AP 0475: How Does Email Marketing Differ for One-Time Purchases?

AskPat 475 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody, Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 475 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from David, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is Lynda.com, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on demand video courses to help you strengthen your business tack and creative skills, if you are a problem solver in any way, if your curious for … in any way you want to make things happen in your life, and in your business, and even in your nine to five.

Maybe you want to master Excel, or learn negotiation tactics, or build a website, or boost your photo shop skills, go to lynda.com and feed your curious mind. That's l-y-n-d-a.com/askpat for a 10 day free trial. Again, Lynda.com/askpat. All right? Here's today question from David.

David: Hi Pat, my name's David, I'm a long-time listener, love your show. I'm in the process of putting together a video course that I think has a lot of potential, and I have a question about the use of email lists when the product or the service, or the site that you're developing is based on a single transaction or a single event. I understand the importance of putting together, of collecting emails, and putting together an email list, but whenever the topic is discussed it's usually in the context of a product, or a service, or a site where there's some kind of ongoing activity, or there's an ongoing relationship.

Smart Passive Income's a perfect example of that, when people like me go there, we are looking to start an online business, and that's an ongoing activity, so we subscribe, and we love getting ongoing emails from you. We can go to your website and read articles, and stay there as long as want, and we might do that for months and months, before we do anything.

After we start our business, we're gonna to continue to go there to get new information, but what about when the product or the service is just a single event that's going to come and go? A good example of that is, I think you had a caller call in and he was going to put together a digital course, or a video course, or digital product, to help people who were looking to buy a used car.

That's a single event, people are going to start looking for that stuff on the internet, because they're looking to buy a used car. They're not gonna go to website for four or five months and read articles about buying used car just for fun, or just because they might some day buy a used car. Similarly, once they bought a used car, they're not going to want to continue to get emails on future products that come out, they've already bought the car, they don't care anymore.

How do you use your email list when that's the case? For example, your autoresponder, obviously that would need to be accelerated, if you put in emails in a four week autoresponder when in four weeks a person has probably already bought the car, and they don't need your product anymore, and again, after they've bought it, I don't think you want to continue to send them email about your newest how to buy a used car product.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. I'm really interested in how the email list is used in that context, but really any other suggestions or thoughts you have on websites and products that are revolving around a single event, or a single transaction where the person's gonna need it, and then they're done with it, and probably won't need it again. Love your show. Keep up the good work, and we will all keep listening. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey David. What's up? Thank you so much for the question. I believe this is going to be very useful for a lot of people, because they feel like there might be a business within them, that is more of a one-time event, like you said, where you're not giving ongoing advice, but it's leading up to one single transaction, and in most cases, it's more than that. I'll get into that in just a second, but again, I want to appreciate you calling in and for anybody else out there who has a question, please feel free to go to AskPat.com like David did, and ask your question.

Now to answer your question I will give you an example, and that is GreenExamAcademy.com. This is a website that I had back … I still have it actually, but I created it back in late 2007, and started selling product on it in 2008. This website helped people pass an exam in the architecture industry that I took. The thing is, it's very similar in the fact that when people purchased that guide, and they passed the exam, well then, they were done. That's it.

It's similar in that way, however, when you think about it, well, there's a lot of other things you can do to utilize that email list. I had eventually started to build an email list, and I got to a point where people started to pass the exam, and I didn't need to send them emails anymore about buying my study guides, because they had already passed. However, there are things you can do after that purchase, that transaction, that one time event, that would be very useful, and would help you utilize that email list even more, and even get more out of your business too.

For example, people could purchase the study guide, and then pass the exam, and then I can follow up with them to see how they did, which would strengthen that relationship, at which point it would probably help them want to help me even more. “Hey, you already passed the exam, awesome, well do you know anybody else who wants to pass the exam? Send them this way, here's a coupon code for them too.” They'll feel special because they'll have given a person a great resource, my website, and they would've helped that person save money too.

You could also ask for feedback on particular products that you use, “Hey, great job on passing your exam. Amazing! Now, is there anything that I could have done better to help you along the way?” You're not going to have everybody reply, but you will get some people replying, that is something that can help you fine tune your business for people who are coming in brand new. You can do that no matter what business you have.

Another thing you could do, is create additional offers after the fact. They end up making that purchase. They end up making that purchase for the study guide for example, they passed the exam, “Well, great job, well, here's a guide for you to help you be able to utilize that information in a different way. Here is another guide for a different exam, which you might have a partnership with for example.”

These are things that I've done, and some of them I did better than others, but let's think about the used car purchase, for example. What you want to do, is be able to divide your email list into people who have yet to purchase your product, and then people who have purchased that product, which is very easy to do. A lot of email service providers allow you to do this. A lot of shopping carts allow to create automation to have you segment your audience in that way.

The people who have yet to purchase, of course they'd have a series of emails that you would likely send out to help push that purchase, and make your pitches, providing value at the same time. Once they make that transaction, they get taken off of that list, and put onto the buyer segment. Now you're going to have a completely set of different emails, but you can have a number of emails already set up. For example, how's your service for the feedback on the product, if you enjoyed this, here is a link for you to share it with people, and the coupon code.

It's like Amazon, right? When you purchase something on Amazon, what happens? Well, they follow up with you, to get feedback, to show you other recommended items, and those types of things. Those are things that you can include that can help your bottom line even more. I would not discount that, and not use the fact that it's a one time event as an excuse not to create an email list.

Not saying that's why you called in David, but hopefully you're just looking for information on how you might be able to utilize that email list after people make that one-time purchase. Now, let me just spit ball, and brainstorm on the used car idea. People who buy a used car, what are they often looking for? Well, stuff related to keeping your car clean, or maybe there's some local information that people can use to make sure that all their registrations are up to date, and all that sort of stuff. Maybe you have a deal with carfax.com, that allows people to see the history of that particular car, and actually keep track of that, and all those sorts of things.

Maybe there's accessories that people can include in those particular cars, or links to groups for different kinds of cars. I know people who are interested in Mini Coopers for example, are all obsessed with hanging out with other people who have Mini Coopers, and if you can provide them that link, that'd be cool. Again, that's probably a little bit more targeted and more, you know, niched in terms of what you can do, but again, I'm just spit balling, and thinking out loud here.

If anybody else has any ideas for David, on this fact, head on over to Twitter, and use the hashtag #AskPat475 and we can brainstorm even more there. But, David, I hope this helps you, or at least gets the gears going, pun intended, 'cause if we're talking about cars, ‘member? But, anyway, David thank you so much for the question, I'm going to send you an Ask Pat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. We do that for everybody whose question gets featured.

If you have a question, for those of you who are listening, that you'd like potentially featured here on the show just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page. I also want to thank another sponsor today, and that is braintree.com, I don't know if you've heard it before, but Braintree gives you a full stack payment solution. It's support for all payment types for your customers including Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo cards, and whatever's next, all with a single integration, across all platforms.

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Thanks so much, I appreciate you listening in today, and as always, I like to end with a quote, and today's quote is from Jack Welch, he said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself, when you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Take care. Have an awesome week, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.