Dan Martell - Email Marketing Strategies For B2B SaaS Companies

00:00:00.000 The job as marketers is not to go from step A to step Z.

00:00:04.820 It's to help the buyer go from step A to step B to step C.

00:00:20.580 Hey there, I'm Dan Martell,

00:00:22.120 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:24.140 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:25.860 the four key campaigns for your email marketing.

00:00:29.220 A lot of you are doing email marketing.

00:00:31.740 You're just blasting people.

00:00:33.220 You think like, I'm just gonna share everything I know.

00:00:36.100 You have no strategy.

00:00:37.360 You have no strategy for how to deal with new leads,

00:00:39.640 customers, or even ongoing engagement.

00:00:41.960 I even have friends that have told me recently

00:00:44.220 that they've got email lists

00:00:45.760 they haven't sent an email to in six months.

00:00:48.540 Okay, if that's you, I'm gonna show you

00:00:49.960 how to overcome that, create a simple process

00:00:52.960 to do this based on literally 20 some years

00:00:56.240 of writing email campaigns.

00:00:57.760 and be sure to stay at the end

00:00:59.320 because I'm gonna tell you how to get access

00:01:00.640 to my email flow planner, which maps out the whole process.

00:01:04.760 And more importantly, I even have an email template

00:01:07.520 in there called the account reviewer

00:01:09.380 that will allow you to get expansion revenue

00:01:12.000 in your business.

00:01:12.840 If you have a service business,

00:01:14.060 just think of it as like getting people

00:01:15.800 that are current customers to buy more from you.

00:01:17.840 I'm gonna share with more on that at the end.

00:01:20.620 So I love email.

00:01:22.060 I love email for so many different reasons.

00:01:24.160 One, it's an asset, it's powerful,

00:01:27.560 It's real time, you know, you can persuade people

00:01:31.540 to support your nonprofit projects, your initiatives,

00:01:34.700 get customers from it.

00:01:36.280 And if you do it right, it's going on 24 seven.

00:01:39.120 You literally can have somebody

00:01:40.440 in a different part of the world being nurtured,

00:01:42.680 introduced to your business, your products

00:01:44.500 and buy from you while you are sleeping.

00:01:47.280 This is a real thing.

00:01:48.400 It doesn't matter what kind of business you're in, you know?

00:01:50.980 I've been involved in writing 50 plus

00:01:54.060 different email campaigns from launch campaigns

00:01:56.580 to nurture campaigns, to you name it.

00:01:59.100 I've, not only that, I've spent $100,000 plus

00:02:02.300 on courses, books, experts.

00:02:05.200 I mean, if I started looking at my copywriting team

00:02:07.200 and my email team, like that number,

00:02:09.340 you add a zero to that and maybe, yeah,

00:02:12.640 add a lot more money.

00:02:14.100 I've spent a lot of money on the art of email.

00:02:18.380 And I first learned about it,

00:02:20.120 really like the formal way that inspired

00:02:22.520 this conversation with you today is a guy named Ryan Dice.

00:02:25.740 he's not only become a friend of mine

00:02:27.880 and a coaching client in SaaS Academy,

00:02:30.980 but he built a product called The Machine that I bought.

00:02:34.080 I think it was exactly $2,000, okay?

00:02:36.440 I bought this thing when it came out

00:02:37.760 because it was like promising all this stuff.

00:02:40.420 And it was the most thorough example

00:02:43.440 of like how to think about email

00:02:45.120 and bringing people up a value ladder

00:02:48.360 and what to do with them.

00:02:49.480 And I've not only devoured that program,

00:02:53.220 but I've gone on to buy many other people's

00:02:55.420 because I'm always looking for like that one or two idea

00:02:57.420 that's gonna give me an edge, right?

00:02:58.800 That 1% better over five, 10 years

00:03:02.080 creates separation from everybody else.

00:03:04.100 So I have an unlimited budget for investing myself,

00:03:07.220 but that course set the stage for how I think about email,

00:03:12.420 how I think about nurturing,

00:03:13.480 how I think about selling clients to get them to be aware

00:03:17.500 and be on board with you using the written word

00:03:21.420 and automation to grow your business.

00:03:23.920 So let's get into this.

00:03:25.280 So the first thing I wanna talk about

00:03:26.700 are the four campaigns.

00:03:28.040 These are the ones that I want you to audit yourself.

00:03:30.680 I want you to listen to how I describe them

00:03:32.620 and ask yourself like out of 10,

00:03:34.700 one being doesn't exist, 10 being,

00:03:37.280 I think I'm doing this at a world-class level.

