5 Email Marketing Profit Vampires…

When former Vampire Death Dealer, Selene, fights the Lycans, a breed of part-vampire, part-werewolf, part-human creatures in the Underworld series, there’s all manner of blood sucking involved…

… As there is when sending critical emails to your prospects and customers.

Some PROFIT MONSTERS just weaken your sales message… others outright kill it.

But you can’t afford either!

That’s why you need this information.

You may not be dealing with supernatural beings, but there’s one thing you CAN count on to make money…

… Human nature.

Which means you’re selling to folks with the same burning self-interests, the same desperation to escape pain, the same greed for power, and the same lusts for pleasure.

So… if your online efforts have fallen short and you’re looking for that elusive silver bullet…

… STAY THE COURSE with your email marketing efforts, and read on…

Profit Vampire #1: Pissing People Off!

You probably don’t mean to, but it’s super easy to annoy, offend, and frustrate your audience.

In other words, you can’t barrage people with a bunch of crappy emails and expect they’ll want to keep hearing from you.

No, they’ll hit the dreaded UNSUBSCRIBE button in a heartbeat if you’re an annoying pest, instead of a welcome guest.  

And you’ll drain the lifeblood out of your persuasion.

What you CAN do instead is provide a “secondary reward” in your message.

Here’s one example of how it works.

Let’s say you’re telling a joke at a dinner party with a bunch of friends.

You might start out with a line like…

“A guy walks into a bar…”

Of course, you’ve now set the stage and everybody knows what’s coming.

But what’s unspoken in this scenario is that you’ve made a secret agreement with your friends.

The deal you’ve brokered is that they’ll put up with your amateur comedy routine… IF… you’ll entertain them along the way to delivering a knee-slapping punch line.

It’s what we alchemists call, “secondary reward”… which means delivering some sort of positive feeling your subscriber enjoys as a result of hearing from you that day.

Whether it’s a smile on their lips, hope, a word of encouragement, entertainment, a useful tip, a piece of advice, or wisdom that smooths out a difficulty in their lives.

As long as they feel they’re getting something for their time, you’re golden.

And whether or not the person is in a position to buy something that day, they’re glad they opened your email to spend a couple of minutes with you…

… PLUS, they’re primed to buy from you soon.

OK, now here’s another stake in the heart of flatlining sales…

Profit Vampire #2: Not Making Everything About THEM!

Lately, I’ve seen newbie entrepreneurs (and some veterans) screwing this up royally.

They’re bleeding so badly they need a tourniquet AND a transfusion.

Even worse, the perpetrators like to shout their blunders proudly from the rooftops.

They love their product or service to pieces and start gushing about how wonderful it is, how long it took to make, how slick it works… and they pile on the flowery, self-serving hype.

But it’s disastrous when your emails reek of, “I’m Great!”

Instead, you’re taking it in the neck.

Because the most important commandment of marketing has been violated, i.e….

WIIFM!

That’s short for THE foundational persuasion principle:

“What’s In It For Me?”

Sadly, your prospects and customers just don’t care that much about you or your product.

So don’t talk about what YOU want or how great YOU and YOUR product are.

Everything should be about THEM, and THEIR wants and desires, and what you’ll do the make THEIR lives infinitely better.

Another way to say it is in the words of one of the greatest advertising geniuses of all time, Leo Burnett, who said:

“Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.” – Leo Burnett

It’s hard to believe this ordinary looking guy was named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century by Time magazine… so write down his words of wisdom.

Then review them with every email, because even if you’ve just invented the next iPhone, it’s too easy to fall back into bragging.

 We all have to fight the urge.

Profit Vampire #3: Not Achieving Maximum DENSITY in Your Emails!

Look. Online competition is getting to be like seagulls fighting over a French fry on the beach.

Or like vampires in the ER in New York.

And this next year is predicted to be the worst ever… as the escalating online gold rush continues to lure millions into starting new businesses.

The good news is only the informed survive… the ones on the bleeding edge with information like this.

You can’t afford to be napping.

So how do you make your emails “dense” with persuasion-packing power?

One way is using carefully selected METAPHORS.

And don’t make the mistake of using them to make your emails clever or flowery or impressive.

We don’t give a rat’s derrière about literary value.

We only want to SELL.

