Email Asset makeover - (because they sincerely DON'T really care about you, they only care about filling their pockets)

Cancelled a product, membership or service recently? 

So what did you get back from the company by way of a follow up communication?

Well, depending on the company or business, you've probably not received anything at all as most are firstly unware about the lifetime value of a customer. 

And secondly, most are unaware of the various impact points throughout their customer communications funnels and sequences and so can't actually do anything to fix them. 

You can't fix what you can't measure, see or know about.  

Or, you'll have gotten something that sounds like they want to bribe you back into their arms, without really ever sincerely digging in and finding out why it is you cancelled.

Of course, many people don't want to give any reason at all why they've cancelled and simply ignore any communication they receive that's designed to enquire - and that's whether or not the follow up communication is sincere or not. 

They, we, just want to be left alone and carry on with our day.   

And in case you're thinking that it's the smart, switched on and customer centric, marketing savvy companies who've got all this sorted by way of their customer communications and follow ups, then think again. Because they're not immune to creating communications that smell of desperation.

Let's get into a follow up communication email I received from a big company in the motivation and productivity space.

To give you some context, the following email was generated because I cancelled a trial membership to one of their service based products.      

--------------------------------------------------------

Why Raja? Why?

Raja...

Maybe you can help me out with this?

Here's the deal ...  Two things:

1.  You cancelled your membership a few days ago.

2.  I think you're crazy :p

See, I'm pretty sure xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is amazing.  But you seem to disagree.
Or maybe there's some other issue?

See, I don't know.  But I want to  ...

So, if you take a second to tell me what's up, I'll give you a course
of your choice on the house (up to a $97 value).

Just click here:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Then I'll immediately send you a coupon code for the course.  Easy :-)

----------------------------------------------------------

So let's see where things could be improved. 

Subject line is good. It got me to open the email, especially because I was unaware who it was from. It's curiosity based. 

Next...

Maybe you can help me out with this?

The can you help me out with this rings as if they're coming to you for advice, yet it's really all THEM centered and focussed, and not customer focussed. 

How could that opening line be improved?    

Something like...

I'm troubled that we've let you down in some way yet I know it seems silly but we don't quite know what we've done to mess things up. 

The next line of their message -- 

Here's the deal ...  Two things:

What deal? Where's the negotiation? Why that language? And why the quick, curt, Two things line? 

Not sure who their writers are but they're not really thinking in alignment with normal human conversation. It's as if there's an urgent on their part for a response, along with a  demonstration of how cool and smart the writer is..., rather than giving full attention to the reader/recipient and focussing on their wants and needs.

So how could that all be improved? 

I've noticed you've cancelled your trial membership and that's really okay. I wanted to get in touch with you to understand what I can do to help you, to figure out how we can make the product work for you so you can benefit from it in the way we'd promised it would.

Moving on to the next piece of copy in their email...

1.  You cancelled your membership a few days ago.

2.  I think you're crazy :p  

I've touched on the first part in my version of things above, as well as the second part in a way, but the second bit of the second part is quite interesting. I think you're crazy, along with a colon and the alphabet p. I'd no idea what that was so googled it. Turns out it's the equivalent of sticking your tongue out in a playful way in real life.   

I don't know the person in the email so would I be speaking and doing that in real life to someone I don't know. No. Not really. Yet in email and with online communications, it seems nearly everyone has given themselves the freedom and license to replicate real life scenarios and conversations online, buck them, and not think anything about it. 

Big error in thinking.

The next part -- 

See, I'm pretty sure xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is amazing.  But you seem to disagree.
Or maybe there's some other issue?

What's wrong here?

The person doesn't even know if the product is amazing. They're 'pretty sure'? They're not certain. They're hedging. They're riding on a possibility. There's no evidence that says they've used it at all and can speak with any kind of credibility. So why use that line at all? 

Next piece in the same sentence assumes I disagree that the product is not amazing. Where did they get that factual info from? From nowhere except out of thin air because of their sheer laziness and guesswork.   

How to improve their line of thinking?

By replacing it with the following:

We've 3,459 (or whatever their real customer number is) people who are thrilled customers who swear by the product and think it's amazing. And of course, we'd love for you to be number 3460 but we know that that can't happen at all, until and unless we know how to help you solve whatever problems you might be having.   

-------------

Now in that email there's a link to a questionnaire where the language and thrust is all about "what can we do to win you back?" It's as if bribing osmosis is being dealt, ethical or not, and yet all of that won't do a jot of good if there's no clear understanding and connection regarding why the cancellation. 

