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Revealed: my top 3 performing emails

Posted byIan Brodie on September 18th, 2011.

Being a bit geeky, one of the things I like to do is analyse data. And one analysis I often return to is effective email subject lines.

Now the ultimate measure of the performance of an email is how much new business I get as a result of my emails. But that can be tricky to track down to individual emails.

And in truth, the effect of the emails is culmulative rather than one email suddenly causing someone to pick up the phone and hire me or buy a product.

So what I often analyse is email open rates. What percentage of people who receive each email actually open it. So it's a measure of the performance of the email subject line rather than the email as a whole.

If I look at the emails you've been getting every Sunday from me there are some pretty interesting results that may help you when you're trying to write emails to get them opened by your potential clients.

Generally speaking, email open rates go down over time.

The first time I email someone after they sign up for my newsletter there's a high chance they'll open it and read it. Over time, people's interests and priorities change so the open rates go down.

What I looked for was email subject lines that “bucked the trend”. That got significantly higher opens that the email that preceded them.

Here are my three best performing subject lines using this criteria:

“5 crippling beliefs that keep consultants and coaches in the poor house”

“How to escape marketing overwhelm”

“Business Development romance in practice”

Why did they perform so well?

The first two are obvious, I think.

The first promises to reveal some information on “crippling beliefs” likely to “keep you in the poor house” if you hold them. The language is strong, and the benefit is clear: avoid these beliefs to avoid ending up poor.

The second promises to show you how to avoid a problem I believe a large number of professionals suffer from: being overwhelmed with their marketing. It's likely to hit a raw nerve with many people and again, the word “overwhelm” is a strong one.

The third one is a bit of a puzzle. It doesn't quite fit into the pattern of promising a strong benefit.

My belief is that the high open rate is driven by curiosity. People wondering what on earth “business development romance” actually is.

So three quite different types of subject line. One on avoiding potential pain people could be worried about. One on alleviating pain they could well be already feeling. And one arousing their curiosity.

When you come to write your own emails, see if you can work some of those themes into your subject lines.

And feel free to “steal” my subject lines too and tweak them for your own use. The “5 crippling beliefs” one was actually adapted from a headline on a Copyblogger blog post.

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Self promotion sucks!

Posted byIan Brodie on September 11th, 2011.

I was talking to my friend David Seaman a while back (that's business coach and lecturer David Seaman, not goalkeeper David Seaman) about how difficult it is for most people to promote themselves.

He highlighted how most people have no problem promoting the business they work for or its products.

But when they start working for themselves and selling their services, they feel incredibly uncomfortable about promoting themselves.

A bit of a problem when your business's only product is you and what you do.

Perhaps it's the way most of us were brought up – not to boast or show off. And personally, I've never really got on with people who insist on telling the world how great they are – so it's not something I want to do myself.

So when you are your business, how can you promote it without the discomfort of self promotion?

The answer for me is to create “stuff” and promote that.

Or more accurately, to offer people the value in my “stuff”.

For example, the my 21 Word Email report or the 5 Day Authority Challenge I run.

While I may feel uncomfortable telling people about all the things I could do for them, my track record and my client successes – I have no problem telling them about what's in the report or the challenge and how it can help them.

By focusing on the thing rather than on me, it doesn't feel boastful.

But the end result is the same. If they work through the report or do the challenge, then it's highly likely they'll find it valuable and it will raise my credibility.

In fact, the end result is better. I've proven my expertise, rather than just claimed it.

This is something you can do too if you feel uncomfortable promoting yourself.

Create something that's of incredible value to your potential clients and that proves how good you are and promote that instead.

Much easier. Much more effective.

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Do something different

Posted byIan Brodie on September 4th, 2011.

I did some training a while back for a really good client. And something we did had quite a surprising result that I think we all can learn from.

The area we were focusing on was tenders/RFPs and we used a live example of a proposal they were about to work on to bring the training course to life.

The team did a great job and came up with a theme and approach to the proposal that really hit their customer's hot buttons while highlighting their strengths.

At the end of the course, one of the participants made an excellent point…

“You know, we normally would have just ‘gone through the motions' with that proposal and not come up with half the ideas we ended up including”.

It wasn't that we did anything particularly unusual.

We just analysed their customer's request a bit more deeply and used a couple of frameworks I'd developed for them to draw out what was really driving their needs, and what fears they might have about switching suppliers.

What was important was that we tried something different.

We looked at something they'd essentially looked at a hundred times before – but just with a different lens.

And it made a big difference.

Try it the next time you're working on your marketing.

