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13/08/2020

We run Ink Marketing out of a lovely converted barn just outside Meriden.

It’s got all the features you’d expect a barn to have.

Old, twisted wooden beams.

Large, heavy oak doors.

And a mouse.

We only realised we had a mouse a week or two ago when, during a job interview for our new junior marketer, he decided to pop out and introduce himself.

He seems a nice chap, our mouse.

He keeps himself to himself, mostly, and doesn’t ask for much.

But having checked the subletting clause in our tenancy agreement, we decided it was best he find somewhere else to live.

One of Bezos’ lot delivered a pair of humane mouse traps this morning, so we decided to do an experiment.

We’ve baited one with smooth peanut butter. The other with crunchy.

Thing is, whatever variation of nut butter the mouse goes for isn’t going to tell us anything useful.

There’s not enough data to look at.

Too few mice. Not enough traps.

Lots of businesses should be sending regular emails if they want to attract more, better quality customers.

But they don’t. Instead, they overcomplicate things.

They spend too much time split testing subject lines on their list of 159 subscribers.

Or analysing the open rates for the 3 emails they’ve sent.

That sort of information is useful, of course, but when you’ve got enough data to be meaningful.

Until then, focus on sending the emails consistently.

And if you struggle with that, you’re going to find the training I’m sending on Friday extremely valuable.

11/08/2020

I had a conversation last week with a guy who my good friend, Will Polston, referred to me.

I want to share it with you, because it could influence how you think about your copy.

Now, we’ll call this man James.

(Partly because that's my middle name, but mostly because that's his name.)

James has built a pretty great business over the past few years teaching people how to play the bass guitar.

Plus it’s an info business, so the margin’s great.

And James has, virtually single handedly, built up a fantastic membership base who pay him monthly, as well as doing a few successful launches a year.

But, as is often the case, he’s decided that to scale things further, he needs to buy in some expertise to free up his time to focus on the ‘big picture’ stuff, and optimise some of the work he’s been doing.

In the instance of our conversation, that’s the copy.

As is often the case with a referral, James already felt relatively sure I’d be able to help him.

But he did have one question:

“So, Nick, considering you don’t play bass guitar do you feel confident that you could write copy that’s going to sell what I do?”

I’ll level with you. I probably don’t talk about this objection enough when talking about the services Ink Marketing provides.

But here’s the thing.

Writing the best sales copy - in terms of the stuff that converts the most prospects into buyers - isn’t about understanding every intricacy of the product or service you’re selling.

You need to have an understanding of them, sure. And some research is a key part of the process.

But remember this:

People almost always buy for one of two reasons.

To move closer to pleasure, or away from pain.

In this case, people are going to be buying the lessons because they’ve always wanted to learn - PLEASURE.

Or because they’re sick of not being able to play as well as they’d hoped - PAIN.

When you come back to this simple rule, copywriting becomes a lot more straightforward.

10/08/2020

I've been doing some copy work recently with a really smart guy called Steve Auchetti.

His company specialises in creating quiz funnels for experts to generate more leads and create more customers.

They build the quizzes and all the complicated back-end stuff, and then handle the paid traffic and emails for some clients too.

It's clever stuff, and they've built over 600 of them in the past 12 months alone.

I was on the phone with Steve a few weeks back when he made a throwaway remark that really resonated with me.

Now, Steve's Australian, so I need you to imagine the accent when you read this back to yourself.

He said:

"Let me just pop my didgeridoo down for a second so I can write that down, mate."

I jest.

He actually said:

"Well we've noticed with another client that the lead cost came down by about 5% when we changed that page, so we're going to do that here as well."

Now, out of context, I appreciate that sentence doesn't make a huge amount of sense.

So here's the important thing to take away from this email:

Because Steve's working with a few businesses at any one time, he's able to see what's working well for one, and then use that data to improve all of his other clients' results.

Nett result - they all perform better.

Steve's not psychic. He's just got more data to leverage than someone who was just having a crack at it by themself.

(Let me know if you want Steve's contact info, by the way.)

It got me thinking about why business owners choose to sign up for our 'done for you' weekly email service, Ink Emails.

Because, honestly, when pitching in the past I've tended to focus on the fact that it's one less thing off your plate when it comes to marketing for customers.

But when I think about it.

One of the real benefits is the fact we're sending 100,000s of emails every single month for clients in a range of industries, so we see what works, and what doesn't.

