Email marketing hack to double your sales. [4 STEPS]

I visited a gym on vacation and paid a $20-ish "drop-in" fee.

This is a normal price that I expected for a single day drop-in.

I came home to Phoenix.

Reminiscing about the awesome trip and a cool new gym experience.

I received an email from the gym.

It didn't feel spammy so I opened it. I started to read it and appreciated that they were checking in to see if I had a good experience or not.

I wasn't ready to invest time into a response, but the very next line was asking what else they could do for me... Offering to send back any equipment I might have left behind. WOW!

So I clicked to leave my review.

They made it so easy with a button to click for either a good or bad experience so I was interested to see if the process of giving my feedback would be as easy as it seemed. I wasn't disappointed!

When I clicked on the Green/Good button I was presented with a webpage where I could choose to leave my review on Facebook, Yelp or Google. This required a couple clicks, but the webpage had little to no content on it besides the instructions to click to choose where I wanted to leave my review.

I chose Google because Yelp has a tendency to over-screen good reviews, making them inaccessible to viewers.

Then, just to see what would happen I clicked on the Red/Bad button. It opened a webpage with an email form to leave my feedback directly with the gym management. This was awesome because it cuts through red tape for the customer and gives the business an opportunity to learn from direct, honest feedback.

When I closed out the review webpage, I read more.

I wasn't intending to, but the content was so friendly and engaging that I gave them a couple more minutes of my time.

They went for another sale.

These guys are smart! Mixed in with their conversation-like content, they referenced things I might have noticed at the gym with affiliate links to the products. This means the gym would have got a cut of anything I purchased. They also provided a registration link for a really cool seminar they were hosting in a few months. A seminar they knew was cool enough to entice another visit.

Use your preferred email marketing system.

A lot of our clients love Mailchimp and it's very user-friendly. We personally use Autopilot because we like to geek out on all the features.

In almost any email marketing system you choose, you will have the option to create branded emails with your logo and create yes/no or good/bad buttons like the ones I showed you in the video.

Create a custom list.

You obviously don't want to send this email to everyone all the time, just the people who fit the criteria of your email. You can connect your email system with a specific form on your website to automate this and you should also have the option to add contacts manually.

Know your audience.

You'll want to come up with unique content for this new list so that they are as compelled to click as I was. You can replicate this tactic with various lists and content strategies.

Speaking of content, I can not stress enough how important GOOD content is to the success of any online marketing tactic. If this is a pain point for you, I highly recommend "How To Write Copy That Sells" by Ray Edwards. He breaks down a lot of great nuggets of information that will help you be more impactful with your words. Just remember to keep your tone consistent across all of your marketing platforms so that your message is authentic.

What works for one audience sector might not work for another. Keep playing with your content until you can see an increase in click rates.

Analyze your results.

WordPress will give you stats about your form entries, your email system should give you stats about open and click rates.

You can also take it a step further by looking at your Google analytics account to see where your customers are, how long they looked at your webpages, how many times they clicked, how many times they visited, and so on.

The more you geek out on this stuff the more effective you can be.