Studies have shown that people need to hear from you 5-9 times on average before making a purchasing decision.
But, how many of us actually connect with people that many times before we get frustrated, give up, or lose track?
Email is a great way to warm people up to the idea of your offer, but you can’t hammer them over the head with it. Let’s imagine that you’re selling paperclips, and somebody signs up on your website to get your e-book or request more information. Chances are that you’re going to put them on a follow-up autoresponder. That’s great — Step 1 is complete, and you’re on the way to making sure that this lead doesn’t slip through the cracks.
There are two common mistakes, however:
1) You set up your autoresponder to tell them about your amazing 2 for 1 paperclip offer, and you tell them about it in every single email, sent every two days over a two week period. This strategy will undoubdtedly fail. If all you do is tell them about your offer and nothing else, they’ll stop reading your emails after two or three, and you’ll never connect with them enough times to get to the purchase decision.
2) They receive and read all your emails, but then you don’t do anything else. Let’s imagine they’ve received all your emails and like what they’ve read. You’ve included information about how paperclips can change lives, some anecdotes about funny things to do with paperclips, and peppered the emails with a few mentions of your amazing 2 for 1 offer. Now what? The next step to getting to a purchase decision is probably a phone call. In your last email, try some wording like this: “I can’t wait to connect with you on the phone to find out more about what your paperclip needs are. I’ll call you sometime tomorrow. If tomorrow isn’t good for you, just email me back and let me know when you’d like to connect.” Doing this gives them the opportunity to reach out to you, and also lets them know you’ll be calling. It’s a win-win.
We know that the fortune is in the follow-up, but that follow-up needs to be varied. Email is great, but it’s a one-way street most of the time. You can use any autoresponder tool to set up your emails to go out, but make sure you monitor where people are, and mix in other activities like sending cards, calling them, or posting on their Facebook wall. You can use the Relationship Builder in Oprius to automate those tasks, and make sure that none of those customers slip through the cracks. If you can automate a few of those 5-9 contacts, you’ll have more time to focus on the two most important ones of discovering your prospects needs and closing the sale.
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