk the reader from, hey, you have this problem, it's march and you're struggling with this and this and this. And you're probably thinking, will I ever be able to achieve my goal of this and this and this? Well, good news, we were able to figure it out and we helped people like you, 10,000 people from all over the world, find an answer to this problem. Now you can learn more about this problem right here. Go check it out. It contains three bonuses. It contains our signature framework for resolving this problem.
• 8:06
  Plus unique selling benefit and a call to action button. So when you take your time to deliver your sales pitch across multiple emails over 3578 days, then that allows you to reduce the overwhelm. You're not as pressured to sell, sell.
• 8:26
  And you can create context, you can create relevancy. You can use a lot of storytelling to draw your reader in because this leads me to another thing.
• 8:37
  So a lot of people think that the role of an email is to sell. They do have that role but at a very specific time in your reader's journey with you. First you need to understand that you can't really sell everything in an email. So if you talk about the 100 different things that your course does, that becomes overwhelming and it switches the focus from why should the reader care to what you think about your brand. So you're not really creating curiosity, you're not really creating any motivation for that reader to just click the button so they can learn more. And that's a missed opportunity. Your emails are supposed to engage. Pick the curiosity and preframe. And when I say pre frame, it's not like, oh my God, preframe them to buy.
• 9:33
  No, it's creating, planting an idea, an expectation, a thought of what would be possible once they do resolve their problem or what is going to be possible when they do get your course. These are like small nudges. And sometimes in the beginning of this journey, your call to actions are not going to be buy. Your call to actions are going to be, yes, show me what's inside. Yes, I'm curious.
• 10:07
  And then you leave your sales page to do the heavy lifting. And this is why we call a sales page a sales page. That's where the purchasing action occurs. Another element of this is how you talk to your audience. A lot of brands are very cold or very informal. The idea is that you can still have the voice of your brand, but you need to talk in a way that is familiar to your audience. So, for instance, if you're a course creator and you're teaching people English, but your audience is made up of spanish natives who don't have a lot of experience with English, who are struggling with their vocabulary, then you need to figure out a way to deliver your sales speech in the most basic form. If you're writing in English, then your emails need to be easy to understand. So avoid using fancy words, avoid using expertise based words that only you understand. You need to adapt your sales pitch and your emails to the reading level and comprehension level of your students and write like you're right next to them and you're having this conversation about the pain point and you're telling them. So what else have you tried? Okay, cool. And what do you know right now? I mean, what's the progress you've made? Wow, that's amazing. Congratulations. You've made so much more progress than you think. So what are you thinking now? What do you want to do in the future? Have you considered trying this solution or this solution? What's keeping you stuck? That's how you create these sales emails that sell without being salesy. The point I want to leave you with is your sales emails don't have to be pushy and they don't have to be based on features and just urgency. Your emails can be compassionate. They can start this like one on one coaching conversation with your audience. And even if they don't buy from that first email, what you've created is so much more powerful than that momentary conversion. You could have just created the beginning of a relationship that could span over years and years and years. Because when it comes to selling, there is a need for trust.
• 12:37
  You need to develop trust with your audience. And I've seen this many, many times with multiple creators across multiple industries. If you don't have trust, if your audience doesn't believe you have the expertise, you have their back. If they don't believe that you are someone they can trust, they're going to buy once, but then they're not going to come back for a second time, which is a shame. Okay, so we mentioned being compassionate.
• 13:07
  We mentioned about not just like pitching and running and creating a journey where you walk your reader through problem aware, solution aware, product aware and all of that. But here's another aspect I want to introduce you to reduce the overwhelm of the expected outcome. Many sales pitches sound like buy this and all your problems disappear. Or don't buy this and your life is going to suck, which is a position of force and control. And you're not allowing your reader to make a decision from a place of tranquility and calm or empowerment. You're using fear mongering at that point, which can work. But I assume you're listening to this podcast because you want to know how to sell within mail in a way that feels good to you and to your readers. So remember that if you're just going to use fear mongering, you're going to get a sale. But that's not going to leave a memory of a nice interaction between you, the brand and the reader. So there is a better way to do this. And this is about being very specific about the outcome and making sure that that outcome is realistic because all your problems are going to go away.
• 14:28
  It's not realistic. You can't really expect to be fluent in a new language after six months of study. And the other part of this is you need to understand that your audience, as motivated and as committed as they would be, they still are not going to invest 20 to 40 hours each week so they can learn with your course, right? You need to be very aware of the conflicting priorities that they have to deal with every single day while they still have a goal to learn something new.