I can tell you one thing, no matter how good the product or service, trying to plead and get people to buy and invest by offering a price cut, will get you a specific type of customer with a specific type of mind. And you can be sure there'll be a mad high percentage who won't use the product or service. In some cases it works, but price lowering is never a good idea if you want quality customers who invest and consume. 

Right now I could go on and complete the email and have a completely refreshed and revamped version. Which in turn would bring a number of cancelled subscribers back as full paying customers.    

Now let's step back a little and think about the numbers here.

The monthly membership is $47. 

Compound that out over the year and it's over $500. 

Multiply that by 5 years (and that's being conservative because just like electricity or gas, you're going to keep on paying for it if it brings you ongoing constant service, usage and value. You're not going to disconnect)...

So that's a $2500 amount. 

Factor in the suite of products and services they'll ascend people up to, you can see there's a huge amount of value stored inside one customer who buys and invests in a front end product. 

And by fixing one email in the cancellation sequence, you'll find that each month there'll be a number of $2500+ customers coming in who wouldn't previously, excusing themselves and never to be seen again. 

Tot that up over the year and you're looking at an email asset that'll continue to pay you... over and over again.  

Lesson?

Three of them.

1. Don't be casual in your communications.

2. Emails, copy, sales messages, they ARE the money bringers. Value them above anything else in your business. Because without them being the best they can be, you ARE losing a stream of income. Continually.  

3. And so now look through your entire suite of marketing and sales communications and ask this simple question -- "how can we improve this?" 

 Do the above and you'll find you'll add plenty to your bottom line. Plenty.

 

Creating value based follow-up emails are worth an ongoing mint. If you want to know about 20 other WAYS you can retain your customers and clients, pick up this handy one page guide here that'll help you do exactly that.    

    

 raja . hireker @ gmail . com 
07903 905 802 

Come from communication spirit

No.

Not the kind of spirit that's delightfully sold to you as a beautiful drug that supposedly makes you human and relatable.

Not that kind of drug infested spirit.

I'm talking about the animating force that's inside us all. That pure abundant spirit of self expression that makes us uniquely us. That toe tapping, finger clicking, soulful yet rocking rhythm that has us rise up and BE that force.

That's the kind of spirit I'm taking about.

And we've ALL got it.

Because when you come from that place and you put that un-chainable force you've got inside all your written marketing communications, in your audios and videos, you'll find you'll have a natural electricity flowing through your communication veins that it all becomes... irresistibly infectious.

And as most marketing communications, campaigns, and promotions are visibly and viscerally dull, tepid, flat out boring, devoid of almost all spirit and self-expression, there's no better time to bring forth that spirit and unleash it. 

When you do, you'll see a stark difference in not only how much energy, fun and spirit you bring to creating your communications and marketing pieces, but you'll see a significant difference in how your customers, clients and prospects respond to them. (Translate that into also meaning more money in the bank for you.)   

There's nothing to write home about if you've had an average, lukewarm, so so kind of experience. That's true for all of us, no matter who we are, no matter what the experience. 

And there's definitely nothing to write home about for your customers and prospects if they are constantly faced with the sea of communication sameness you see presented almost everywhere.

Time to change it. Time to reinvent. Time to have new communication spirit be the order of the day, every day.           

Want to experience what kind of transformative difference coming from spirit, makes?

Let me give you an example. 

And you don't need to necessarily like tennis or be overly connected to sports to get the difference making transformation at work here. Simply transfer the lesson over into your communications and presentations. 

Engaging irresistible commentary (radio or tv) makes a real difference in the readers and listeners experience. 

The difference maker that makes the difference? 

The commentator. 

You'll note there's a stark difference in the commentary style of someone like John McEnroe, than that of someone like John Lloyd or Martina Navratilova. Lloyd and Navratilova are run of the mill at best. Their styles, language, word choice, all mixed in with a monotone drone, makes the listener or viewer experience, a forgettable one.  

On the other hand, McEnroe brings his unique perspective, he takes a definite stand one way or another, he's incredibly intelligent in his understandings and his ability to communicate that understanding in a connected and engaging way is what brings a smile, joy, increased viewership and listenership, and... a happy visceral experience.

He comes from pure spirit and unbridled self-expression.      

Lloyd and Navratilova?

They're audibly and visibly limited in spirit, self-expression, knowledge transference, word choice, creative juggling with language.

As such...

The experience is COMPLTELY different for the listener or viewer. 

That's the kind of measurable difference you can create in your communications when you come from full spirit and unbridled self-expression. 

What do you want YOUR communications to be filled with?  

 

      

a Simple marketing & cashflow formula

Open your Internet browser, plug in the term marketing, and you'll get...