And all of our clients benefit from that data.

I'll share some of our findings next week.

Also, I'm going to be releasing that training I've been teasing at in just over a week. I'll send a link when it's good to go.

Hope you had a great weekend.

04/08/2020

I’ve got bad news.

There’s something that’s been weighing on me for a little while, and it’s about time I share it with you.

But first, advice. I get lots of it.

It normally comes occasionally, unsolicited, and in reply to my emails.

People advising me where I should put my opinions, or emails, or ‘not funny jokes’.

But every now and again I get something constructive.

A few weeks back, I had such a response from a man whose name I won’t share.

Because I did a search and I can’t find it in my inbox.

He found it ridiculous that I was talking about ‘the power of relationships’ in my email, but had failed to add his first name.

Which brings me to my confession.

I send my emails three times a week to just over 15,000 business owners and operators.

And my parents.

I’ll save you powering up your Casio scientific calculator. That’s 45,000 emails going out a week.

I don’t spend every waking hour in front of my laptop, Gmail open, sending these emails out individually.

I write them once. Drop them into my email marketing tool. Hit send.

The internet fairies take care of the rest.

But you knew that already, right?

It’s no big secret.

So why insult your intelligence by dropping in your first name and pretending I typed it out myself?

Consumers are, on the whole, becoming more marketing sophisticated.

They’re learning more of the tips and tricks us sneaky marketers use on them to try and elicit the sale.

That’s why transparency, honesty, and even frankness has become increasingly important in creating effective marketing.

Got that, ~FIRSTNAME~?

03/08/2020

During the time I spent unsuccessfully completing a university degree, I worked at a restaurant.

I liked working there.

The pay was low. The hours were long. But I got to eat for free and work with people I liked.

Plus the restaurant was perfectly situated for a student.

There was an off-license a few doors down, a smorgasbord of pubs within walking distance, and a casino a few hundred feet away.

I’ve never really been into gambling, but a few of my colleagues were.

Occasionally they’d insist we delay our trip to one of the local drinking establishments in favour of playing a few games.

They had all sorts of “strategies” for winning on the blackjack tables, or picking the right slot machine that was “guaranteed” to pay out.

I didn’t share their enthusiasm, but I felt obliged to join in.

So I’d set a hard limit of £20 and spend it as slowly as possible.

The rate at which I lost that £20 always varied, but the fact that I lost it remained constant.

Very occasionally, my friends won 3 or 4-figure sums on our trips to the casino.

So why did they win, when I lost?

They had to spend more than £20 before they won any cash.

It was their willingness to double down, keep pulling notes out of their wallet, and gambling on the right spin that enabled them to win.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I have ZERO doubt that if calculated their overall results from every trip, they’d be down.

But there are some parallels between their approach and those who win when it comes to email marketing.

Because those who succeed with weekly emails don’t take the short term approach.

Your first £20 probably isn’t going to bring in the customers, revenue, or profit you’d like.

Instead, the results come in time, once you’ve committed to the process and given it time to work.

The good news? Unlike gambling, the odds of winning are in your favour.

27/07/2020

I'd be lying if I said I did anything tremendously advanced with my emails.

I've sent 251 emails out of this CRM.

That's 80-odd week's worth as 3 emails a week.

Maybe I could dig out the old login details from my old inbox for the old CRM I used to send my emails from, and work out exactly how many I've sent since in total.

I probably won't.

I've sent enough emails now in this tool alone to be able to accumulate some data.

I've got the ability to work out my average open rate based on the time of day I've sent emails, the day I've sent them on, what my subject line was, or what the weather was doing in Barnstaple.

I'd love to tell you that I do.

That I've got a colour-coded spreadsheet printed off on the wall, with Gantt charts, pie charts, and pivot tables.

I've got no such thing.

I use just 2 metrics to track the effectiveness of our email marketing:

#1. List size.
#2. Monthly revenue (and profit).

A quick scan of those figures gives us a good idea of where we're at. As long as they're steady or increasing, that's a good sign.

I work with some clients with bigger audiences, bigger teams, and bigger businesses than me.

We do some fancier stuff for them because when you're working with BIG numbers and you've got plenty of resource, those 2 or 3% improvements can have a significant impact on the results.

But more often than not I talk with business owners who know they'll benefit from sending weekly emails, but haven't started sending them yet because...