Look at what you're working on through your customer's eyes. Or your competitors'.

Instead of focusing on problems, focus on aspirations – or vice versa.

Instead of your normal benefit-filled headlines – write copy to invoke curiosity or surprise this time.

Do something different. It can work as well for you as it did for me.

Speak soon,

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How to market like a professional poker player

Posted byIan Brodie on August 28th, 2011.

About a decade or so ago I got a bit obsessed with poker.

For an ex-mathematician like me who then went on to study business and psychology, it's an alluring game. Full of analogies and parallels with business and marketing.

Although I haven't played for years, I still have a huge library of poker literature in storage. Brunson, Sklansky, Malmuth, Caro, Schoonmaker, dozens of them.

And I'm still sometimes reminded of the similarities between poker and business. Here's one that struck me recently.

Stacking the Odds in Your Favour

Perhaps the biggest difference between poker professionals and casual players – the thing that most results in one group winning money and the other losing it – is simply that the pros play less hands.

In the most popular form of poker, hold-em, there's a saying that “any two cards can win”. And while that may be true in exceptions, following that advice and regularly playing any two cards is a surefire route to the poor-house.

Instead, the pros stack the odds in their favour by only playing the best starting hands. They sit out round after round and only invest their precious chips in starting hands they know have a positive expected value (ie. if played often enough, they'll make money).

It's not a particularly clever strategy. It's not a particularly exciting one. But it works. It's the foundation they then build on.

Now,  if you were to watch poker on TV it wouldn't seem that way. Every pro mixes up their game and plays cards you wouldn't expect so that they don't become predictable. And inevitably the TV shows focus on those unusual hands, or hands where a big bluff comes off or someone gets lucky on the river.

But underneath all the fireworks, and the table talk, the pros know the odds and they play them.

Similarly, in marketing, one thing that separates successful rainmakers from those who struggle is they stack the odds in their favour by focusing on prospects with a high chance of becoming clients.

It sounds obvious. But so few people do it.

They don't have a clear picture in their mind of exactly the sort of person likely to need their services.

They go to networking events filled with people unlikely to ever become a client or to refer one.

They advertise in general media or Yellow Pages.

Their website offers nothing of value or interest to the people who would make the best clients for them.

When they ask for referrals, they say they'd be happy to get a referral to “anyone” or “small businesses”. Such broad definitions that they don't get referred to anyone (or worse still they get referred to people never likely to buy from them and so waste their time).

If you want to be successful and productive with your marketing you must invest your time and effort like professional poker players invest their chips: only in the very highest potential areas.

For most of us, our time is a super-scarce resource. Yet so often we use marketing approaches that cause us to spend valuable face-to-face time with people who aren't perfect prospects for us.

The result is not only wasted time for us – it's also a painful experience for both sides.

Don't be like the poker amateurs who play any two cards and throw away their chips night after night.

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My moment of madness (and why it affects you)

Posted byIan Brodie on August 14th, 2011.

I had a weird experience a while back.

I was a bit dissatisfied with my business bank account. I'd been with the Co-operative bank for a while. They're the UKs “ethical bank” which I like – but unfortunately their online banking is just awful and I'd had about enough.

So I made up my mind to switch to a different bank. I planned to set aside an hour over the weekend to look up the different options and choose which one I was going to go with.

Then completely by coincidence, I got a call from Barclays asking if I'd be interested in briefly talking about their business account and the benefits of switching.

It was like they were psychic. Absolutely perfect timing. Just as I was considering a switch.

Now you're probably expecting me to go on and talk about the value of timing. Knowing how to identify when your clients get urgent needs. And how Barclays walked away with my business as a result.

But it didn't work out like that.

When the nice lady on the phone asked if I'd be interested in discussing their business account, I immediately said “no thanks, I'll call you if I need something”.

I couldn't help it, it was a knee-jerk reaction. Pure emotion speaking.

Afterwards I realised just what a strange thing I'd done. I needed a new bank account, someone offered to give me detailed information about it, and I turned down the chance.

Madness really.

Here's what I think was going on inside my head.

The minute someone called me offering to talk to me about something, my defenses went up.

It wasn't her fault. She wasn't pushy. Wasn't salesy. It's a conditioned response these days.

If you call me wanting to discuss one of your products or even how you can “help me” I assume you're trying to sell me something. I assume you're biased. I assume you'll give me a picture that favours your products.

And I know I can find out all the information I need from the web anyway.

You see, the importance of the web isn't just that it allows me to search and find what I want. It's changed my mindset.

