TAM 015: John Logar – Rapid Cashflow Sequence

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In episode 15, we get John Logar back to share one of his favourite automation sequences, he calls it the “rapid cashflow sequence.” You can easily put this sequence to work in your business to make an offer and get sales.

Use this email sequence for fast cashflow #podcast #emailmarketing #marketingautomation

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This is designed to make an offer to existing customers or leads. These offers work in any type of business and they even work well with small lists.

The more you offer the more you get

The sequence consists of four emails with a few days between each email.

The Offer
Just Want To Make Sure You Got The Offer (3 Days Later)
Hey, I Would Love To Know What You Thought About The Offer We Sent (3 Days Later)
Are You Still Interested In Taking Advantage Of The Offer (3 Days Later)

Links Mentioned In The Show

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Announcer: Welcome to The Active Marketer Podcast. Where we talk about how to design, automate, and scale your business to the next level, using sales and marketing automation. You can find out all the tips, tactics, and techniques you need, to get more customers, and sell more stuff, over at theactivemarketer.com. Now here's your host, Barry Moore.

Barry: Welcome podcast listeners, to episode 15 of The Active Marketer podcast. I'm your host Barry Moore, and this is a very special Hawaiian episode of The Active Marketer Podcast. We're just hanging out in Waikiki for the week, doing a little bit of work, and catching a lot of surf. So, I didn't want you to miss out on any marketing automation goodness, so we've got another episode for you. I've been getting a lot of feedback from people, asking about, what specifically can you do with marketing automation? How can I put it to work in my business, straight away? So, what I thought we'd do over the next few weeks, is get some of our guests back to share one or two of their automations that have really worked well in their business, that you can go away, straight away, and implement in your business.

So, this week we got John from episode five, I think it is, of The Active Marketer Podcast. He's come back to share a simple sequence with you that can generate sales and cashflow in your business. He calls it, The Rapid Cashflow Sequence. So, he's going to share that sequence for you. It's a sequence of four emails, and by the end of the episode you're going to be able to go away and implement that in your business. So, lets get into this week's episode, which is John sharing his Rapid Cashflow Sequence.

All right, we'd like to welcome back to the show one of our favourite guests, John Logar, and he's come back to share one of his favourite sequences that he sees in his business and that of his clients that works really well. So, you can go away and build that for yourself and start using marketing automation to increase your sales and get more customers.

So, welcome back John.

John: Thanks Barry, for having me. We get to share the sneaky sauce now.

Barry: Yeah, the secret sauce to the backend of making more money with emails. So, why don't you just launch into … I know you've probably seen lots and lots of sequences across lots and lots of customers.

John: Yep.

Barry: And, I think, sometimes it's the most simple ones that actually work the best. So, if you could, maybe, share with us a simple easy to implement strategy so our listeners can go away and implement straight away.

John: I love calling this strategy, The Rapid Cashflow Email Strategy.

Barry: Sounds good already.

John: Because, to me, it's always good to have an injection of funds. If you need … It's like, if you want some money you've got to go and ask for it, yeah? It's simple, if you want something you have to ask for it. I'm not sure of the biblical phrase or biblical reference, “Ask and you shall receive.” Is this concept. Well, this sequence is designed completely around the concept of asking, okay? And it's a very, very simple process, and I'll give you a couple of different ways in which you can run this sequence.

There are only four emails in this sequence, so it's really short. Some people can run the sequence once every day. I would probably recommend that you give a couple of days space in between each email, because this will leave the message out there, or the offer out there a little bit longer. It also gives time for people to have a look, take things in or even to respond back to you. So, the sequence should optimally last for about 12 days.

The results and responses can happen significantly fast, in some cases it will happen instantaneously when you send out. In other cases it might take a few days to filter through. But, I'm going to share also, a couple of ways in which you can maximise your opportunity to really get some traction on this particular sequential strategy. So, the premise of the strategy essentially, is making an offer to existing, past or new clients, in your list. So, the idea is, if you have a list of existing customers, you would formulate that list. If you have a list of past customers that you haven't done business in a while, or they haven't been in for a while, you would also put them on this list. And also none customers. So there maybe people who've inquired about your product or service but actually didn't buy, but you've got their details, okay?

So, the list doesn't have to be big. Some of the most successful campaigns in this strategy that I've run have … The smallest campaign was 30.

Barry: Oh, right.

