How I Bagged $5 Million In Internet Sales In 5 Short Weeks
Dear Business-Builder,
It's not getting any easier – is it?
If you've spent any time in the trenches of Internet marketing over the past few years, you know precisely what I'm talking about: Those out-of-the-park grand slams are fewer and farther between these days.
Once upon a time, you could just blast an offer – almost any offer – to your customer file or even ice-cold prospect names, then sit back and watch an avalanche of orders come pouring in.
The money was amazing: When one of my clients e-mailed a single note to his 35,000 customers back in the mid-1990s, he raked in $12 million in less than a week.
Ah … the GOOD old days!
Today, that client would kill to get those kinds of results. Like most Internet marketers today, he's working harder and profiting less. Much less.
Why is Web marketing getting so much tougher?
It should be obvious: When Web-based marketing was new – and still relatively rare – just about every one of your prospects and customers read every word of every promotion you sent them.
But these days, even e-mailed sales messages I want to receive are lost among the scores of slimy junk messages that slither into my inbox (while I wrote the above sentence, e-mails from TWO different Viagra companies arrived. No kidding!).
And while all that junk is still finding its way through, overly aggressive spam filters are not only blocking promotional e-mails I've asked to receive – they're even trashing non-commercial e-mails to and from my family, friends and clients!
That's just the tip of the iceberg: The entire Internet is awash with ads. Try to get a report from Weather.Com, or check the stock market on Big Charts: Pop-ups and pop-unders galore!
"It's like déja vu – all over again!"
– Yogi Berra
It was bound to happen. Since the dawn of time, every new marketing innovation and medium to come down the pike has gone through the same response cycle:
Phase #1 – Advent: A small handful of innovative businesses and marketers discover a new advertising medium or technique that proves to be far superior to traditional methods – advertisers' return on investment (ROI) skyrockets …
Phase #2 – Proliferation: Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of businesses and marketers discover the secret and begin using it – ROI begins to flag …
Phase #3 – Saturation: The novelty wears off … consumers, besieged by advertising messages begin tuning out – ROI begins to decline …
Phase #4 – Maturity: With its novelty spent and ROI falling, the once-vastly-superior new medium or technique eventually takes its place as an equal among many in the advertiser's arsenal.
Today, we are clearly in Phase Three of the Internet marketing explosion: The saturation phase. In just about every industry and product area you can name, open rates, click-through rates, response rates – and most importantly, ROIs – have peaked and are beginning to decline.
The days when you could sleepwalk through your Web-based promotions with lousy, hastily written sales copy, unbelievable product claims and beyond-the-pale pricing strategies are vanishing fast.
That doesn't mean Web-based marketing is dying. Not by a long shot. Well-conceived, well-crafted, well-executed Web marketing can still make you rich beyond dreams of avarice.
But Web-based marketing is maturing. And to generate maximum response and ROI in this environment, it's becoming increasingly important to make sure that your marketing strategy, your sales copy and your offer are razor sharp.
It also means that the Internet is quickly becoming recognized for what it really was all along – one of many media through which marketers attract new customers and make their sales.
Here's how thinking about the Internet in this new light
recently made a favorite client
$5 million richer in just 5 weeks …
Several months ago, one of my favorite clients asked me to create a Web-based promotion for a new investment advisory. The service would give daily mutual fund trading advice to investors for the princely sum of about $1,000 per year.
… So instead of beginning with a series of e-mails or even a new Web page (as my client requested), I promptly sat down and wrote a 24-page DIRECT MAIL package.
It's not that I'm contrary by nature – I just had a better idea …
My client had been blasting several sales promotions for other products to his customers every weekday via e-mail, and had been doing it for years. And predictably, response to those promotions had crashed to less than one-tenth of what he had been getting years earlier.
My goal: To do everything possible to make this promotion the exception – to boost response rates and ROI by an order of magnitude.
My strategy: To establish the new $1,000 product in prospects' minds as being head and shoulders above every other product my client had ever offered them. To do that, I would demonstrate the uniqueness and superiority of this new product – and create emotional momentum for it – by making its introduction a gala event.
My tactic: Use every medium available to me over a 5-week period – beginning with the cheapest avenues and proceeding step-by-step to ever-costlier ones – to sell the maximum number of subscriptions possible with a positive ROI.
That would require much more copy than the client usually produced for an e-mail promotion – but it would be worth it.