Searching myself. Finding information myself.

Where in the old days I used to rely on others to provide me with information on things I might want to buy, now I don't want to hear from them.

I want to be self sufficient. I want to control the process.

There's an old saying in sales: you have to control the process. Control the sales meeting. Control the agenda.

But try that on me these days and you'll be out of the door.

I, the buyer, want to be in control. If you want to sell me anything you're going to have to live with that.

And I'm not the only one.

We're all shifting. We're all growing increasingly suspicious of information we haven't sourced ourselves.

We're all used to being in control and that's how we want our buying experience to be.

You know this. This is nothing new.

But have you adjusted your marketing to respond?

Are you focused on becoming one of the trusted sources of information your clients use?

Or are you still pushing your message at them?

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The best way to get the attention of prospects

Posted byIan Brodie on August 7th, 2011.

Getting the attention of your prospects and clients – and more importantly keeping it – is so tricky.

Not only are attention spans shrinking, but we all have so much on our minds and we're so busy multi-tasking we find it difficult to give our full attention to anything.

Yet if we want prospects to hire us and clients to continue to engage us, then we need their full, undivided attention.

Recently I was reminded of the power of an approach that most of us don't use anywhere near enough: storytelling.

When I was on holiday one of the books I read was Stephen King's “On Writing”. It's partly an autobiography, and partly his guide to how he writes.

Now I can't claim to be a big Stephen King fan – in fact I've not read any of his books. But he's very prolific and commercially successful – so worth paying attention to.

In the part of the book where he talks about good writing: vocabulary, grammar, style, etc. he introduces it by telling the story of his Uncle Oren's toolbox.

It takes him 3 and a half pages and just shy of 1,000 words to essentially make the point that it's useful to have a big “toolbox” to hand so that you always have the right tool for the job, no matter how hard your writing task gets.

Now I've got an embarrasingly short attention span these days, but his story of going out with his Uncle Oren and his giant toolbox to fix a broken screen had me hanging on every word.

I even found the diversions – the descriptions of the box itself, the cigarettes Uncle Oren smoked and his attitude to King's brand choices – quite fascinating.

King could have made his point in a few short sentences. But if he had, I'd have forgotten it hours later. Thanks to him bringing the message to life through storytelling, the point is still clear in my mind a couple of weeks later – and no doubt will be in months or even years to come.

Master salesmen are usually master storytellers too. They hold attention and get their points across much more powerfully through the use of stories and examples than by just stating the plain old facts. And even the most no-nonsense, “tell me like it is” executives listen intently. We're all programmed from birth to listen to and remember stories.

Veteran marketer Dan Kennedy is another master storyteller. His carefully crafted stories of “Al the Plumber” and the “Carpet Cleaning Guy” give perfect illustrations of how his magnetic marketing approach works in a way that's both memorable and intriguing.

You listen to the stories and they give Kennedy credibility without him having to boast or make bold claims. And they segue perfectly into his offer to provide the tools and templates to help you achieve the same great results.

You can use stories in many different situations. On my blog I've writen about how to use stories to explain what you do, or to answer tough questions from clients.

They work brilliantly in pitches and presentations, or in more informal discussions.

And the lovely thing is that you don't have to be a famous novellist to use them. You just need to put some thought in advance into preparing a set of relevant stories you can use to illustrate key points you often cover in your presentations.

Of course, most people don't put in the effort to do the preparation. So if you're one of the few that does, you're going to really stand out.

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You MUST ask yourself this question

Posted byIan Brodie on July 24th, 2011.

A while ago we had one of our best summer holidays ever. Kathy, the kids and I spent a wonderful week in Anglesey – a little islandy thing off the North West coast of Wales.

We lay on the beach in the sun most days, while the kids went off swimming, fishing or paddling around in our little boat. Fantastic stuff.

We weren't initially planning to go. We'd got out all the brochures with exotic and far flung destinations. Lots of exciting looking places we've never been, but everyone tells us we really should go to.

We were struggling to choose, then one evening Kathy turned to me…

“What would you say was the best holiday we've ever had? The one you've most enjoyed?”

“Honestly? When we rented that apartment in Anglesey a few years ago.”

“Me too. Why don't we just go there again then?”

So we did.

And we had a brilliant time again. It suits us. Easy to relax and do nothing – yet plenty for the kids to do.

It's so easy to be tempted by all those exciting new places in the brochures. But by sticking to what we knew worked for us we had a great time.

And it's often the same with your marketing too.

It's so easy to be lured by “shiny new object” syndrome. To see how much success others seem to be having with marketing approaches you're not using.

