Issue #443
Email list on autopilot (The Email Flywheel) | Protect your lead magnets
Good morning! How was your weekend?
Well, 4 screens ended up being too much for me. Remember this from last week?
Yeah. Well, now it looks like this:
More isn’t always better. 😉 But, I made some other further changes to my office workspace to make things more efficient and, frankly, pleasant to work in.
It’s worth doing in your own home office, if you haven’t done so in awhile. Spend some time and really make it a space that you can be productive in. It pays off over time.
OK, let’s get moving…
Here’s what’s on the menu for this issue…
GROWTH STRATEGY: The Email Flywheel
SITE STRATEGY: Protect your lead magnets (without pesky passwords)
TOOL OF THE WEEK: Ditch the annoying WP admin notices
WP TECH BUZZ OF THE WEEK: Updates from the “Fluent” team
Featured This Week
GROWTH STRATEGY
Email Marketing (And The Email Flywheel)
As we build our businesses, we should be seeking out opportunities for leverage. Ways to get more results (or better results), but with less work and more efficiency.
When it comes to our email list, this is one of the biggest opportunities for leverage we have. Because our email list has the ability to be automated using pre-written and pre-scheduled emails.
One potential way of doing this is via the classic, linear autoresponder sequence.
The person gets onto a schedule where they just get a series of emails over time. If you were to send them weekly emails in that autoresponder, you’d set up those emails to go out on Day 1, then Day 7, then Day 14, 21… and so on.
It is real linear, tho. Just a straight line. And, when most people set this up, they don’t bother to put it on repeat.
Here’s another thing…
What if the person engages with one of the email and expresses interest in a particular topic or product? Perhaps they click on a link in an email and that tells your system that they’re interested. That right there is an opportunity to get a little more granular on that single topic and… maybe… make a sale.
When those things happen, you probably don’t want your main autoresponder to just keep on truckin’ like nothing ever happened. It might get distracting and you could lose a sale. What you’d like to do is have your main autoresponder PAUSE while you talk to them about the thing they just expressed interest in.
So, here’s a structure that might work for you…
Instead of a non-repeating, linear autoresponder sequence about random stuff, how about you set up more of a circular flywheel.
We’ll envision it as circular because it will never end. When (or if) they get to the end, you simply restart it and start at the beginning.
Does that mean they might get the same email again? Yep. 🙂 But, you know what… they probably won’t notice. We’re talking an email flywheel that might be a year or more in length. Trust me… if they get a nice, useful email from you again after a full year, not only are they not likely to notice, but they’ll just find it useful all over again.
So, you’ve got yourself an email flywheel. Make it a year or more in length. If it’s weekly, that’s about 52 emails pre-written and added to the sequence. And you set up an automation that will just reset them back to the beginning if they ever get to the end.
Now, one more thing….
Each email on the flywheel is set up to be a HOOK on a particular topic. Something potentially of interest to them. Some things they may just read the email and delete it. Others, however, they may engage more fully. And you set up your automations so that if that happens, you splinter them off the main email flywheel and put them into a more topic-specific (but much shorter) email sequence.
This shorter, front-end sequence further engages with them on the sub-topic they’ve expressed interest in. And, if you’re smart, it will lead to a sales opportunity for them to buy a product or service related to the interest.
While they’re getting this sub-sequence, you PAUSE the main email flywheel.
When they are done with the sub-sequence (either because they just finished it or they bought your offer), then you UNPAUSE the email flywheel. And they just keep on with the weekly schedule.
Does this make sense?
Yes, it takes time to build. What I would suggest is just writing your weekly emails like you normally would. However, instead of just sending them out as one-time emails, you instead add them to your email flywheel. People will still get them all the same. But, you now have leverage because you can (and will) reuse those emails.
Over time, you’ll have a fully developed email flywheel that can engage new subscribers for a year or more… fully on automatic. And the whole time, generating sales for you.
SITE STRATEGY
Protected Lead Magnet Delivery – But No Passwords
So, here’s a common issue…
You want to offer a lead magnet in exchange for the opt-in. Could be a PDF, a video, or something else. And you would prefer that people not be able to access it unless they’ve actually opted in.
Here’s how most people handle that…
Don’t even try. Just let the page with your lead magnet hang out there and if somebody shares the link and people can access it without opting in, then so be it. There’s nothing wrong with this option, either. It is what most people do.
Password protect it. Annoying, frankly. And it isn’t as if people can’t share the password.
Put it behind a member login. But then people may end needing to go through the complexity of figuring out how to access their profile just to get a lead magnet.
I’d like to share a better approach.
To be clear, this solution requires WP Fusion to be installed to your site. Keep in mind that you can use WP Fusion Lite (which is 100% free) and will offer many of the core features at no charge.
The function we want to use is the Auto Login Link.
With the auto-login link, you can link to any protected page on your site. You pass their contact ID from your CRM along with the link. WP Fusion will then look up their CRM profile, make sure they have the proper permissions, then let them view the protected content.
The great thing about this is that it does NOT require them to have a full user profile. They are not actually logging into anything at all. It is simply taking their contact ID, looking at their CRM profile, then acting accordingly. The contact ID is a field you just pass along as a merge field in your email. Easy peasy.
So, here’s all you do…
Set up your lead magnet on a page of your site.
Use WP Fusion to protect access to that page using a tag from your CRM.
When they opt into your list to get that lead magnet, make sure you add that tag to their profile.
When you send them the lead magnet, link to your page and pass their contact ID along in the URL.
If somebody tries to access the page without being on your list, it won’t let them in. Just redirect them to your landing page.
If the contact ID is in the link, it will verify they’re on the list. And let them access the lead magnet.
No logins. No complexity. As far as they’re concerned, they just clicked a link in the email and got one-click access.
TOOL OF THE WEEK
Tame The WordPress Notifications
One of the stupider things going on right now with the WordPress admin panel is how notifications work. It is rife for abuse by plugin developers who overuse notifications to promote crap, do upsells… and basically put a ton of noise that gets in the way.
Check this out…
This plugin will put in a new option on all notifications that, when clicked, will ensure you don’t see that notification again.
It works most of the time, but isn’t 100% foolproof. But, man, does it help.
I especially hate it when you dismiss a notification and it keeps showing up on every page refresh in the admin panel. These developers that do that should be flogged. (I’m half kidding 😉 )
This plugin will help. Makes the admin panel a little less annoying to use.
WP NEWS
WP Tech Buzz Of The Week
Uncanny Automator is coming out with it’s next major release: version 5.0. One of the big new additions for Pro users is Loops. With Loops, you can set up a workflow and run on in bulk on multiple users at once. You can read more about version 5.0 here.
Fluent Support has launched version 1.7.3. This version has a few useful new additions including quicker access to deleting a ticket, re-designed permission page, and some other UI changes to make handling your support ticket load more convenient. Here’s the full announcement.
From the same team, Fluent Forms is now at version 5.0.8. This version offers some improvements to conversational forms, improvements to inventory management (useful for payment forms that need to track inventory), and improvements to AirTable integration.
There’s a new Roadmap to WordPress 6.4 out. You can check that out to learn a bit more about what’s on the slate for the next major release of WP.
Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:
Concierge: I’ll be your “web guy”, helping to maintain your site for you do you don’t have to think about it. Also includes access to my agency plugin licenses, site analytics, and a massive discount on any potential project work on your site.
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Book A Call Anytime. Via a private one-on-one call, I’ll make your business… my business. Easy peasy.
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