3 BILLION results (at least that's what google chrome just threw up for me right now at this moment in time --2nd September 2021, 10.03am, London UK)    

It took Google a fat 1.1 seconds to curate all that.

Masterful.

And yet, if you're looking for marketing help, advice, information, you now know you've a bog deep minefield (of mostly quackery) to wade through and to make head and tails sense out of. 

Danger is imminent. 

Because you'll quickly find that your time, isn't actually yours. It'll be drained and drowned inside multiple marketing rabbit holes. No wonder business owners and online entrepreneurs are continually complaining about how flat out pooped they are each day. 

They're always travelling! 

No wonder.

Here's a simple marketing formula for you that'll bypass the billion or so search terms and their associated websites and information.

D-r-u-m  r-o-l-l

Create hot irresistible offers and present them to your most viable prospects.    

Can it be that simple?

You can decide that for yourself by carrying out the simple experiment below. 

If you've a number of existing clients and customers, present them with additional, higher value, higher priced products and services. 

And to those new prospects? Find more of them and present them with your front end offers, and take them up your products and services ascension ladder.

Admittedly, not very schexee. 

However, whilst everyone and their moustache wearing giraffe is off tying to conqueror and capture the whole world marketplace with their offerings, wearing themselves out in the process, you can all but clean up in your patch of the universe by working the above non- glitzy strategy.

Of course, if you're a glutton for the complex, have deep enough pockets, want to be everywhere trying to reach everyone who might not even be your ideal customer or client, and you want to be in all media formats... then go full steam ahead and see how that way of doing things, works out for you.

However, if you try all that and find it's not to your liking, (or pocket) guess what; there's a simple juicy plan above that's ripe and ready for plucking.  

They're your living, breathing, walking cash machines

Getting a new customer or client through the door can for many, be the most complex, painful, and chaotic process. 

Let's not forget it's the most expensive. Insanely so, if you don't know what you're really doing.

And yet...

When you realise approximately 80% of the wealth and equity, and your future bank money, is locked up inside your past and current customers and clients...

And... once you embrace that fact, mining and extracting that untapped wealth mine lying inside your existing customer assets can be an exciting and fun game for you.

It'll be way more profitable for you, costs little, once you start building out your product ladder and ascend your customers up that ladder.

And they'll gladly take the steps up to your higher placed offerings, so long as there are higher placed offerings for them to take advantage of.

Not only that...

There's a small percentage of your customers who'll buy and invest in an even higher priced offering, one you haven't yet created.

Read that again.

There's a small number of your customers who'll buy and invest in the most ludicrous highest priced offer you've not even planned or conceived of yet. (See P. Marshall's book 80/20 Sales and Marketing to get the full scoop on this).

So what does that tell you?

Get busy creating, planning, and presenting!

Because yes, your customers and clients are living, breathing, walking cash machines and they'll continue to give you their money and custom, if you set, structure and plan things in that way for them. They'll gladly and willingly do that.

And no...

You cannot simply be rubbing your greedy paws and jumping up and down in a mad frenzied glee in thinking all you have to do is send promotion after promotion in order to tap into all this wealth that's lying there for the taking.

Cultivating and nurturing your existing customer relationships IS one of the highest value activities you can undertake.

Do it right, and you'll see amazing things happening. 

One of them being releasing the constant struggle and focus on bringing in new clients and customers. And where now you can divert a good portion of attention and focus on mining and extracting the vital bulk of your profits lying inside your existing clients, customers and prospects. 

It's the most profitable activity you can undertake as the lifetime value of your clients and customers shoots way up. 

If you want a handy 1-page pdf guide showing you 20 Customer Retention and Customer Astonishment Money Map Triggers that'll help you zero in on extracting all that wealth from your existing customers, send your request to me at  the following: raja . hireker @ gmail . com             

                

Don't BORE... Entertain! (marketing samples galore)

It's easy to be a lazy bones, boring communicator and copywriter.

Simply look around at what everyone else is doing, and do something incredibly similar. 

The danger in that?

When you consider almost 80% to 90% are wrong in almost everything, in all professions, businesses and industries, you're onto a losing game. (Especially in marketing and advertising) 

The numbers are stacked against you.

Take a look at the email subject lines/headlines below I've created for various businesses.

What strikes you about them?

Where's the 'sameness' in them compared to others you see in the respective marketplaces? 

Where's the "oh yawn, boring" factor in them?

Now most importantly for you, after you go through them, ask yourself or your team how can you now adopt, adapt, and apply the ideas an concepts above for use in your business, to have your business communications become more reader friendly, entertaining, non salesy... and yet at the same time... bought from?