John: A list of 30 people generated $250,000 worth of sales. That's the smallest campaign.

Barry: That's a good list.

John: That was a pretty good list, and it was a pretty good offer too. The largest list, on average, would probably be about 1,000. Surprisingly, the average list that I've seen work really well with this campaign is between 200 and 800 people on the list. So, they're relatively small lists, you don't need thousands of customers. As I said, a list of 30 people can bear fruit. In fact, it's one of the strategy's that I teach, a lot of the consultants that I mentor, a lot of business people that I work with, it's one of the first things I encourage them to do. Because, the thing that I believe in, also, and this is not my thing, I didn't invent this idea, it's something that is historically happened over the millennial, over many, many thousands of years, is, the more you offer, the more you get.

Barry: For sure.

John: If you're constantly offering something out there that means that people have the opportunity to constantly buy from you. Break it down into a very small sequence where it happens over a 12 day period, where you reiterate an offer. So, like in advertising in the old school advertising idea … It's if you're going to run an ad campaign you don't just run one ad and then hope something's going to happen. The idea is that you run the same advertisement half a dozen, or a dozen times so that it actually permeates, and gains acceptance, and awareness, and recognition within the customer base that is exposed to that media, right? So, it's no different to advertising, this sequence is designed to hit the customer, or give the customer a nudge on a consistent basis in a very short space of time. So that, one, it makes them aware that you're there, two, it encourages them to open the actual offer that you're making, and three, if it's relevant to them they're gonna buy, okay?

So, the sequence is very simple, it is to construct an email offer. So you have your list of, whether it be 30 people or a couple of 100 people, and you would have that … You can put that in an excel spreadsheet, in a CSV file, and then I would upload that list into an order responder.

So, simple order responders are things like Aweber, MailChimp, product like Active Campaign, is easy to set this up in. But, all you're doing is taking the name and the email address of your customer, and placing in the place where you can actually create one email and mail merge that automatically through that system, press the button and go, if you want to do this yourself, okay? So, if you're already using an order responder system then this is going to be a lot easier for you because you've already got a list in that system. But, of those who are starting out, or those of you that have never done this, this is as simple as it gets.

So, you've got your list, you upload it into a mechanism that can distribute emails to that list.

The second part of this, is to think about who you're sending this email to. A moment ago I said, existing customers, past customers, and perhaps none customers, right? If it's existing customers, the email that you send needs to be relevant to existing customers. So, what I mean by that is, if you're going to create an offer, think about your current customers, and think about what you've got that would add value, or would be of benefit to them to take advantage of. That is the offer you want to create for them.

If it's past customers, you might identify them as past customers and say, “Hey, you once used to buy from us.” Or, “You've been a great customer in the past, we thought we'd love for you to take advantage of an offer that we've created especially for you.” So you're making it relevant to the past customer to reignite them and come back into the business.

Or if it's a none customer say, “Hey, you've inquired once in the past, we've come up with a special offer for you, would you like to take advantage of it? Here is our offer.” Right?

So, I want to share with you a couple of examples of offers and strategies that have worked in a moment, but that's the premise. So, you created an offer that is relevant to the customer. Now, what types of offers you can create? You might have overstocks, so you might have stocks of things that you have, that you haven't been able to sell. You could probably put a price point on and let your customers say … “Hey, we've got an excess of stock, we've made a mistake and we over ordered. We thought we'd … You've been a great customer, we thought we'd give you an option to take this … Take advantage of this offer, because we are clearing it out.” So you're telling your existing customers that they can take advantage of you from a mistake that you've made, that you've got an over stock. If they'd like to help you out, they can get an advantage, and you'd like to clear your stock through them, right? So, there's relevancy, there's a reason behind it, and there's also a sense of scarcity. I've only got a certain amount of stock available, right?

So, that's another offer. Another offer is … One of my favourites is, we're about to spend a whole bunch of money on advertising, and instead we thought we'd give the money instead, right? So, we thought we'd give you $50 to come and spend on our product, right? That's another great offer.

Another offer might be, hey, we've got this product here. We've got access to another product that we could add value with. And you package them up and you give a great offer, which is a value add. So, you can package products together that will increase your profit, but it also gets a customer to buy more. And if it's a good offer then people are gonna think, “Hey, that's a great idea, lets take advantage of it.” Okay?