And I'll admit, I'm a huge advocate of shiny new stuff like online marketing myself. I'll tell anyone who asks it's been the most effective marketing strategy I've ever used.

But often the best thing you can do is ask yourself the same simple question Kathy asked me: what's worked the best for you before?

Whether it's networking, direct mail, conference presentations, referrals. If it's worked well for you before, chances are it'll work well for you again.

You should still experiment. Try out the odd shiny new marketing approach. But not at the expense of what you know actually works for you.

It may not be exciting and new. You may have got a bit bored with it over time.

But if it works, stick with it until you find something genuinely better.

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How to smash through the geography barrier

Posted byIan Brodie on July 10th, 2011.

Every now and then I'll head down to London for a conference or to meet up with a client. I always enjoy my trips ot the capital.

One of the things I like about London is the sheer diversity. There are so many specialist restaurants and shops that you just don't get anywhere else in the UK.

On my last visit I spotted a specialist ribbon shop, and as usual, peered into the window of Arthur Beale's yachting supplies shop to look at the rope, ships bells, compasses and other obscure equipment.

The reason these specialist shops can survive and thrive in London but not in the rest of the UK is simply the sheer number of people who live and work there.

Even though they deal with a very tight specialism, Arthur Beale, VV Rouleaux the ribbon shop and the like have enough potential customers nearby who can hear about them and reach them to make them a success.

Focusing on a tight specialist niche means your marketing is much more likely to resonate with your target clients. To make them feel your services were designed just for them.

But it only works if you can reach enough of those targeted clients. Because of its size, that's often true of London and it's why it has so many specialist businesses.

And it's the same with the web.

One of the wonderful things about the web is its ability to lift geographic restrictions.

When I first set up in business, as an ex-consultant who'd got really good at marketing and selling consulting services, I looked into focusing on just that niche near my home base in the North West of England.

But there simply weren't enough potential clients nearby to make it viable.

With the web though, I can (and do) have global reach. People visit my website and sign up for my emails from all over the world (in fact I have more US subscribers than UK ones).

It's the same for you. If you want, you can have global reach online.

The first step is to market online so anyone can find you. The next step is to be able to deliver services remotely so you can translate your global reach into clients.

It might start with flying out to their location if it's a high enough value piece of work.

Or potentially working with them over the phone and skype if it's coaching or advisory work.

Or maybe you can deliver your service via pre-recorded video, audio or text. Further removing geographic restrictions.

Being able to overcome the geography barrier is hugely important. Because if you can find ways of remotely delivering your work. Or even just needing less of a physical presence. Then everything changes.

Then you can focus on a very specific niche you love, knowing there are enough reachable clients to make that niche viable.

You can communicate in ways that really connect with clients looking for those specific specialist services (rather than the generic communication you need to use when going for a broader market).

So here's a challenge for you: how can you break through the geography barrier in your business? What ways can you find to deliver your services remotely?

Because if you can crack this problem it can literally revolutionize your business.

It did for mine.

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Lazy marketing rant

Posted byIan Brodie on July 3rd, 2011.

I hate lazy marketing.

How many times in the last couple of weeks have you heard about new products, services or even books that are apparently “game changers”?

Or “innovative”? Or “leading edge”?

How many websites have you been to where they promise to teach you “how to quickly and easily…” do something or other? (of course, it's never quick or easy). Or tell you you'll soon be “crushing it” or they'll get you to the “next level” whatever the latest in-phrase is.

Now, the first time you hear these phrases they have impact. Maybe even the third or fourth time too.

But over time, you start to ignore them, or just not believe them. If everything is “game-changing” then nothing is.

How about this gem: “Learn how to harness the power of referrals to get a flood of new clients for your business”.

Sadly, that's one of mine. Written years ago when I released my first ebook on how to get more referrals.

Now I'm still very proud of the content of the ebook – it stands up well today and is a great guide for professionals who want to get more referrals.

But “harness the power” and “a flood of new clients”? What was I thinking?

Lazy marketing comes from two sources.

Sometimes, the marketer really is lazy. They can't be bothered writing decent copy or coming up with a decent idea for how to promote their services. So they copy what everyone else is using.

Unfortunately, that means what they write becomes invisible. If everything looks and sounds the same, it disappears into the background. Especially true if we're talking about something like Google Adwords where 8 ads are shown next to each other. Next time you do a search for something read the ads and see just how similar they often look.

More often though, it happens because the marketer hasn't really understood their target client. They haven't gone beyond the surface to understand what motivates them and why they might want what you have to offer.