• 15:04
  So if you're going to say, well, you're going to be fluent in six months, while that sounds amazing, it also doesn't sound realistic and creates uncertainty and overwhelm. Because here's the idea, okay, so I'm going to be fluent in six months.
• 15:19
  How much time do I have to put into achieving fluency?
• 15:23
  And what does fluency mean? If you leave it in this vague example, you're going to get some sales, obviously, but you're not going to get people who are committed. And because they're not committed, they're not going to enjoy or actually use the course, they're not going to get the results. So the next time you sell them something, they're going to be like the promise. Sounds amazing, but I haven't even used the last course I bought from them. And even if they tried the course, but they couldn't keep up with the amount of work they had to achieve the fluency goal in six months, they're either going to believe that your method doesn't work, which is damaging going forward, because they're not going to want to buy from you because they have this worry again, or they're going to believe that they are not able. That's a limiting belief, which again, is going to hinder future purchase from these students. So think about what is the outcome you are delivering when you talk about the course and what's the time frame, and then what is the commitment and investment of time and effort and maybe even additional resources your customer should have available if they want to achieve that specific outcome. And this allows your whole sales pitch to become a lot more realistic, a lot more easy to understand, and also a lot more easy to achieve. The other bit is a lot of sales emails only focus on the offer.
• 16:59
  It's like, well, get this offer, get this offer. And then I know you will instantly start to learn the language, you will instantly start to make progress, which could be real, but again, the focus is only on the offer and on the immediate result of what happens when they do purchase your course. And that's good, but don't leave it at that level. Put things into perspective. Talk about the bigger picture.
• 17:29
  So their decision to enroll in your course today is taking them one step closer to achieving their goal of learning French, which means that they are also closer to achieving, I don't know, three other important goals. And those goals are deeper, they're more emotional, and they have a much bigger impact on their lives and relationships and even personal confidence than you think. So when you take it to the deeper layers of what it means for them to re enroll in your course and taking that action to get closer to their goals, you're actually consolidating where your offer is standing in their lives and how important it is that they make that step, because you're basically positioning your course as the stepping stone to achieving those bigger other elements, those bigger other goals they have for them in life. And that shifts everything. Another good way to deliver a sales pitch in an email without being salesy is to simply tackle the objections and the concerns and the misconceptions and the myths people have about learning what you're teaching or actually achieving that on a personal level. And it's important to tackle the objections and maybe even the disbelief even before they go to the sales page.
• 19:00
  And if you have repeated promotions over a couple of weeks or months, that's going to help you test different objections and angles. And some of these are going to feel more painful or more relevant to your audience. And you're going to see that based on open rate, click through rate, and then the actual number of sales that came that day. Now the list could go on and on and on.
• 19:29
  And I know you're thinking, okay, that sounds amazing, but how do I put it all together? Well, this is why I'm including one of the emails I actually write, and you'll find the link to download it in the episode description. And this is one of the emails that I send at the beginning of a sequence. It delivers on all of these elements we talked about, which is context, relevancy, why it makes sense for your audience right now. What's the problem they're currently facing? What's the opportunity? So, like the bigger picture perspective there, this email also taps into the idea of creating curiosity and leading them into the page to learn more. So you'll find that again. You'll find the link into the show description. It's monicabadyou.com freebie. And you'll find it there. So here's what I want you to do right now. It's a reflective exercise. So think about a moment when you had the sales experience that made you feel bad about yourself, about your decisions, but you still bought it. Try to remember the circumstances. Was it an email? What did that email say? How did they get you to click and go to the sales page? Was it through scare tactics? Were they focused too much on fear of missing out? Were they tapping into your limiting beliefs about what you can do and then using that against you. Now think about sales moment. When somebody sold you something or you bought something and it was a good experience, you felt hurt, you felt mirrored, you felt understood. You felt really like deep down, that this, what you're going to take, is the best thing you could do for yourself at this moment in life. Because that's what we're aiming for. You can do emails, like in the first example, fear mongering, or you can do it in a way that feels good, like you can feel it in your body. That decision you're taking is right decision. Thanks for tuning into master the inbox, the podcast where creators, coaches, and consultants come to learn how it's possible to sell with email marketing in a non spammy, nonaggressive way. I would love it if you'd help me spread the word. So share this episode with a friend, leave a comment, review, or follow on all your podcast platforms. Because I think more brands need to know that email marketing can be done from a place of love rather than fear.