So, there's three different types of offers, or you can just do a straight out, “Here's our service.” And it's a thing, what I call The Capacity Offer. So, if it's a service you provide, let's say you're a web developer or you're an automation specialist, okay? You might say, “Hey, we've got … Our team has got an allocation of time in which we can actually expedite a project. So, if you'd like to get your website up and running in the next two weeks, our team can take care of that. We can take care of that right now, if you'd like to go ahead now.” So, there's a sense of urgency, and there's a reason for the capacity. There's a reason why we're making this offer, right? So it's relevant to the list, okay?

Barry: For sure.

John: There's five different offers that you can create for the first email, the offer. So, we upload that email into the order responder, or email service and then we hit send, right? Now, some people say that should be it. Most people make the mistake, they only send one offer and one email, okay? In this sequence it's a four email sequence.

So, the first email is the offer, it goes out on the first day, day one, right? So, the first thing you want to do is you want to check, because these software systems that I've just shared with you allow you to see who opened, when they opened, what they looked at. Is there a link that they clicked to the offer that you may have on your website, is there a link that might go to a landing page, or a page that you have set up especially for people who inquire about the offer. Or, is it a straight out reply, “Yes, I'd like it.” On the bottom. You can actually see the behaviour through the order responder system that you're using.

So, the first thing you want to look for is, how many people opened the email. So you want to actually keep an eye on this campaign, right? Generally, the majority of emails are opened within the first two hours, two to three hours of a send. After about two to three hours the email starts to pile up in the list of emails, like everybody's inboxes.

What you're looking for is the ratio. So, if you had 100 people you send an email to, you want to see if … Did 20 people open the email, so you had 20% response rate or open rate. Did 30 people open the email. Generally on a familiar list, a list that is close to you, like a customer list, or a list that knows who you are, based on the fact that you've, perhaps, never done this before, or it's been a long time since you communicated with your customer, open rates could be as high as 50 to 60%. So, that means half the emails that you sent out were actually seen by your customer, or by the list person. And my experience is, it will gravitate between about 35 … At the highest end it will be 60%, right? But I've seen them gravitate 35, 40, 45, 50% on average, right? Because they know you, so naturally, they receive an email from you they'll open it up. Some people will open up. Now, that's half the people opening the email up.

What you also want to do is, if you get sophisticated you can actually look … I mentioned a moment ago, the links. You can actually see, not just how many people opened the email, but how many people actually clicked on the link to go to the offer on your website, or clicked on the link to go to a page, which articulates the offer, or replied to the actual email to take advantage of the offer.

Barry: Yeah, or even if they've opened it multiple times, right? So, if they've opened it once, and maybe they're on the bus, on their phone.

John: Exactly.

Barry: And they come home and then they open it again to check it out again, yeah.

John: Exactly, so you can see how many times they open the email. I'm glad you mentioned that, or brought that up because … Just remind me a little bit later, because there's a really sneaky trick you can do something about the double open or the triple open emails. They can actually dramatically improve the sales for this campaign. So, that's the first email.

The second email that comes out, three days later. Some people can do it the next day, I would recommend once every two to three days. Two to three days later, second email comes out. “Just want to make sure,” subject line, “just want to make sure you got the offer. So the email that I sent you a few days ago, I just want to make sure you got it and you saw it.” And then … So, your first paragraph will be, “Hey Bob, sent this the other day, not sure if you saw it. I just want to make sure that you didn't miss out on it, and make sure that you saw the offer.” And then it reiterates the same information about the offer in the email, same link or same course of action to take advantage of the offer, and you leave it at that, right? So, that's the second email.

It's really funny, the second email usually gets … There's a lower open … It can … It goes both ways, it could be a lower open rate by about 20 to 30%, or sometimes, it could be a higher open rate by 20 to 30%. It's like science, I don't know why this happens, but for some reason the second email has a fluctuation in it, okay? In terms of open rates.

Two to three days later, third email in the sequence. The third email in the sequence is, “Hey, I would love to know what you thought about the offer that I sent you the other day.” That's your statement. Say, “Hey, Bob, Mary, Sue, just wanted to find out what you thought about this offer that we sent you. Did you like the offer? Didn't you like the offer? Just reply, just give us a quick note just to let us know what you think.” Right? So, what you're doing is you're trying to get feedback, but what you're also doing is you're asking them to reread the offer.

Barry: Yep.

