The 3 Questions I Ask Every Client

Welcome to Easy Email Marketing. I'm your host, Yael Keown, mum, FIFO wife, MBA, coffee lover, survivor superfan, and creator of the email experience. In Easy Email Marketing, you'll benefit from my nearly 20 years experience, where I'll be teaching you all the tips, tricks, and insider info on how to create feel-good, non-spammy experiences for your subscribers. Let's get stuck in.

Welcome back to the Easy Email Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Yao Keone, and today I'm talking you through the three key questions I ask every client before mapping any strategy, before setting up any system, before creating any automation, and even before drafting a single email. And these are three questions I want you to start getting to the habit of asking before you do your next email marketing task and probably any email marketing task at all. So let's get stuck straight into this one because it's a good, fast, action-packed episode for you.

Question one, who is this for? Who is getting the email, the series of campaigns, the launch, the automation? This should be from both a practical perspective, so which list, which segment, which tag, which category. And yes, this may mean as you think about it that maybe you need to have a couple of versions.

But we'll start simple. Who is this for? And then also from a target market profiling perspective. So who are they?

What do they want? What are their challenges, their frustrations? Where are they at in this moment of time? Because that could be different.

So remember, you have people in your audience that are at very different stages. So we want to ask this at all levels. So big picture, when you're just thinking about your big picture, email marketing strategy, who you want to attract to your list, you want to understand who they are. So who are they before they join your list and your world?

But we also need to think about it at an automation level as well. So you want to understand who they are and what they have been doing just before they start that automation. So yes, if they have just joined your list and they're getting your welcome automation, then they are at that starting stage. But that is very different from someone who's been on your list for a while.

That's very different from someone who has abandoned a cart. It is very different from someone who has just purchased. So who are they in that moment before they start an automation? But we also want this at an individual email level too.

So that email within the automation needs to fulfill a certain role and we'll meet someone at a stage. Because remember, we're progressing people through. Where are they at right now? What are their challenges?

What are their frustrations? What questions are they asking? What excuses do they have? What is going on in their world?

Question number two What do you want them to do? This sounds obvious but so so many people miss it Sometimes we are so focused on delivering value and I putting that in quotation marks that we forget about asking for anything. Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know that when I say asking something, it doesn't always mean asking them to buy something. But we do want to get them in the habit of always doing something, which generally means clicking or replying.

So it can just be to click to read a blog post, to watch a video, to comment on a social post or to answer a question. They can be very simple actions. But remember, those low commitment actions not only build habits and that two-way relationship, but they send all those positive sender reputation signals to the Gmails, the Yahoo's, the Apple Mails, the Outlooks, all those people we want to please. so we always want them to do something even if it is simple but of course we also need to think big picture here and the ultimate goal is to sell and to sell something and have them buy it and this is where many business owners get stuck as well because they don't make it easy they either hide their offers or they have so many offers or possible things to present that They just give a scattergun of choices and make it harder for that subscriber, that lead to make a decision.

So when we are thinking of the sale here, we need to think about the easy yes, the one natural next step. So if someone is brand new to your list, to your world, what is your introductory offer? What is the first step in that sales process? Is it to book a discovery call?

Is it this one particular strategy call that you might have? Is it to use their 10% off coupon code? What is the natural next step? And then further on, as you go through the sales pipeline, it will be different first steps.

If you have a product-based business, make sure you're including, you know, the dynamic product fees which give them the best recommendations. Anything that helps them make that natural decision and it's just that logical progression. It's not a, here's 10 different options to choose from, even three, because that can make it tricky. So big picture, you want to understand your full sales pipeline, what offer leads to what offer, etc.

And then knowing which to present first in which moment. At the automations level, that's typically where you'll bring this to life. So you might choose different strategies here. You might choose to always lead to one specific initial offer or maybe you have a couple of different starter offers depending on who they are, which might involve some segmenting.

