Email marketing to sell more

By Lan Vuga

In this article about Facebook ads, we went into the strategy for gaining new leads.

But what happens after you get a new subscriber. After someone downloaded your lead magnet and gave you their email address.

They gave you their attention which is very important.

Now you have the opportunity to talk to him or her. You have the right to engage,

It is up to you to make the most out of this connection.

They want to hear from you.

But what do you say to them and how?

What I will focus on in this article is giving you a framework to write emails that will hopefully bring your new leads closer to booking with you.

This article will focus on 2 topics.

First, we will go through some of the basics of your messaging and then focus on how to deliver the messaging by using storytelling in your emails.

I suggest you read this article on creating high quality leads that talks in depth about messaging before continuing forward with this one.

But if you would like a distilled version of the article, here it is.

1. MESSAGING IN YOUR EMAIL MARKETING

Ask yourself:

WHAT DOES YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER NEED TO BELIEVE TO BOOK A TOUR WITH YOU?

Just think about all the things this person has to believe:

About you; (That you are an expert, you have been in the business for a long time, that no one else can make a tour like you,…)

About himself; (That he is somebody that does tours like this, that he earned this vacation, that adventure is his middle name,…)
About your product. (It’s safe, that it’s made for people like him, that the destination is something incredible, that he will have a good time,…)

Write as many as you can and rank them by importance.

Then prepare an argument for your top 10 beliefs together with a proof for your argument.

I give examples and more guidance in this article.

Ok now that we know what we have to write, the question is how to write it.

The solution is simple storytelling. And no, you don’t have to be a writer. I and my partner/client are not and this was a combined effort.

2. USING STORYTELLING IN EMAIL MARKETING FOR A TOUR OPERATOR

We are all bombarded with emails, open rates going down, people don’t take the time to read, attention spans shortens every year.

So what can you do to get the message across?

What I suggest is a very worn out word: Story.

You stop talking about you and how good you are and you tell a story.

Let people imagine it themselves.

Example:

One of the beliefs we have to instil in our readers to buy from us is

“The current way of travelling is not satisfactory, an empty shell of what it could be “

We are positioning ourselves as an anti-classical tour operator.

For people who have not yet found something that would satisfy their travelling urge, their thirst for experiencing.

English is a bit rough but this is a translation of the second email in our sequence.

The first one is a welcome email and doesn’t cover any beliefs so I am not including it here.

This one is sent 1 day after the welcome email.

Hello

Let’s first find out if we are on the same wavelength. If we fit together.

Meet Mary.

To get away from it all Mary loves to travel.

Now Mary was about to visit Rome and she was looking forward to it.

But look how unfortunate she was.

The system indoctrinated her that the Sistine Chapel is a MUST-SEE.

(Since she was in High school, she remembers the explanations about this chapel, and later she saw photos in magazines and travel programs; and friends coming back from Rome were proud to see it.)

Doesn’t matter how – with an agency or by herself – she wants to see it when in Rome.

Mary is already in a long row of people, who wait to enter. After two hours of waiting, she is worried about wasting her precious free time. She feels like a sheep waiting for shearing.

Imagine, people will waste an entire day of vacation for 15 minutes inside the Sistine Chapel, I mean a hall filled with tourists who stare at 500 years old frescos in the ceiling.

(Her husband doesn’t want to travel. You can understand why.)

And like 99.5% of visitors she understood nothing – not the frescos, not the point and not herself.

This and similar attitudes we call “checking off the list”.

(At least now she understands her husband.)

Darn it looks like she fell in a tourist trap.

(He-he, wouldn’t be better for her to watch the same frescoes from the smartphone while drinking coffee on Navona Square?)

Do you also have a similar experience?

Sorry, for me this is wasting time, money and energy, because I know I can spend these rare (objects) much better in Rome.

To make a long story short, If this is acceptable for you to make check-marks on the list for tourists, then we are not on the same wavelength. We don’t fit together.

Our tours are of a particular kind. Monuments, churches and frescos are not at the forefront.

We even don’t support nonsense wandering as Carl is doing. He goes, looks around, smells a bit, eats,… No! (Carl’s real story is below.)

Travels make you live your life to the full. For you, they’re important as air is to stay alive. I’ll show you.

Just one more thing about Sistine Chapel. It is normal for art historians, scientific researchers of old pigments and other scientists to go to Sistine Chapel.

But for us, who are any of them, do we have to waste our precious time, money and energy to see something, that is not relevant to us?

How often do we think or talk about renaissance art in our everyday life? How often do we read Vasari of Alberti? When do we browse articles or books about Botticelli, Michelangelo and Giotto?

For me, Rome is much more beautiful. Every time I go to Rome the city affects me.

The Song Arrivederci Roma is my best guide.

It says, enjoy squares and fountains. Look around for ancient ruins. Take time for fettuccine* and a glass of wine ˝dei Castelli˝.