- They're not sure which day is best to send them...

- They're still trying to think of the perfect subject line...

- Their list is only 200 people, and they'd rather wait until it gets to 1000 before they start emailing...

- They're still not sure if red or blue buttons convert better...

- They "haven't got anything to talk about"...

There's an oft-quoted marketing untruth you'll often hear at business events:

"It takes 6-8 prospect touches to get the sale."

Different people will tell you different numbers, but there's a big problem:

No two prospects on your list will behave the same.

When you're running a small business - be that one that's turning a hundred grand or a few million - the time and resource you're able to commit to marketing is limited.

The businesses who do really well are those who realise they don't need to overcomplicate their marketing, and track every possible data point for the sake of it.

They just need to do a few things that work well, consistently.

Because as long as you:

- Continue to grow your list
- Send an email every week, without fail

You won't actually mind if someone's on your list for 3 weeks or 12 months before they become customers, because you know that they will when they're ready.

P.S. I spent some time at Mark's house on Wednesday recording a new training I'm going to share with you soon. It's a little different to anything I've done in the past, but I can't wait to share it with you soon.

23/07/2020

A few months back I got an email from someone who'd been receiving my emails 3 times a week for a few months.

He felt they had an opportunity in their business that needed some fast action, and he wanted to see if I could help them leverage it.

But what started as a pretty typical sales conversation, quickly illustrated where most businesses get it wrong with their email marketing.

Anyway, here's an overview of the situation as he explained it to me:

- He was Co-Founder at an L&D (learning and development) company who offered a subscription service focussed on monitoring and employee performance and happiness.

- They decided to waive their usual annual billing of $72 per user for all companies so as to enable them to better handle the impact of the global lockdowns and shift to 'work from home' at no cost.

- They were doing their level best to acquire as many free members as possible - by running some paid ads, and driving traffic through bloggers and influencers.

- But they were getting virtually ZERO sign ups.

Yep, you read that right.

Even though they'd completely removed the need to pay for their service, they still couldn't acquire any members.

I agreed to jump on a call to better understand their strategy and see where I could add some value, and the issue was immediately obvious.

They were driving 1000s of visitors to the homepage of their website.

Not a specific landing page talking about the tremendously valuable offer they were doing to help businesses navigate challenging times.

Not a page where the visitor only had one simple action they could take.

But to their homepage - which had vast amounts of links, irrelevant videos, and distractions.

The solution, as I explained to him, was actually pretty simple:

Step #1. Change the page so that it converted a higher % of those who landed on it into members. That meant better copy, removing the distractions, and simplifying the whole piece.

Step #2. Get more eyeballs on the page. This was a case of understanding where we could quickly build or acquire an audience and get them to the page and the offer.

Bonus Step #3. Pull together an effective way of converting the members into paid members down the line.

He agreed, said he wanted to move forward, and asked if I could do another call with him and his fellow co-founder - the guy who owned their marketing deliverables - to agree everything and get started.

Fast forward a couple of days, and the 3 of us jump on a call.

After some quick intros, co-founder A asked if I could run through the strategy with co-founder B, so that we could get started.

I was talking for about 15 seconds before he cut me off.

"Hold on a second. Let's backtrack a minute here. Can you talk me through your credentials?"

Immediately warning bells started ringing, but I had pretty good rapport with the other guy on the call, so I gave him a quick rundown of how we help our clients, and then continued with my initial overview of the strategy.

Again, he interrupted me.

"Right, before we go any further I need to understand what makes you qualified to pick apart our strategy and why you think you can do it any better."

All of a sudden, I felt like I was back in my late teens, sat in a job interview.

I paused. Thought for a few seconds. And composed my response.

"Look, I don't think we're going to be a good fit. I stand by the strategy I've shared with you, and I hope you use it to make this work for you, but we're not going to be able to work together on this."

Honestly, just saying those words made me feel incredibly awkward an un-British, but we quickly wrapped up the call and parted ways without incident.

There's a valuable lesson in that exchange that I want to highlight.

When people know, like, and trust you, sales conversations are simple.

In fact, I wouldn't even class them as 'sales' conversations at all.

But when there's no pre-existing relationship. No trust. No familiarity. The whole thing becomes an uphill battle.

And here's the thing.

If you've got a gift for the old school cold calling approach of making sales, sending regular emails may not be worth your while.