John: That's the trick in this email, or that's the strategy in this email. So, because if they hadn't paid attention to it the first two times, by the third time it's like, “Oh, okay feedback. Oh, okay I might do them a favour.” Not everybody's going to do you a favour, but some people are going to respond, surprisingly, right, when you ask, the feedback. So, that's the third email.

Fourth email, final and last email, right? Final, last email is, “Hey, just want to make sure, are you still interested in taking advantage of that offer?” Right, so it's a really short email and then, here is the offer, again. So, you're reiterating the same offer again, and then that's the end of your sequence.

Now, I just want to give you the premise, to dramatically improve your conversion rates for this campaign, okay?

Barry: Okay.

John: So, to dramatically improve your conversion rates on each of these emails, because each of these emails are pretty simple. It's really the same offer, all you're doing is changing the headline, the subject line, and you're changing the initial paragraph to suit the actual email that you're sending, to make it [inaudible 00:16:26], okay. So, with your offer, as long as your offer is relevant to the customer, you've given them a good reason for it, right?

There maybe a quantity number associated with it, so there is a limited number, right? And also you want time scarcity. We're only making this offer available for the next two weeks, okay? So, there's relevancy, the actual offer itself, the quantity, how many you want to sell, right? If there is a quantity, because that will improve your … Chances of improving conversion.

Barry: Yep.

John: The fact that there is a limited time only available for this offer, okay? And there's this concept of exclusivity. You are one of the few people that is receiving this offer. So, if you're one of the few people, it gives you a better chance of taking advantage of it.

Barry: Yeah, for sure.

John: Yeah. So, you're creating … You're using some tactics in the email to resinate with people's buying motivations, yeah? So, it's … You're creating an opportunity, basically, is what you're doing in this scenario.

Barry: I can hear the questions from the listener out there. So, isn't that going to piss somebody off, if they get four … Essentially, what amounts to four of the same emails, is that not going to annoy some people?

John: Yeah, I'm glad you really asked the question. In most cases I would say 99.9% of the time, no. And let me tell you why, most people scan their emails, so in my scanning, and this is why subject lines can be very important, sometimes I'll miss things or I'll deem them not to be important and won't even bother opening it, right? So, the reason why you're sending the email is, one, you want to make sure they got them. The premise of the psychology behind it is, I'm just making sure you got this, right? You're giving them a relevant reason as to why you're doing it.

Barry: And you're kind of asking for permission, for the … You've sent it for the second time, yeah, for sure.

John: Exactly. You're asking for permission as well. Most people I would say … Your unsubscribe rate, if you were to look at unsubscribe, in most cases would be … Especially if it's a known list will be less than 1%, right? If it's a sizable list. You might get the odd person saying, “Hey, I don't want to receive this anymore.” That's fine, right?

Barry: They weren't going to buy from you anyway, so.

John: No, no, we're not catering to the individual, we're catering to the group, the majority, okay? So, are you going to piss people off, not at all. If your offer is relevant to them that's a good thing, it actually keeps you top of mind, it keeps your customer aware that you're there to provide a particular product or service. It may encourage a purchase, not at that point, but it may encourage a purchase within a short span of time from that as well. So, to answer the question, effectively, no, you're not going to be pissing your customers off. If you think you are pissing your customers off then you need to think about what you're offering.

Barry: That, and they'll tell you in no uncertain terms.

John: They'll tell you in no uncertain terms. And if you think that by offering … If you think that, that's pissing your customers off, you're not going to be in business for very much longer. Absolutely.

Barry: One thing I wanted to circle back to about the not pissing off your customers, especially if you presented the whole premises as, “I have a special offer, I don't want you to miss out.” In going back to the ready deals thing from quanta scale, it's that psychological factor of loss aversion right? So, people will act more willingly to avoid a loss than they will to get a benefit. So, you don't want to get off that ready deal list because you're afraid you might miss out on a really, really good deal, right? So, you stay on that list. So, it's the same kind of psychology at work here. People aren't going to get pissed off because you're offering them something that they don't want to miss out on, they don't want to miss out on a special deal, they're afraid of the time scarcity. So, that psychological factor will go along way in not, quote unquote, pissing off your customers.

John: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Barry: Just a question on the management of the sequence. If you're sending it out every couple of days, every two or three days, are you making sure to just send it out on weekdays? So, do you want to skip Saturday and Sunday and get them based on weekdays?