(*typical pasta in Rome)

That’s why I rather do something else than the mass of tourists.

I rather sip local wine between fishing boats spread around the black sand on Positano beach.

It is more beautiful to spend a day, and night with shepherds in Sardinia that have a unique lifestyle, or stay with flamenco people in Andalusia.

For my life, I get more if I sit at a lavender field in Provence and enjoy the beauty of the moment. I set a table and arrange a picnic while the bluish landscape is all for me for an hour, two or even three.

You also can do that. With me, if you don’t do it on your own. We will cross La Mancha in Spain and search for Don Quichotte – damn we’ll find where he drank wine and where he fought the windmills.

You travel across the Greek islands and enjoy beautiful moments within local people without a single worry.

But If you’re looking for someone to approach you to the elements of mass tourism and commercial offers or to activities that many people are already doing, you will not find it in here. Here you can unsubscribe from receiving my emails.

Otherwise, persist. I’ll show you the way to have a good time on travel, to find wealth for your life.

Anyway, easier for you is to join me on one of my tours. I create around 12 different travels each year.

If you are ready to visit foreign places as a keen traveller, to feel the local life and enjoy the best local food, why don’t you travel with me?

It is great, we’ll sip good wines, have wonderful walks, enjoy panoramas and attractions that is well worth to. You will gain new friends, sleep in beautiful hotels…

Check the tours here

It costs quite a lot. As you would expect for a particular kind of travel.

Keep in touch with me, you’ll see, travelling is not a plain activity. It is superb.

Till next time.

Leon Saksida.

This email is meant to tackle this belief:

“The current way of travelling is not satisfactory, an empty shell of what it could be “

It uses a fictional character Mary that could be any one of our potential travellers.

The reader has to agree with us on the content of this email otherwise she is not a fit with us.

He will not get the value out of travelling with us and its better if he chooses some other provider.

But for those that nod through reading,…we got them 1 step closer to booking with us.

The goal is to do this through all of your emails.

Another example. The belief we would like our readers to have is

“A tour is not just an expense, it is an investment, you should see the true value in it.”

We would like to remind people not to look at tours from the money perspective but from the perspective of what is possible.

As something that gives back more than you put in, if you do it well.

The email goes like this

Hello, me again, Leon Saksida.

Why do we travel?

It is said that life and travels are connected. Is it true or a myth?

(I believe travels influence us deeply)

In most cases, we say that we travel because:

We discover new places and meet new people,
Travel enriches ourselves/our lives,
We recharge our batteries,
Expand our horizons.

By travelling, we enrich ourselves because at the same time we grow personally, have a good time and experience the world.

For your money, you get something permanent. You get something that enriches you (and nothing can deprive you of it ever)

So from this point of view travel is an investment.

Travels are in fact secret investments – we don’t know and understand how, but we know they influence our general well-being – they are knowledge, the source of vitally and health,…

So…what you spend on travel, you invest in yourself – isn’t that great?

Most of my budget, when I was single and now with my family, I spend on travel. If I saved all that money, it would be quite a nice sum – but I don’t regret it a single bit.

Why not?

Because travelling for me is like an antioxidant – it keeps me young, physically and mentally.

It gives colour to my life. Travels are almost like oxygen – I can’t breathe without them.

To have it so, you need a good travelling style. With it, you go, travel, feel the world and your place in it. You are happy between new people, in new places, relaxed from worries and everyday chores.

You don’t regret the time, money and effort spent.

Also because good travel grows on you, transforms your life.

When you are back home, you are your travel. And you are more vital and younger. Impressions from the journey circulate through yourself for the rest of your life.

I see it with people that share my travelling style.

Because when your travelling style is good, travel becomes joy, disengagement and investment in life.

Leon

I will continue to write to you. First about how you can travel with me in my style. And also that you can copy and use my style by yourself – why not? You will find out soon ..

In some of the emails, we try to use so-called “Open loops”.

You all know “cliffhangers” from Holywood series.

When you start a story but don’t finish it.

It is something similar.

You talk about one story in your email but then don’t finish it and tell your readers to watch out for the next email where they will discover the resolution of the story.

This is how you tell an engaging, interesting story with suspense.

Then you remind your readers about your promise at the beginning of your email but you tell them you will answer it at the end of the email

You use the body of your email to open a new “Open loop” or maybe even 2 of them that will continue in the future emails.

This is how you are creating a story with your emails.

You create characters, drama and suspense.

There are many possibilities to use this kind of storytelling in emails.

Hopefully, I got some ideas boiling in you.

Would love to hear if this was helpful. Let me know by commenting.

Thanks!

Lan

PS.

About email marketing and marketing automation providers. There are lots of options. Some of the most well known that I have experience with are MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit and Active campaign.

There are many others. You just need to find something that suits you best. It really is not possible to say one is better than the other. If you talk with users, all have problems. Its only about making it work for you.