When it comes to building and selling an info product like an e-book or course, most businesses focus solely on the product and its sales and marketing. While creating a great product and getting people to pay you for it (or at least, register to download it) is important, the real money is in the follow-up.
Here's why: Let's assume that your product is high quality and sales are strong. You still face challenges in product delivery, customer service and information retrieval -- all key to upselling happy customers at a later date. Creating an email follow-up campaign can set you up for long-term success and help you gain valuable insight about what your customers are thinking. As a bonus, most email software today makes automating follow-ups relatively straightforward -- meaning you can create your campaign before your first customer even hits "buy" or "download."
Below, I share five strategies to help you craft a strong follow-up campaign.
1. Deliver the Goods
Once the sale is made, you must make it easy and intuitive to access the product. As a paying customer, it's often frustrating to be unable to figure out where or how to download your information after you have already paid.
Send personalized emails that give step by step instructions about how to access videos, worksheets, e-book -- whatever your info product entails. Make this part incredibly easy for your customer and they will love you for it. Customers who actually download and use your info product are better leads for upsells and have increased customer satisfaction. As a bonus, you’ll have fewer refund requests.
2. Give Ongoing Customer Support
No matter how much time you spend on the content of your product, there will always be questions you fail to answer. Enable a two-way conversation by inviting your clients to send in questions and having a customer service team answer them promptly. This data is invaluable for clarifying your sales process, creating FAQs and giving you opportunities to upsell.
This can be as simple as a “just checking in” email that goes out a certain number of days after the purchase, a card in the mail to follow up, or a personal call outreach.
3. Inspire Action
The follow-up sequence is not just about delivering the goods and answering questions. The best email campaigns inspire action by sharing success stories and teaching through examples. By showcasing other clients, testimonials and case studies, you’ll increase the perceived value of the product and improve your stick rate.
Through follow-up campaigns, you start to make an important shift from a single transaction (e.g. money for an e-book) to an ongoing relationship.
4. Offer Additional Support
For most startups, info products are introductory offers, not the full deal. So use email campaigns to upsell your new customer with complementary products, events, services, coaching and workshops.
Even those who understand the importance of increasing the value per client often start with a blunt “buy this” offer. Don't. Instead, talk about the natural next step from info product to your client's end goal. This will build your brand loyalty and establish your company as the premier provider. Your customers will no longer need to go elsewhere for support.
5. Build Your Tribe
If a follow-up campaign is a relationship-building tool, then you have to allow your clients to talk back and share their experience and results -- ultimately becoming part of your tribe, either as an affiliate or raving fan. If you’ve completed the earlier steps, you’ve built up sufficient goodwill to ask for this favor.
The most valuable part of this whole experience is that, with the right software, every single step of the process can be automated. Reminders, prompts and content should go out to each buyer automatically. When you don’t have to manually send 400 emails a week and remember who gets which message, you can refocus on writing emails that offer value.
Remember -- the first sale is just the beginning.
Patrick Conley has taken his background in engineering design, robotics and process flow systems from billion dollar international development projects to online businesses and founded Automation Heroes -- a marketing strategy firm that develops the resources and processes for clients looking to to conquer their business system chaos by leveraging the power of marketing automation.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