As a result, they're forced to use generic descriptions and hype to say how good it is – rather than being able to state precisely the benefit their client actually wants.

In my case, I got as far as knowing that professionals are interested in referrals because they want more clients. But I didn't go deeper than that so I had to use hype like “power” and “flood of clients”.

What I should have done was ask why they wanted more referrals and more clients.

Perhaps their business was struggling and they were in financial difficulties? Or perhaps they were looking to bring in more clients to get promoted to partner? Or maybe the real motivation was because they felt uncomfortable with cold calling and networking and wanted a method they could use that didn't make them cringe?

There's usually no “one right answer”. When you dig a little deeper you often find that different people want your services for different reasons. And that's OK – it means you should market to those different people in different ways.

Perhaps, for example, I could have done a Google Adwords ad asking “Hate Cold Calling? Get More Clients Through Referrals Instead” or similar.

It wouldn't have hooked everyone. But for those in that situation it's a lot more compelling than the myriad of unbelievable ads offering a “flood of new clients”.

Have you been lazy with your marketing?

Take a look at your website, your brochures, your online and offline advertising.

Is it filled with generic phrases, hype and platitudes?

If so, your first step is to think more deeply about your clients and what they really want. Keep asking yourself (or even better, them) the question “why?” until you get to the underlying reason – often a feeling or an emotion.

Focusing on that will get you much more attention than the generic copycat marketing we so often see.

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What’s the most common marketing problem?

Posted byIan Brodie on June 12th, 2011.

I sometimes get asked, “what's the most common marketing problem you see?”.

Out of all the potential issues, not having enough leads is by far the one I see the most frequently amongst professionals – especially sole practitioners. And it's also the most debilitating one.

When I'm having initial discussions with potential clients, almost half of them say something along the lines of “if I can just get in front of the right clients, I can almost always sell”.

Now sometimes they're wrong. They're overestimating their selling skills.

But very often they're right.

You see, selling for consultants, coaches and other professionals is not that far removed from our “day jobs”. It involves talking to clients about their issues, diagnosing what the cause might be, understanding the impact, and proposing solutions.

That's not a lot different from what we do when clients have already hired us.

Some professionals have big psychological hangs up about selling. It's beneath them, It doesn't fit with their self image. But often, when push comes to shove, they're not that bad at it.

And if you've worked for a professional firm for any length of time, you'll inevitably have been involved in a number of initial client meetings. You'll have built up experience in it, even if you don't like it.

Lead generation is a different kettle of fish though.

It involves activities like presentations and “pitches”. Asking for referrals. Writing sales letters or doing email marketing. Stuff that's very different from our day jobs.

And if we've come from a large professional firm background the chances are that those activites were done by someone else. The marketing team or the firm's star rainmakers.

Now suddenly we have to do those things. And many of us struggle.

I know I did initially. Even though I'd learnt how to be pretty darn good at selling when working for big consulting firms, when I went solo, lead generation was new to me. I had to go through a painful learning curve very fast.

The first area most people struggle with is knowing which marketing approaches will work to generate high-quality leads in their specific situation.

But even after they've got this sussed, many professionals then fall into a huge trap.

They just don't fill their pipelines with enough leads.

Because they don't (yet) enjoy lead generation activities, they do what they feel is just enough to get them the business they need. Then they stop and focus on delivery.

But, of course, they overestimate their chances of landing each client in their pipeline. So when they don't all come off, they're left feeding off scraps.

My advice is to always “overfill” your pipeline. Generate at least twice as many leads as you think you need.

Because having an overfull pipeline generates some wonderful side-effects:

-> You can cherry-pick. With a surfeit of opportunities you can choose the best ones to work on. The best clients, the most interesting work, or the most lucrative.

-> You can establish the right peer-level relationships with clients from the start. When you're not desperate for business, when you can take it or leave it, then you immediately elevate your status and can work with senior clients as a peer right from the get-go.

Conversely, if you really need to win a deal you can very easily drift into a subservient relationship that damages your ability to advise and guide your client.

-> You can be highly ethical. You can turn down work you're not perfectly suited for if you don't need to win it to pay the bills.

-> You can negotiate from strength. You don't have to make unfair concessions just because you really need the work.

-> You can relax. You'll be surprised how much better this makes you at selling.

Of course, building an overfull pipeline isn't easy (that's why clients pay me the “big bucks” ;) ).

But it absolutely is possible if you use the right approaches and keep going beyond the point where you think you have “just enough”.

Because, believe me, “just enough” is not enough.