But if you would prefer to make every sales conversation you have significantly easier, you'd be foolish not to send weekly emails to your audience.

20/07/2020

Today, like many other days this year, I bought a coffee.

Today's came from Starbucks.

It's the same Starbucks I've bought LOTS of coffees from.

At least 100 in the past 18 months.

I've sat in there for early morning writing sessions and, since lockdown, I've had more than fair share of drive-thru takeaways from them.

Florence sleeps like a baby in the car, so it's easy to hop 1 junction down the motorway to Hopwood services, pull in, and grab a cup of joe.

Needless to say, I've become familiar with the place.

The same few people have worked there for as long as I've been going and, while I don't know any of them by name, I'd recognise them even out of situ.

I'm not sure I could say the same about whether they recognise me.

We've had dozens of short, transactional conversations, but I'm still not confident any one of them could pick me out of a police lineup.

Because they never give me that knowing smile or nod that says 'hey, I know you, how are you?'.

And they never remember that I always want to pay with the app, not a card.

It's not the end of the world, don't get me wrong, but then I compare it to my favourite coffee shop, Bayleys.

The Bayleys brothers could pick me out of a crowd.

They welcome me, by name.

Know my order.

Know what I've been up to, and ask about my life.

What's any of that got to do with business?

Given the choice, I would far more freely spend my cash with the guys at Bayleys than I would the strangers at Starbucks.

And, if I'm entirely honest, it's not even for the venerable reason of picking the 'local business' over the 'big bad corporate'.

It's simply because of who I have the better relationship with.

You can build a business without building a relationship with your audience.

I won't dispute that.

But business is much more enjoyable and straightforward if you do.

Stay safe.

P.S. Bayleys are only open at weekend for takeaways right now, hence the increased trips to Starbucks!

13/07/2020

A few months back Mark and I flew to Ireland for a meeting.

At this point, we still weren’t taking Coronavirus tremendously seriously in the UK.

In fact, we were still allowed to fly, drink Guinness wherever we fancied, and stand as close to others as we dared.

Something the inebriated man at the pub urinal took full advantage of as he tried to redecorate my shoes.

We touched down in Dublin airport relatively early.

Picked up a rental car.

Zipped across the border to our meeting.

Had some lunch.

And zipped back 3 or 4 hours later.

We still had a few hours to go before our return flight, so we hailed a taxi to ferry us to Dublin’s Temple Bar.

The thing with getting a taxi is you never know what kind of driver you’re going to get.

The quiet, mysterious sort.

Or the kind who clearly feels uncomfortable if there’s more than a nanosecond’s silence.

Our driver, Sean, fell into the latter camp.

After plenty of small talk about why we were there, where my family in Ireland lived, and this new thing called ‘Coronavirus’, we talked money.

“We haven’t got any cash. Do you take card, or are you able to stop at a cash point so we can pull some Euros out?” Mark asked.

“Cards fine. I’ll take payment in any form, as long as I can spend it,” Sean joked.

“Great. We’ll pay you in bitcoin,” I chipped in, seeing the chance to deliver something I knew I’d find funny, even if Sean didn’t.

“Let’s call it 0.1 bitcoin shall we?” I continued. “That’s €50. Sorry, €10,000. Nope, €1."

(A reference to Bitcoin’s volatility, that I didn’t think warranted any further conversation.)

But Sean’s ears visibly pricked up.

“Bitcoin?!” He replied, the excitement obvious in his voice. “Is that why you fellas are here? For Bitcoin stuff?”

Honestly, I didn’t know that much about the currency at the time.

Fortunately, Mark knew a bit about coins.

Enough to talk with some confidence about things like Satoshis and blockchain.

Sean was in awe of Mark’s knowledge.

He asked questions, shared his predictions, and listened intently until we arrived at Temple Bar.

Plenty of the conversations I have with business owners about daily emails reveal something interesting:

They’ve tried email marketing for a while but stopped because it didn’t deliver any results.

When they show me the stuff they were sending out, it doesn’t take long to work out why.

If given the choice, someone would rather read the ingredients on the back of a shampoo bottle than your email, you’ve got a problem.

The key to crafting effective emails lies in talking about something your audience can relate to.