And beginning by writing long copy – copy containing every benefit, every credibility element, every reason why the prospect should buy the service – would be the best way to make sure that the strongest sales copy available appeared in every contact with our prospects.
Once the long copy was finished, the rest would be easy: I would simply excerpt it over and over again to create my multi-step campaign …
STEP #1 – Pick the low-hanging fruit – cheap: A respectable chunk of my client's customers love him to death and will buy just about any product he recommends. For these wonderful customers, I created an extremely low-cost, multi-step e-mail campaign: A series of short, daily blasts announcing the new product and the reasons why the customer should jump on board right away … re-announcing the new product … asking them why we hadn't hear from them, etc.
Important point: The e-mail medium itself is, in a very real way, a big part of the message. By its very nature – the fact that it is an instant communication – the e-mail medium screams "urgency!"
And it also raises key questions in your prospect's mind:
"Why is this communication urgent?
"Is it because you urgently need to sell me something?
"Or is because I urgently need a piece of information in order to bring value to my life?"
If my prospects perceived that my e-mail messages were just crass attempts to sell them something, my e-mails might be instantly deleted. If on the other hand, my e-mails were perceived as a timely and sincere offering to help the recipient in some way, my sales message would be far more likely to be read and responded to.
And so, for urgency and readership, I began each e-mail with valuable information or advice relating to a fast-breaking piece of news from the investment world. The subject line and opening copy of each blast was new each day – as fresh as each day's headlines – and rewarded prospects for reading my sales message.
Next, I made the connection between the breaking news and the new investment service – and demonstrated how the service could use this new event to generate huge profits for the reader in the days ahead.
And finally, I inserted copy justifying my price and asking for the order.
RESULT: A constant stream of $1,000 orders poured in from these e-mails every day for five, full weeks.
STEP #2 – Get fence-sitters to a "tipping point" Website: While a significant group of loyal customers could be counted on to buy in response to a short e-mail, I reasoned that the short copy would leave at least 90% of my prospects sitting on the fence. To sell them, I'd need longer copy – more reasons to buy now – than could be presented in a five or six-paragraph e-mail.
To tip these prospects off of their perch, I used about half the long direct mail copy I had written about the product (12 pages, of 12pt. type, single spaced), to create an "Urgent Special Report" on-line: A small, cheap Website. And in week #2 of my campaign, I began sending e-mails to the client's customers urging them to click a link in order to read the free report immediately.
RESULT: Order volume increased dramatically as a significant number of my client's customers responded to the simple Website.
STEP #3 – Exploit other low-cost or free media: While my client's Web-based products were extremely successful, he also publishes and mails a monthly print newsletter to some 120,000 active subscribers every month.
Taking my client's urgent recommendation to his customers in print would position this new product in my prospects' minds as being something special – not just another run-of-the-mill product promoted exclusively on the Internet.
So, I simply took the 12-pages of copy from the little Website I'd created … wrote a new headline and opening copy … turned it into a printed special report … and had it inserted in the next issue of my client's print newsletter.
At the same time, I tasked the client's operators to include a pitch for the product on all in-bound phone calls from customers.
And I included an insert offering the free on-line report in my clients outbound welcome packages that new subscribers received.
RESULT: Once again, sales spiked nicely.
STEP #4 – Show up where they least expect you to: Two weeks after the newsletter insert hit my prospects' mail boxes, I hit them again – with the full 24-page direct mail package I had initially created to promote the product, formatted as a free special report or "thank-you" bonus for loyal customers.
After years of receiving ONLY e-mail promotions for these high-priced trading services, my prospect suddenly realized that this must really be different – and therefore better than – anything my client had recommended before.
Reasoning that anyone who hadn't bought probably hadn't read past the headline and lead-in copy, I made sure the first three pages were fresh. Beyond that, the copy was pretty much unchanged.
RESULT: Money was positively rolling in.
STEP #5 – I get tenacious: Two weeks after the 24-pager hit their mail boxes, we stuffed it into an envelope, added a one-page letter from my client asking, "Why haven't I heard from you?" and dropped it into the mail.
Again – the phone rang off the hook.
The final result: The combined effect of e-mail, the Website, the inserts in the print newsletter and two direct mailings had a multiplying effect on response.
When the dust had settled, our multi-channel marketing campaign had sold more than $5 million-worth of subscriptions to the new service in just five weeks – about five times more than we would have sold through an e-mail promotion alone!