00:03:39.120 It's thorough, it's great copy, it's great engagement.

00:03:42.160 I know my numbers, all that stuff.

00:03:43.940 How are you doing?

00:03:44.900 So the first one is the new lead sequence.

00:03:47.160 This means that you have some value, okay?

00:03:49.780 And it could be a call.

00:03:50.840 So if somebody fills out a form on your website,

00:03:52.780 it could be a resource, could be a PDF,

00:03:54.960 could be a spreadsheet, could be a script,

00:03:56.500 could be a blueprint, could be whatever it is.

00:03:58.560 But when somebody gives you an email,

00:04:01.660 I would consider that a new lead.

00:04:03.520 What is your new lead sequence?

00:04:05.820 Normally it's 14 days.

00:04:07.400 In a 14 day window, somebody downloads your thing.

00:04:10.360 What is the automated, strategic, thoughtful sequence

00:04:15.200 of messages, emails that you send to take that person,

00:04:20.020 I probably cold, they don't know a lot about you,

00:04:23.300 to a place where they know exactly what you're made of,

00:04:26.760 they know what you're all about,

00:04:28.100 they know how you can help them,

00:04:29.360 and they're motivated to engage with you

00:04:31.440 in the next step of your buying journey.

00:04:33.400 So that is the first one, the new lead sequence.

00:04:36.280 Number two is the converting to prospects.

00:04:39.080 So even if they don't get on a call in that specific point,

00:04:44.240 it's what is your ongoing sequence,

00:04:47.200 what Ryan Dice would call the indoctrination sequence,

00:04:49.340 but there's a lot of,

00:04:51.240 Like, cause you could have 15 different places

00:04:53.600 people come in as new leads,

00:04:54.840 through partners, webinars, you name it, they're coming in.

00:04:57.300 And they'll go through a custom,

00:04:59.000 ideally custom email marketing campaign for that sequence.

00:05:03.180 But then if they don't buy,

00:05:05.000 you gotta put them into an indoctrination sequence,

00:05:07.260 a place where it teaches them about your business

00:05:10.440 and you strategically written the emails,

00:05:13.340 ideally over kind of a three month period that unpacks,

00:05:18.000 again, how you can help them, creates value.

00:05:20.660 Maybe you've done some talks.

00:05:21.740 Maybe you've interviewed some experts.

00:05:23.640 Maybe your team has created some assets

00:05:25.300 and you can just share that.

00:05:27.200 But the whole point is get the person,

00:05:30.020 A, wanting to get your emails, opening your emails,

00:05:33.480 clicking on your emails and just like feel like,

00:05:36.020 hey, I would never unsubscribe from this

00:05:37.560 because it is the most valuable thing.

00:05:39.420 But that is taking the person from,

00:05:41.900 they didn't, you know, they still need to learn who you are.

00:05:44.080 Maybe they didn't have a problem you could solve yet

00:05:46.100 to going through an indoctrination sequence,

00:05:48.700 converting them to a prospect

00:05:50.320 where they could potentially buy from you.

00:05:51.780 That needs to be designed.

00:05:53.380 So that's the second campaign.

00:05:54.980 The third campaign is engaging customers.

00:05:57.780 The amount of people that do not have

00:06:00.980 a automated designed sequence

00:06:04.640 when somebody becomes a customer blows my mind.

00:06:07.740 Like literally somebody becomes a customer of yours.

00:06:10.140 You should have this mapped out base

00:06:12.260 and you can do some really cool stuff

00:06:13.520 with trigger notifications based on what stage they're at

00:06:15.840 of using your product or service,

00:06:17.040 but we can leave that apart.

00:06:18.380 You could just literally say

00:06:19.460 every customer should probably know these 12 things.

00:06:21.980 They should know about where they get support from.

00:06:24.120 They should know how the product works.

00:06:26.980 They should know about your events.

00:06:28.300 They should know about your other products.

00:06:29.920 Like there's all these sequences of emails

00:06:32.300 that a lot of people have never set up

00:06:34.840 for their new customers.

00:06:35.900 So that's the third one.

00:06:36.860 And then four is long-term nurture, okay?

00:06:40.060 After they went through your new lease sequence,

00:06:41.920 after they've gone through your prospecting,

00:06:45.220 onboarding sequence, after even they've become a customer,

00:06:48.240 What are you sending out at minimum once a week

00:06:51.980 to add value, to keep top of mind?

00:06:54.640 That's the long-term nurture sequence.