Strength programme -- Your t-shirts won't be able to contain your new bulging biceps and rock solid triceps

Self development business/coach - Are you still listening and watching your way to personal development doom, gloom and non-success?  

Diet product - You can't hide those Olympic sized belly fat pounds anymore - because you've only gone and lost them all! 

Meat Grill Restaurant - Eat all you want tonight. In return? Your incredible shrinking bill.           

Memory training - The only memory training course that'll help you make so much money that you'll keep forgetting how much you now make!   

Independent Optician - "Mirror mirror, I think you see; those are the glasses that'll look perfect on me!"    

Dentist - White as snow teeth, comes as standard. Optional extra? A pack of Wrigley's gum.

Cooking recipes - Mother-in-law left in a huff because HER cooking was THAT good!

Derma logical cream - There's no hiding your acne filled face anymore, thanks to this age old wonder cure from the garden

Marketing training - We'll make you a  notoriously despised (yet wild hog profitable) marketer if you follow our unconventional plan   

Pillow manufacturer - "Sorry we opened late, our night watchman fell asleep on one of our pillows and had to be shaken awake"

Tyre seller - Our tyres don't protest at any of the road muck, debris or other gunk on the road. They eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

Coffee seller - Late for work again!! That's what happens when you start sipping on a mug of Coffee Maniac  

Dog walking/day care - Don't blame us if your beloved pet dog doesn't want to come back home!

Tennis instruction - Tennis balls in mass protests after beginners begin smacking the covers of balls at 30mph faster

Email copywriting services - Eminent Doctor says hospital beds bursting with marketers having severe entertainment by-pass malfunction 

(If you're keen, astute and you look for it, there's a whole marketing and copywriting education inside the above) 

Look, you don't have give in and throw your hands up in wild despair. You don't have to let your business continue with a communication 'mee too, same as everyone else' tag dangling from your neck.  

Because once you start injecting all your communications with the entertainment serum factor, the kind threaded throughout the examples above, you'll see that it's only the beginning of what's possible for you. 

Because what do you think will happen when you begin injecting captivating, enticing, compellingly entertaining, reader friendly copy into the following money creating strategies for your business?

• Client reactivation programmes 
• Short term cash flow surges
• Introducing an obscenely priced product or service option
• Upselling to additional services or products
• Follow up communications and campaigns to non-buyers/enquirers
• Building a continuity element to your business
• Creating Premium based product or service alternatives
• Creating a programme of ongoing communications to increase client retention and referral value

Thread the entertainment factor throughout the range of communications and marketing assets required to facilitate the above, and you'll have a business you simply won't recognise. 

Test it and see for yourself.

Want help?
07903 905 802 / raja . hireker @ gmail . com   

  Want to be subscribed to the "Bowlarks and Boolseet" e-Letter for Owners, e-Preneurs & Professionals? Get in touch. 

The core of it? Ongoing fresh ideas freshly baked and pumped out of your idea creation factory is what'll give you the adoring long-lasting patronage and unbroken umbilical cord link with your existing, and soon-to-be, audience who'll only be too happy to give you their money because guess what; you're really the only one that'll listen, that'll share, that'll help them see themselves in a brighter happier light, who'll bring them a daily potent burst of happy citrus that kicks their day into happy productive action.

 

Boring quack professionals create boring quack communications

Number one SIN, in marketing, in life in general? 

Being B-O-R-I-N-G.

Nothing makes the mind, body and eyes to want to part company with each other than having a near daily dose of  the mundane, mediocre, non entertaining drivel trying to pass off as 'cool marketing and communications'.

Nothing sends businesses crumbling, than a consistent dose of communication foolishness and quackery.    

Nothing will send your customers scarpering to the hills than the next ho hum boring gargle flooding  their sense doors (aka, deliriously running into the welcoming arms of your competitors)   

And no, you do NOT need an MBA or a string of fancy pants academic qualifications to tell you if something bores the living daylights out of you, or... whether it lights you up and raises your interest, curiosity and lifts you up inside. 

Nothing or no-one can convince us otherwise. We internally know. No advanced science or technology needed. 

And yet...

You don't need to look far to know and notice that we're continually bamboozled with communications and presentations that are stuffed with uninspiring nonsense produced by unthinking minds.  

We're still bored senseless by marketing messaging and sales communications prepared by expensively paid humans who are pretty much following a lazy robotic factory line of un-creativity and un-charming non-entertainment.      

The good news?

I've got 20 ways for you to spark your creativity and writing muscles, into delirious ecstasy. Whether it's your emails, your video posts, facebook messages, blog posts, your articles... it doesn't matter. The creativity and communication techniques and ideas easily transitions across into all media formats.