But metaphors have untapped power.

When you pick the right one, you compress feelings, images, memories… even smells and tastes… into one simple image that explodes in your reader’s brain.

You can fire off dozens of neural connections instantly and make an impact on your reader that would take pages of sales copy to duplicate.

It’s a much more efficient way to convey and condense information, since a “picture’s worth a thousand words.”

Here are a few from some famous folks:

“Conscience is a man’s compass.” –Vincent Van Gogh

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” –Truman Capote

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.” –Virginia Woolf

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” –Victor Hugo

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” –L.M. Montgomery, from Anne of Green Gables

“She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.” –Mae West

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” –Pablo Picasso  

“A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.” –Groucho Marx

“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” –Walt Whitman

REMEMBER: using metaphors (and similes, and idioms)…is like dousing the boredom vampire with holy water and dragging him into the light of day.

The same goes for long-form sales copy or even classified ads… overarching stories with little story “bursts” of brain-pleasure along the way.

And I’m not making it up about the “bursts of brain pleasure,” as you’ll see in #4…

Profit Vampire #4: Not Hitting ALL the “Addiction” Buttons

Las Vegas knows about vampires, and it doesn’t mind draining you dry.

They know EVERYTHING about getting your money by preying on your weaknesses and addictions.

They know the impact of floor layout, color schemes, money spent per drinks consumed… everything…

… Including the chemicals released when we win.

We’re like Pavlov’s salivating dogs.

AND… we all know about the dopamine addiction that goes with clicking your cell phone… which is as powerful as anything Sin City has to offer.

Here’s what it said in an article in USA today about why we can’t stop:

“The answer is we get a massive thrill from what we are addicted to — a reward called dopamine. Dopamine is a brain chemical that literally makes us happy, and it is released every time we receive something on our phones. It could be a text from a loved one, a ‘like’ on Facebook, or a bit of breaking news we find interesting. Dopamine feels good, so we keep checking our phones, hoping to get a little hit of it.”

The same goes for your emails. The design and structure of your words have the power to alter your reader’s brain chemistry.

In one of his 57 books, Edward DeBono talks about the patterns our brains tend to follow in order to simplify our lives.

He used the example of telling a joke…where at the beginning, we’re moving along an EXPECTED pathway.

For instance, let’s say your mind is heading toward a conclusion… like going from point A to point B.

But something happens along the way…

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, you’re at point C!

And at first you don’t know what happened.

Here’s what DeBono says:

It’s precisely this phenomenon of asymmetry which gives rise to both humor and creativity.

In telling a joke we are taken along the main track. Suddenly we are shifted to the end of the side track and immediately we see the track we might have taken:

“If I were married to you, I should put poison in your coffee.”

“And if I were married to you, I should drink the coffee.”

DeBono calls it a “sudden shift in perception” that initially throws us off balance, but then just as quickly, makes sense again.

And here’s the takeaway.

There’s PLEASURE in arriving unexpectedly at point C.

So long story short, the WAY your email delivers your messages is extremely important.

If it’s flat, boring, and unclear… don’t send it because you’ve just invited a vampire to attach to your own neck.

In other words, you’ll drive business away.

But if your emails pop with pleasure, reek of rhythm, and sing with emotional sensation…

… YOU’RE ON THE WAY TO THE SALE…

You’ve got it made!

BEGONE you blood suckers!

Profit Vampire #5: Ignoring the KILLER Marketing App!

It’s a FACT.

Email is your #1 relationship builder, information deliverer, and sales closer… NOT Facebook… NOT Instagram… NOT Twitter (although they all have their place).

If you’re still not sure, you’d better get a garlic necklace because the vampires will declare open season on you.

Still wondering?

Check out these stats:

• You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet. – Campaign Monitor
• Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. – McKinsey
  
• 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on previous shopping habits were at least somewhat likely to make a purchase as a result of targeted email. – eMarketer
• When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more. – DMA
• Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources. – QuickSprout
• 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media. – MarketingSherpa
• Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social. – Monetate
• A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook. – Radicati

OK. I think you’ve got the ammunition you need to protect your profits from the vampires.

Focusing on email marketing and building your list SHOULD be your #1 priority.

But no matter what, IMPLEMENT this information and you’ll walk confidently, even on the darkest night!