Last week I mentioned that getting your audience to take action is an immense step towards getting them to buy from you because it gives them confidence in their own ability to achieve something.

Ideally with your help, of course.

There's something else action does.

It breeds more action.

When we receive emails or any communication we tend to mentally classify them into a few distinct piles.

There's a pile of stuff we're going to ignore.

There's a pile of stuff we're going to take action on.

And there's a pile in between. A pile we'll read and take notice of, but not necessarily act on.

Hopefully, your marketing doesn't end up in the first pile. And if you're sending people useful, relevant, interesting information it probably won't.

But there's a good chance it will end up in the “read but don't do anything” pile.

Generally speaking, most people read email newsletters – even great ones – and don't do anything.

They might think “good idea” or “I'll try that at some point”.

But it's relatively rare that they do anything in the next 48 hours directly resulting from the email.

That's not because the email isn't good. It's just that it's not immediately actionable.

That's fine: not every email could or should be immediately actionable.

But if you go for a long time without any immediate actions your readers can take, they begin to see your emails more as entertainment than advice.

Nice to read. Nice to re-affirm their beliefs. Nice to get some new ideas they might do something with someday.

But not emails where they immediately expect to do something when they see your name as the sender.

The downside of that is that eventually, you really do need them to take action if you want them to buy something from you (or get on a call to discuss it).

Because if they've never taken action on any of your emails, then asking them to buy something is a heckuva first ask.

On the other hand, if they expect to take action on your emails then when that action is to click to buy something or to set up a call with you, it's much less of a jump.

Go check your outbox: what was the last email or other communication you sent to potential clients?

Did it have an action in it that was easy for them to do?

What about the one before that? And the one before that?

If you have to go back a long long way before you find something that isn't purely educational and instead suggests an action, you might have a problem.