00:06:57.580 And if you have those four email campaigns, okay?

00:07:01.660 Out of 10, you're doing better than 99.2%

00:07:04.820 of the population of businesses, okay?

00:07:07.580 But I want you to rate yourself one out of 10.

00:07:09.540 Where do you sit on all four of these?

00:07:10.880 Where's your opportunity?

00:07:12.480 Because with that answer,

00:07:13.920 we're gonna dive into the specific principles,

00:07:17.340 these hot principles that are gonna allow you

00:07:18.960 to take email marketing to the next level.

00:07:21.000 So let's get into it.

00:07:21.940 So number two is hard to leave.

00:07:24.000 That's the principle I wanna teach with you.

00:07:25.500 If somebody comes into your world,

00:07:28.020 pretty much in my email nurture sequence,

00:07:31.060 until you unsubscribe, you will hear from me.

00:07:34.200 Most of it is automated.

00:07:35.920 Most of it is stacking different funnels

00:07:38.880 on top of each other.

00:07:39.800 So depending where you come into,

00:07:41.760 where you're at in the stage,

00:07:42.760 we segment and we push people through.

00:07:45.000 Now, do we do campaigns throughout the year?

00:07:47.280 100%.

00:07:48.120 I think we have like six to seven different campaigns,

00:07:51.060 new campaigns we're creating,

00:07:52.480 but a lot of them aren't even new.

00:07:53.580 They're things that we've done in the past

00:07:55.580 that we just turn on, right?

00:07:57.700 And the whole email automation works the exact same.

00:08:00.760 So it's like, if you know you're doing an event

00:08:02.600 once a quarter, you can have a whole email that goes out

00:08:06.020 that says, hey, do you have these problems?

00:08:07.700 If so, click this link and I'm gonna show you a video.

00:08:09.820 When they click that link and you show them the video,

00:08:11.720 you then put them in a sequence

00:08:13.080 that sells them into the event.

00:08:15.960 Nobody else on the email list gets it,

00:08:17.840 only the people that identified as being into the event.

00:08:21.520 The way I try to explain this to my clients

00:08:23.460 is it's kind of like those fun house mirrors,

00:08:26.780 you know, when you go into those fun houses

00:08:28.100 at a circus or a carnival or wherever,

00:08:30.480 and you're like trying to make your way out of this maze,

00:08:33.000 but it's mirrors, you're like, is that a door?

00:08:34.680 Is that a window?

00:08:35.520 And the mirrors are there.

00:08:36.980 That's kind of how you want your email to work,

00:08:39.060 where it doesn't matter what they do.

00:08:40.860 Obviously, if they unsubscribe, let them unsubscribe,

00:08:42.780 but you wanna make sure you're always talking to them

00:08:46.000 and they think like, wow, this is super personal.

00:08:48.440 My favorite compliment in response to my emails

00:08:51.280 is it feels like you are spying on me at my office

00:08:55.420 because then you know you're really communicating

00:08:58.680 at your buyer's level,

00:09:00.440 which is the most powerful way to do is meet them

00:09:02.920 where they're at and they will give you permission

00:09:04.660 to take them where you need them for them to be successful

00:09:07.500 and ideally buying and using your product.

00:09:09.660 Number two is build the asset.

00:09:11.620 So having the campaigns is awesome.

00:09:14.020 You need to have at least those four campaigns build out.

00:09:16.620 But I just wanna sell you on why email is amazing.

00:09:19.920 It is literally one of the few platforms

00:09:23.320 you truly own in today's world, right?

00:09:25.300 And I would say even email is getting a little scary.

00:09:27.320 That's why a lot of people have moved to text messaging.

00:09:29.520 But the principles and the philosophies and campaigns

00:09:31.780 are the same for a text message-based campaign or email.

00:09:35.320 Email's the easiest one to get going,

00:09:36.700 but think of it like the more emails you add to your list,

00:09:40.500 it's like gold bricks that you're just building

00:09:42.260 because there's, essentially there's just value

00:09:45.000 in those relationships.

00:09:46.820 And if you don't communicate with them often,

00:09:49.320 if you don't have multiple products

00:09:51.320 to be able to serve them with,

00:09:53.280 then those gold bricks don't have a lot of value

00:09:55.540 because you're not creating.

00:09:56.860 So you wanna build the asset.

00:09:58.920 You wanna invest in your email

00:10:00.780 as an asset within your business.

00:10:03.040 I remember when we sold my company Flowtown,

00:10:05.240 we had a huge email list, couple hundred thousand people.