Lessons learned …
- E-mail marketing and mini-Websites are merely two of the marketing channels available to you. Challenge yourself to come up with other non-Web based, low cost ways to deliver your sales message … This will position your product as being head and shoulders above all the others your prospects have seen.
- Picking the low-hanging fruit on a house file with ultra-cheap e-mail campaigns first is a smart way to get the ball rolling. But adding promotions in other media – the newsletter inserts, direct mail packages, welcome package inserts, inbound telemarketing scripts – can make hundreds of sales that are normally lost with Web-based marketing alone.
- Compelling "reason-why" sales copy at every step of each campaign is absolutely essential for maximizing response, minimizing cost per sale and can send ROI soaring at every step of your on-line marketing process. Use anything less than the strongest sales copy that could possibly be written means you're leaving big bucks on the table.
Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,
Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™
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Let us know what you think. Or ask us anything. Or offer your own sage advice.
The only rule: RESPECT THIS HOUSE! Postings that contain abusive language and/or personal attacks will be cheerfully VAPORIZED. One cross word and – POOF! – your well-thought-out post will be gone in a puff of smoke.
– Clayton
Comment by Wayne — July 3, 2008 @ 1:57 am
Great article, I’m in the real estate industry and i sell investment properties, I had planned on going straight into a direct mail package, then into the email marketing campaign using a jeff walker style promo wit some killer copy. I like your method though.
Just some quick advice on which way you think i should go with it, if you could be so kind
Wayne
Comment by Kevin Dawson — July 3, 2008 @ 10:12 am
The multi-pronged approach is necessary for the tougher markets we are facing today. Anyone who narrows their approach to one method is leaving too much money on the table.
This also includes not keeping up on the latest techniques for maximum response.
If copywriters/marketing consultants are not taking advantage of every resource available to them in today’s competitive environment, they are shortchanging clients and leaving money on the table.
Thanks for pointing all this out.
Comment by lawton chiles — July 3, 2008 @ 10:40 am
C- you are raising a very important point- the fact that hitting our visitors and community with multi-media messages that are designed to have the highest impact is so key. Video blog…BOOM, then, a few days or weeks later, two or three audios to download, BOOM, a value-packed report…BOOM, a postcard, ect.
The mixing of the media and the power of the message shows people that <i> this must have some greater value</i> to it if they are exposing it to me in different ways like this.
It also suggests <b> movement</b> of the idea, product or service, you are offering, that this train is moving and they are going to get left at the station without a ticket if they don’t move fast.
Thanks again.
P.S- can we use the articles on our blog even if it doesn’t have a attribution yellow sticker at the bottom? Sometimes, I see one and sometimes I don’t.
Thanks,
Lawton
Comment by chris — July 3, 2008 @ 11:36 am
Bingo!
There is plenty of opportunity out there as Clayton demonstrates. As one marketing opportunity window closes another opens. We just need to anticipate the opportunity by ‘flexing’ our brains a little more, straining to ‘look out into the future’.
Find the needs, the continual needs (although those needs may be in more demand at one time than another), have the product and presentation of that product for those needs and then work on conversion tactics…
I’ll stop now before i get too long winded……
Chris
Comment by Jonathon Pugsley — July 3, 2008 @ 11:46 am
Hey Clayton,
Great article, it really hit close to home. I never thought of using methods in this way that you did it in your campaigns. That really makes sense.
I hope to give it a try one day. Thank you for the insightful information.
Jonathon
Comment by deanna — July 3, 2008 @ 11:57 am
Lawton,
Yes, feel free to "steal" any of our articles - even if you don’t see the yellow sticker. All we ask is that you give us full attribution and a link to our home page.
Thanks!
Deanna Blanchard
Copywriter
Response Ink
Comment by Bruce — July 3, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Take it from an old fart like me, you have a real winning combination. Your other commenters have hit the nail on the head… one does have to craft a compelling multi-formatted message these days. Thanks. Bruce
Comment by Marcelino Latorre — July 3, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
This article is like gunpowder, smokin hott -Thanks for the lesson Mr. Makepeace..
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — July 4, 2008 @ 4:29 am
Thanks everyone! Quick update to this nearly three-year-old article:
Our new record using this approach is $10.5 million sales in six weeks (October-November 2007) … and $2.5 million in ONE week just last month!
No brag – just want you to know how powerful this approach really is!
– Clayton
Comment by Mike Hill — July 4, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
As an email marketing expert I can vouch and say that this article is 100% accurate…
Good job Clayton
Mike Hill