Donald Miller

Empathetic statements start with words like, “We understand how it feels to . . .” or “Nobody should have to experience . . .” or “Like you, we are frustrated by . . .” or, in the case of one Toyota commercial inviting Toyota owners to engage their local Toyota service center, simply, “We care about your Toyota.”

In the year we started StoryBrand, our first lead generator was a simple, downloadable document (in PDF format) called “5 Things Your Website Should Include.” It was remarkably successful. More than forty thousand people downloaded it, which allowed me to e-mail reminders about our upcoming StoryBrand Marketing Workshops. I credit that single lead generator with taking our company past the $2 million mark. From there, we created a free video series called The 5-Minute Marketing Makeover (http://fiveminutemarketingmakeover.com), which took our lead generation to another level. We were no longer grinding to create business. Now we create lead generators for each revenue stream our company offers. This allows us to segment our customers by their interests and offer different products to solve their various problems.

Make sure you feature your lead generator liberally on your website. I recommend creating a pop-up feature on your site that, after ten seconds or so of the browser arriving, offers your resource to the user. Though people complain about pop-ups, the stats are clear: they readily outperform nearly every other type of Internet advertising. Just make sure there’s a ten-second buffer. You don’t want the pop-up to appear immediately. That would be like being tackled by a salesman as soon as you walk through the door of a retail store.

Just before my series of promotions, I’d discovered a piece of software called FileMaker Pro. We used this software to manage our database and orders. I passed the hours fiddling around with the software and one day realized we could see who had placed the largest orders each month and send them a letter in the mail. This is all standard marketing these days, but back then it was relatively new technology. Each month I sent about two hundred form letters to the businesses that ordered the most copies of our books. That simple activity generated a ton of business.

What I realized, in hindsight, was that every month our top customers were being reminded that we existed. Every time one of those customers threw a letter away, even without opening it, our logo was flashing across their eyes.

Content is important, but the point is, there is great power in simply reminding our customers we exist. I was young and dumb at the time, but I’d stumbled onto something. Our customers may not need our product today, and they might not need it tomorrow, but on the day they do need it, we want to make sure they remember who we are, what we have, and where they can reach us.

Don’t worry if the open rates on these e-mails are low. A 20 percent open rate is industry standard, so anything above that is performing well. And remember, even if a person sees and deletes an e-mail, the goal has been accomplished: you are “branding” yourself into their universe.

Not unlike our lead generator, we want these e-mails to continue positioning us as the guide and to create a bond of trust and reciprocity with potential customers. There will come a time to ask for a sale, but this isn’t the primary goal of a nurturing campaign. A typical nurturing campaign may have an e-mail going out once each week, and the order might look like this:
E-mail #1: Nurturing e-mail
E-mail #2: Nurturing e-mail
E-mail #3: Nurturing e-mail
E-mail #4: Sales e-mail with a call to action
This pattern can be repeated month after month. I recommend creating a few months’ worth of material and letting it ride, then adding to it as you have time. The idea is to offer something of great value and then occasionally ask for an order and remind people you have products and services that can make their lives better. Pretty soon you’ll have hundreds of potential customers being introduced to your business. When they need help in your area of expertise, they will remember you and place an order.

About every third or fourth e-mail in a nurturing campaign should offer a product or service to the customer. The key here is to be direct. You don’t want to be passive, because being passive communicates weakness. In this e-mail you are clearly making an offer.
The formula might look like this:
1. Talk about a problem.
2. Describe a product you offer that solves this problem.
3. Describe what life can look like for the reader once the problem is solved.
4. Call the customer to a direct action leading to a sale.

A good way to craft each nurturing e-mail is to use an effective formula that offers simple, helpful advice to a customer. I’ve been using this formula for years and customers love it.
1. Talk about a problem.
2. Explain a plan to solve the problem.
3. Describe how life can look for the reader once the problem is solved.
I also recommend including a postscript, or the P.S. Often, the P.S. is the only thing somebody who opens a mass e-mail will actually read.