“Email Players” subscriber Jake Lunniss partakes of elBenbo’s evil fruit, and prefers it to the rotten guru vines:
“…four years ago I started an Infusionsoft consultancy, and after 18 months had the largest Infusionsoft company (called “Benelds”) in APAC. We sold almost 1000 apps, had about $120k a year in commissions, and for reasons I’ll go into if you’re interested, I was fat and miserable. In April I picked up my mat and ball and jumped ship. I left the company with my ex (who I also ran the business with, and also left), along with all the commissions, customers, employees and revenue.
All I took with me was an old, cold, contact list.
I’ve been shouting for years that the most effective way to make sales is with direct email, and a question I get more times than I can remember is “how often should I email?” People always want to hear “Wednesday at 11:03 is the #1 to convert a sale…”. My glib answer was always “as often as is necessary” or “every day. No one will care until you get boring”.
I chanced upon your daily email one day, and it struck a chord. Here was someone who actually emails every day.
I also like that you slam gurus and every fucktard with a facebook ad. In my Infusionsoft world has a loud voice, and I loathe the way he teaches people to email. So I signed up, partly because I love the bagging that the gurus get, and partly because I learned so much from the free emails that I felt you a) deserved it (see, reciprocity is a thing), and b) like everyone else, if I can make money writing an email a day, I’ll be happy with that.
So, onto that B2B thing. I’m a consultant: I don’t have products to sell. So I made one up. The audit. Really it’s just a consult people pay for, that most consultants do for free as the sales process.
How many have I sold? One. But I’ve also picked up some consulting and implementation clients, none of which would have happened if I hadn’t been emailing every day.
When I walked away in May I had $1k and nowhere to live.
I just got home from a month holidaying the US, moved into a new apartment, and have $15k in savings. I still have no idea how I managed to pull that off in 3 months. But the emailing definitely got people talking – talking about me, what was happening at Benelds, I got offered a full time job, and people who I hadn’t spoken to in years got in touch. Relationship building 101, hey.
Now it must be said – results not typical etc – that I’m already well known in Infusionsoftlandia. I was on a committee there, represented at three ICONs, and have been a loud voice for years. My product knowledge is second to none, and I can command a high price. But this list was stone cold, and I genuinely left with no money and no safety net. With the way the business had developed, I’d been out of the game for a while.
Every day I would get replies to my emails. Some simply words of affirmation and support (which, when you’re in the swing off a full-blown midlife, is nice to get), others enquiring about services, others challenging or questioning my content. I introduced a “pre-order my book” in the most recent emails and have sold at least one pre-order ($47, not cheap, no “limited offer”, just “buy this if you want”) every time the link has been in an email.
There were a few unsubs in the beginning, but they quickly settled down. Open rates have been consistently above 30%. CTR, where has been a link, has been consistently 25%.
. . .
Thanks for doing what you do. There’s every possibility that your method is the main reason I’m still eating.”
There was actually quite a bit more from Jake.
(He was writing me originally to tell me how he used my system for B2B purposes.)
But, you get the gist.
Anyway, all this hoopla I write about is real.
It works.
And, it can work for you, if you work it, and if you have a list and an offer.
The October issue goes to the printer in less than 4 days.
Here’s where to get it, while you still can:
Ben Settle