00:10:08.700 And that value like was significant

00:10:12.020 from a complete valuation point of view.

00:10:14.040 It wasn't just our revenue, it was also the email

00:10:16.500 because the buyer could see opportunities

00:10:18.960 for upselling, cross-selling that pool of potential buyers

00:10:23.380 and gave it value like gold bricks.

00:10:25.640 It was like its own gold brick that we got paid for

00:10:28.620 because we knew enough to capture the emails.

00:10:30.640 The amount of marketers and business leaders out there

00:10:34.400 speaking and creating social media,

00:10:36.940 doing all these things and not collecting emails

00:10:39.880 blows my mind, okay?

00:10:41.780 Why do you think I started off this episode saying,

00:10:45.020 at the end, I'm gonna tell you how to get access

00:10:46.520 to my email flow planner.

00:10:48.360 This is the trade.

00:10:49.620 I'll create a bunch of value for you,

00:10:51.380 and then I'm gonna create a custom piece

00:10:53.600 of downloadable value, and the exchange is the email

00:10:58.440 because I understand we gotta build the asset.

00:11:01.380 So focus on it, don't make it,

00:11:03.280 make it a core metric review every week

00:11:05.060 and ask your team how, or ask yourself,

00:11:07.040 how many new emails have we added this week?

00:11:08.940 Is that number going up or down or sideways?

00:11:11.320 That's your opportunity.

00:11:12.800 Number four is echo marketing.

00:11:15.340 So I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest compliments

00:11:18.540 that I get is it seems like you're looking

00:11:20.680 over my shoulder at my office, right?

00:11:22.200 It's like you have a spy, you have a camera,

00:11:23.880 you have an army of people monitoring me

00:11:25.820 because you literally sent me an email

00:11:29.140 describing my pain right now.

00:11:32.580 And it's happening like,

00:11:33.860 It's almost like they get freaked out,

00:11:35.360 like people get freaked out about Facebook listening to them

00:11:37.880 just with like ads they're seeing.

00:11:40.160 Here's why it works and here's why the ads,

00:11:43.300 does Facebook listen to you?

00:11:44.240 I don't know.

00:11:45.080 Let's pretend they don't,

00:11:46.080 but here's what I know about my emails.

00:11:47.460 I don't have spies all over the world.

00:11:49.260 What I do is I extract the copy that shows up

00:11:54.320 in the words used on sales calls, okay?

00:11:56.440 So all of our sales calls are recorded.

00:11:58.540 We let the person that we're talking with know that.

00:12:01.340 And then I transcribe those calls

00:12:05.540 and we pull out the sentences when they describe a pain

00:12:09.640 in a way that we think is unique and universal, okay?

00:12:12.180 So unique and universal,

00:12:13.420 those two things you're looking for.

00:12:15.140 They'll say very specific things

00:12:17.800 that only somebody that's in the thick of it would say.

00:12:22.080 And it's usually like the language they would say

00:12:24.100 to a team member in privacy in a room, okay?

00:12:28.140 Which, you know, it's like, man,

00:12:29.760 I don't feel like I'm selling,

00:12:30.800 I feel like I'm bringing people on a tour, right?

00:12:33.560 And then we use that copy in our email campaigns.

00:12:36.540 And that's why it's called echo marketing

00:12:38.160 because all we're doing is we're listening to our buyers,

00:12:41.780 we're transcribing it and echoing it back to them.

00:12:45.120 And then other buyers that are just like them

00:12:47.740 are going like, wow, it's like you read in my mind.

00:12:49.800 It's like, I'm not reading your mind.

00:12:51.940 I actually listened to somebody else

00:12:53.260 and I just use that language.

00:12:54.500 A lot of you guys sit down and write emails.

00:12:56.340 The emails are already written.

00:12:57.700 Your buyers have already told you what to write,

00:13:00.660 but you like think you gotta be creative

00:13:02.300 and come up with new angles and content and strategies

00:13:04.860 and launches and offers and all these things.

00:13:07.920 Like literally just transcribe what the people

00:13:11.300 on the call are saying and use that in your copy.

00:13:14.220 Number five, it's moves forward.

00:13:17.160 Okay, so the email campaigns that work really well

00:13:19.480 move a potential buyer forward in the process.

00:13:22.800 One of my friends, Nick Kuzmich,

00:13:24.780 shared this a long time ago.

00:13:25.820 He says, our job as marketers is not to go from step A

00:13:29.860 to step Z, it's to help the buyer go from step A

00:13:33.360 to step B to step C.