John: Timing sequences. Okay, it depends on what product or service you're selling, because sometimes it maybe advantageous for you to send on weekends, because customers do check their emails on weekends as well. We live in 24:7, 365 day a year society now. The internet gives you access 24:7, all year round. If it's relevant, by all means email on a weekend, because if they don't open it on a weekend, they're going to be opening it on Monday.

Barry: Another thing to circle back to on that four sequence, and why send four when you could just send one? I think, it also comes down to some behaviour issues. I know, for me, I might see an email in my inbox, and I know I want to read it later, I'm just too busy now. This particular day, Tuesday's crazy and I'm busy, and I've got to get back to clients, et cetera, et cetera, and I don't end up reading it. The same email pops up three days later when I've got a bit of extra time, “Oh, yeah, I meant to read that, I'll go through and read it.”

Also, the … If you've ever read Google's, Zero Moment of Truth, there's multiple touch points … People these days … multiple touch points that people need before they make a buying decision. Used to be, I think, five or six and now it's like 10 or 11 or 13, or something. So, in the days of social media where you're bombarded with tweets and Facebook posts, and you may have to … Or it's a good idea, to hit your potential customer up more than once.

John: Absolutely, and again, you hit the idea as well. One, it keeps you top of mind, two, you're going to be up … Your emails run top to bottom. In my email system, I only have the first 50 emails showing.

Barry: And what kind of results have you seen for a simple sequence like that, John?

John: I'll give you a couple of examples. This is a great story, small list, I think the list was 120 odd people on the list. This was a tracking … A company that built trailers, right? For semi-trailers for trucks, so the back bed pan trucks. So, these things are like … We're talking $40,000, $60,000 and it's quite a pricey sale, so they'd never actually emailed their customer base ever, in the history of their business. They'd been in business for 15 years, never sent an offer out to their existing customers. Had a list of customers saying, “Hey guys, we've got four of these trailers sitting out the back here, they've all been refurbished, ready to go, would you like to buy it? Would you like to take advantage of it?” Sold all four trailers within a fortnight, $120,000 worth of sales.

Barry: Nice.

John: To a list of 119, very small list, okay? I can give you dozens more on different scales, but, this is one of the easiest ways to generate an impact of revenue for your business. It's a really simple sequence, and it's one that can work pretty much for any business. I've never seen a business not actually generate a result by running this type of campaign. So, even people that have run it for the first time, they've always managed to get one or two sales out of running this very simple strategy.

Barry: And even if you don't, what does it hurt. You know, you mean it costs nothing to set up one of these campaigns and fired it out if you've already got the tools. And even just think about your own behaviour as a consumer, how many times do you need multiple reminders to get something done? I actually had a fence quote that I never followed through on. If they were to come back to me and said, “Hey, here's a special.” I probably would have done it.

John: Yeah.

Barry: Yeah, you're going to need multiple touch points for your customers, and timing's everything as well. Sometimes the time is not right for them, you hit them up a bit later, and hey presto there's a sale. So, you're absolutely right, yeah, there's a lot of … There's a lot to be said for hitting people over the head with your offer and especially the time sensitivity of it as well.

All right John, we might wrap it up there, and I want to thank you for coming on again sharing one of your favourite sequences with us. And we'll have all the show notes, so we have the sequence spelled out step by step in the show notes there. Where can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about John?

John: They can go to www.consultingunleashed.com or I've got a podcast at businessunleashed.com.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of free stuff and lots of great ideas and strategies that people can take advantage of.

Barry: All right, well thanks John. All the best of luck on your new move to the US.

John: Thanks Barry.

Barry: All right, I'd like to thank John for stopping by and sharing his Rapid Cashflow Sequence with us, remember, that's four emails. You can find all the details over on theactivemarketer.com/rapidcashflow.

We're up to episode 15, things are going really well, and I want to thank all you listeners for tuning in for each and every episode. We are a new show, so if you know someone who could get some use out of this information, we'd love it if you could share this podcast with your friends. And as always, we'd also love it if you could leave us a review over on iTunes, that helps bump the show up and make it more discoverable and easier for people to find.

So, once again thanks for tuning in, we look forward to sharing more great marketing automation with you. In the meantime get out there and design, automate and scale your business to the next level.

See you everybody.

Announcer: Thanks to listening to The Active Marketer Podcast, you can find the show notes and all the latest marketing automation news over at theactivemarketer.com.