But we need to think about what's that logical thing to present first and then if they buy that, what's next? Or if it's not that easy entry-level thing, sometimes there are those people who want the full thing straight away You just present that a little bit later But it understanding what you want them to do and give them those choices and at an email level you will be presenting the offer itself so some of those emails will be those direct sales pitches and we want to make it obvious and we want to give them that one thing or you will be doing the lead work that's in between to prepare them for the offer while also giving them that something low commitment to do so that click a link that reply that builds that engagement, that two-way relationship.

But each of those emails, whether it's within an automation or standalone as part of your regular schedule, they're building, they're preparing for what ultimately you want them to do, but also we're giving them a mini to-do in that email. And then question number three is based on that. So based on who this is for and what you want them to do, the question is what do they need to know and feel to say yes what do they need to know and feel to do the thing that you want them to do now this sounds completely obvious but we do miss this entirely because we haven't done that legwork in understanding the process we're just thinking about what's content that we can share what tips and tricks or different bits and pieces can we be valuable in sharing, but it doesn't fulfill both of the previous questions.

It doesn't, you know, meet where they're at. It's just giving them something random, or it doesn't give them anything to do. Question three is where we bridge the gap. If we understand where they are now and we know what we're going to ask them to do, it's just a matter of helping them get there.

And that involves, you know, three sub questions. You know, what do they need to know? You know, they might need to know that you know what you're talking about, that you are qualified, that you have helped other people. They also might need to know that what the real issue is isn't what they thought it was or that they're not weird, that it's not, that it's actually something they need to think about in a different way.

Or they might just need to know the facts about your products or your services, your return policies, how it works, what they need to do, when they need to do it, when there's deadlines, like is their discounts expiring? What do they need to know? But people generally more make decisions based around how they feel. So how do they need to feel?

What do they need to feel? Things like they need to feel ready. They need to feel confident in you and your product or service as their solution. They need to feel like whatever they're going through now is completely normal and that they are not alone and they're not weird and that they shouldn't have figured out by now.

They need to feel that it's possible for them. Yeah, they might be like, oh, that's all well and good for that person, but they're not in this situation. They need to feel that possibility. And then finally, what excuses do they have?

So why don't they take action? What are the biggest reasons that people tell you why they don't buy? and combat that upfront if you can, if it's related to this thing. So if it money show what the return on investment will be or paint a picture of what life would look like if they didn have that issue anymore Or if it time show them why it needs to be a priority for them Or for both of those things it could be deeper than that.

Maybe they really don't feel worthy of something and you need to remind them that they are. And then there's the compounding costs, like compounding wastes of time, compounding wastes of money that people have in place that we need to make them aware of and go, oh let's eliminate some of these excuses. So this is all about the messaging and meeting them where they are now and creating the desire and getting them ready to say yes to what you offer. And really it just comes down to those three questions but we miss them when we just get so caught up in creating content for content's sake.

So quick recap the three questions I want you to ask before you write that next email or craft that next automation or that next lead magnet is who is this for? Question two, what do you want them to do? And question three, based on those, what do they need to know and feel to say yes? Once you have that clear, you are good to go.

Now, I do want to ask you one final thing before I finish up. How often do you know the answers to those questions I just asked. For most people, it is rarely. And that is because people don't think about email this way.

They just think about it as another deliverable. Nobody has, you know, maybe taught you to start here. They say, so you get stuck with that blank screen and then just want to do that value. So this is what I teach as part of the strategic content creation driver inside my program engaging emails.

I talk about how to research and understand your audience using tools you've already got and how to turn that into messaging that meets them where they are at now and then put that into content plans and make sure that every email you send has an intention behind it. So if you have just had a listen to this and thought oh I need to think about my emails more strategically, then I highly recommend you check out that module of Engaging Emails, which, as I mentioned, is just one of seven different things we need to be thinking about when crafting your email marketing strategy.

You will find everything you need to know about the program at yalkion.com forward slash engage. The link is in the show notes. Keep showing up.

Keep sending those emails. keep asking these questions and I will catch you in the next episode. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for listening to Easy Email Marketing.

It's an absolute honor that you chose to listen. If you love this episode, then it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review so that others can find this podcast and make their email marketing easy too. Finally, make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss a thing. Until next time, have an awesome day and make sure to keep showing up and serving in those inboxes.