Or as Dan Kennedy puts it:

“Do not arrive as an interruption or disruption, attempting to divert your reader's attention from the object it is focused on, fighting to interest him in something different from what he is already, at this moment, interested in. Instead, align yourself with the subjects already possessing his attention, the matters already garnering his interest, the self-talk conversation already occurring in his mind, and the conversations he is already having around the water-cooler at work or at the kitchen table at home with peers, friends, and family.”

It’s one of the reasons observational comedy is so popular.

They talk about things we experience and can relate to.

Stay safe.

10/07/2020

We had someone round this morning to give us a price to decorate the lounge.

It didn't need doing when we had the whole house done 18 months or so ago, but Florence has recently discovered a fun game called:

How much wallpaper can I peel off the wall and eat while daddy makes some toast?

I don't think Hasbro will be making me an offer for the rights to the game anytime soon.

Now, when it came to getting the whole house down, we had 3 or 4 decorators pop in, walk around, do lots of 'mmm-ing' and 'ahh-ing', and see how good I am at pretending I know the difference between gloss and acrylic paint.

This time was different. We only called one guy.

(The one who did it last time.)

When it comes to marketing, there's often an impetus to get more customers.

But whenever I work with a new client, it's not where I start.

Because if you're investing a 4-figure sum with us each month, my priority is to generate a return on your investment as quickly as possibly.

And, 9 times out of 10, new customers are not the quickest way to the cash.

So, next time you're talking about where your next customer is going to come from, ask yourself if you've done enough to keep in touch with the people who've already spent money with you.

Stay safe and have a lovely weekend.

P.S. I know the consistency part of keeping in touch is where most business owners struggle - it's one of the things I'm going to cover on my upcoming training. Stay tuned.

07/07/2020

Want me to critique your website?

That's right. I want to critique your website.

But first off, let's address the elephant in the room.

I'm acutely aware my emails have been creeping a little later into the day recently.

I mean, technically it's still Monday, but barely.

There are a few reasons for that:

1. Sleep deprivation.

A common tactic used in interrogation and by small, loud babies.

2. Busy-ness.

Back in March, I posted a job ad to grow the team with some more 'hands-on' marketing resource.

But, when things started to go South globally, I made the decision to hit pause on the hiring process.

I feel it was the right decision, but it's meant I've been working more hours delivering client work, and my thrice-weekly email has slipped down my 'to do' list some days.

3. Lockdown.

While things have started to return to normal recently, I've still been spending most days working from home.

Things could be worse, but it's definitely had a negative impact on my creativity when it comes to my emails, as much of the content comes from stuff I get up to on a daily basis.

Which leads me nicely onto my offer to critique your website.

Each Wednesday, for as long as people offer up their website as a sacrifice, or until further notice, I'm going to share a website critique with you.

The focus will primarily be on the copy side of things, but if the design's disastrous, I'll be sure to bring it up.

The fee?

Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

All you've got to do is hit reply with your website address and I'll add you to the list.

(The only condition is you need to be willing to have me share my screen record critique with my email list on a Wednesday.)

I'll be working through them on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you want me to critique your site, hit reply and let me have it ASAP.

Stay safe.

29/06/2020

A few days ago I teased plans to pull together some training focussed on email marketing.

I want to tell you a little more about what I've got planned.

You see, while I know plenty of people get value from reading my thrice-weekly ramblings.

(I get lots of lovely replies to tell me this is the case.)

(Thanks Nan)

I've been wanting to pull together something more tactical that almost any business owner or operator could implement into their business and see some positive results.

Here's what I've decided:

- I'm going to focus on weekly emails
- It's going to take the form of a video training.
- It's probably going to be around an hour long.
- I'm going to shoot it outside, with a whiteboard, on a nice day.

And, most importantly...

- I'm going to tell you ALL my secrets.

I've run a few webinars in the past few years, and I've enjoyed doing them.

But, if I'm being completely honest.

I've always held something back.

A little trick or tool or tip I've unearthed, that I've decided is too valuable to share unless someone's paying to work with me or my team.

Because while It's normally not something groundbreaking, it's often enough to either increase the results of your marketing without investing any more time or money.

I'm currently spending the time pulling together a detailed plan of what the content's going to look like, to ensure you get value out of the training.

But I need your help.

What one thing would you want me to cover on this email marketing training video to make it valuable to you?

Please let me know by dropping me a quick reply.

Stay safe and have a lovely weekend.

Address

4 Mouldings Green
Meriden
CV77LJ

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 4pm
Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 3pm

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+441216957906

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