And that's what you really want; to have your communications spark life and loyalty into those reading your communications and messaging. 

A famous direct marketing copywriter use to say - delay is the death of a sale. I believe that. I also believe boredom is the death of a business and the death of continual stream of happy paying, on-going customers. 

So let me give you one of the 20 ways (number 12 of 20) to spark life and electricity into your communications, right now.

(12.) Give the opposite to what’s considered popular convention and tradition - when most are doing one thing, or believing a popular idea or thought, or are heading in one direction, the best thing you can do is to do the opposite. Head the other way. Think a contrarian, opposite thought. The majority are almost always wrong, about nearly everything. Wedded to tradition. Unshakeable in the dogma and beliefs handed down to them. Putting personality in emails? "Gawd no, that's low and unprofessional. Can't do that. We've a standard and image to uphold…" They're saying that and clinging onto those ideas and beliefs that they’ve no doubt heard somewhere and most probably by someone lauded over in the public eye who has some kind of influence and stature, yet is flat out wrong. Yet, most believe it as the truth whilst at the same time, the mortgage is overdue, the car payment hasn't been made for a few months, debts and bills are mounting...

Now if you like the above, and if you can see a direct correlation and transition into your or your client's marketing and communications by using the above, then you might like the entire 20 creative communication ideas to help fuse and fuel your communications with. 

If you would like that valuable document at zero cost, then send an email to: raja.hireker@gmail.com with "FBM 20" in the email subject line, and I'll send over the pdf to you right away.      

Don't Lockdown Your Marketing, Your Thinking, Your Ability to Create. DO Lockdown and isolate away from the nitwits, nutcases and trumpeteers of doom and gloom

Who knows the REAL thinking behind the economy shutting down for vast periods. 

Thinking, presumably made by those who know what they're doing.

They actually do NOT know what they're doing. 

And if you want a proper education on the Lockdown and mask wearing subject matter, don't hit the mainstream media or listen to blockheads in government or science. Study and listen attentively to someone like Ken McCarthy. 

And if you don't know who he is and you use the Internet, email, and video to market, then hear the brains behind it all, he gave the first EVER conference on the web - and now more importantly, the info and evidence he's built up about false Fauci and the REAL story behind lockdown, will challenge your news media infested and now probably sedated, mind.  https://kenmccarthy.com/blog/lockdowns-are-murder 

Now, what are you doing about your marketing and promotional efforts in this hysteria infested time?

Are you stopping advertising?

Are you stopping marketing?

Are you thinking people don't have money to buy products and services?

Well, and this is proven throughout the decades, that when there's an economic bomb being detonated, or a country or continent slinking into Depression, when there's a glut and lengthy suppression of any kind, people's propensity for escape and relief, for rescuing and respite from the current situation... 

... people's levels of wanting to escape from it all is high, very very high indeed.

And with this economic murder that's currently been committed (and Ken McCarthy mentioned above, and the people and video footage he's curated about it all, is much better, much wiser, and can explain things much better than I can on this matter)... many people's appetite for wanting to escape the madness is higher than for anything else.

And that means...

People love to buy in such a scenario. Just look at the online education market, look at the exercise and nutrition sectors, look at the coaching and therapy fields... they're BOOMING! 

Of course, not all sectors and not all people fit into the above situation. 

And yet, if you're closing off your marketing, if you're not investing in communications and messages that actually brings joy, entertainment, excitement and a real message of encouragement and happiness... 

.. if you're not doing any of that, or aren't doing it often enough, then you're missing out on the biggest relationship and connection you can ever make with your audience or marketplace. 

People WANT to buy. 

They really do.        

But, they want a real voice of reason, refreshing sanity, and someone who is reassuringly upbeat because of the way they see life. 

Why not be THAT for them?

But if you're not making it easy for them... if you're not doing enough to make them smile, to make them feel good about themselves...if you're not presenting them with a number of irresistible offers on a regular and ongoing basis, then you're missing out on a succession of fat paydays.

Don't buy into the lockdown gloom and doom most around you are probably invested in. 

Buy into the idea that there are businesses and categories that are raking it in. Who are actually UPPING the ante on creating and investing MORE in marketing and advertising. 

And as WORDS are your sales team and as they're your passport to help you get the things you want, help you get to enjoy what the money can do for you, what it can bring to you, what you can enjoy and experience...

...you then want to ensure that you haven't got a lockdown minded soul writing and creating your communications. 

Beware the lockdown crazies, in all their forms. 

It's easy to be infected by that kind of mind, lockdown or no lockdown.   

http://rajahireker.com/whythehell.pdf