00:13:35.180 And when I look at emails,

00:13:37.360 the campaigns aren't designed to really,

00:13:40.180 you know, kind of like a funnel,

00:13:41.380 tack the problem at a broad level,

00:13:43.300 get them in and then try to like be more specific

00:13:46.480 as you go down so that you can have a call to action

00:13:49.860 in almost every email that moves the person forward, right?

00:13:53.740 Like, and there's so many cool ways,

00:13:55.180 I'm not getting into technical details

00:13:56.620 of marketing right now, you know,

00:13:58.980 But the way I think about it's like,

00:14:00.800 I'm throwing a life preserver to somebody

00:14:02.960 that's drowning, right?

00:14:04.600 Like if I do this right, if my emails land, right?

00:14:08.720 And I write a good sequence,

00:14:10.540 it's somebody that I'm connecting with,

00:14:12.740 they're in the ocean, the ship broke,

00:14:15.700 and they need somebody to help them out.

00:14:17.380 And I'm giving them just the life preserver

00:14:20.020 in that first email, I'm pulling them in,

00:14:22.140 and then I'm bringing them on the ship,

00:14:24.200 and then I'm giving them a towel,

00:14:25.720 and I'm getting them ready, and I'm getting them fed,

00:14:28.600 and they're all heated up and then now we can talk, okay?

00:14:31.020 But we're going from step A to B to C to D.

00:14:34.780 Some of you are so excited about what you built,

00:14:37.380 you bring them step Z and they're like,

00:14:39.380 I don't, why would I use this?

00:14:42.040 I'm still dealing with this problem down here,

00:14:44.720 which is step A, right?

00:14:46.600 And when you meet them where they're at,

00:14:48.360 but then you give them what they need,

00:14:50.460 because you know they need something

00:14:51.580 a little bit more advanced, you know they need,

00:14:53.460 you know, I don't know, new opportunities.

00:14:56.020 But to me, that is the whole point is it moves them forward.

00:15:00.400 And that's what I think great email copy does

00:15:03.080 is it connects with the audience

00:15:05.440 and it gives them a clear understanding

00:15:07.440 you understand their problem,

00:15:08.820 you agitate the problem a little bit,

00:15:10.160 but then you give them the solution to the next step

00:15:12.740 that they need to move forward.

00:15:14.440 So quick recap, there are only four campaigns,

00:15:17.340 new lead sequence, converting,

00:15:18.800 engaging and long-term nurture.

00:15:21.180 Number two is make it hard to leave.

00:15:23.600 Number three is build the asset.

00:15:25.580 It's like a brick of gold.

00:15:27.560 Number four, echo marketing.

00:15:29.080 Just tell them what they told you, but tell everybody else.

00:15:32.080 Number five is moves it forward,

00:15:35.400 meaning that every message has a call to action.

00:15:39.000 So as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:15:41.340 I'm gonna model for you what I hope you guys are doing

00:15:43.300 in your emails and within your content marketing,

00:15:45.820 and that is give some value that collects an email.

00:15:49.180 So if you want, you can click the link below

00:15:50.460 to get my complete email flow planner.

00:15:52.700 In there, I even have a template

00:15:54.900 called the Account Reviewer.

00:15:56.580 It's an email you can send out to your existing customers

00:15:59.520 that gets them on a call so that your sales reps,

00:16:02.860 your closers, whatever you wanna call them,

00:16:04.600 they get on a call and see if there's an opportunity

00:16:06.620 to serve them at a higher level.

00:16:09.140 Really find opportunities of where they're not using

00:16:10.920 the product or things they should be using

00:16:12.380 that they're not using so that you can increase

00:16:14.420 what's called your expansion revenue.

00:16:16.560 So click the link below, drop your email, get a copy of it,

00:16:20.160 and then you're gonna hear from me on the other side.

00:16:22.500 If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to my channel

00:16:25.760 and let me know in the comments below

00:16:26.980 what specific aspect did I share with you

00:16:29.440 that really resonated the most with you,

00:16:32.060 that spoke to you that you feel is going to be

00:16:33.460 the most helpful for you in your business.

00:16:35.000 I'd love for you to write a comment below and let me know.

00:16:37.560 And as per usual, I want to challenge you

00:16:39.740 to live a bigger life, go bigger,

00:16:42.740 and live a bigger business, okay?

00:16:45.220 Build an empire, don't stop building,

00:16:47.680 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:16:52.500 We'll be right back.

Dan Martell - July 18, 2022

Email Marketing Strategies For B2B SaaS Companies

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