#1 Most Powerful Email Marketing Strategy: “The Maze”
In this video, I visually demonstrate the power of “The Maze”:
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Go here now to get the full details on the Autoresponder Boot Camp. Starts August 31.
There’s a story behind this.
The very first day of my marketing education was May 7, 1997. I was at the Peoria Illinois Civic Center and Dan Kennedy was the last in a string of speakers.
The promotional flyer had said he would explain how to replace cold calling with effective, low-cost advertising. Since cold calling was my #1 source of misery and frustration, I wasn’t about to leave early.
I wasn’t disappointed.
One of his examples was the “Giorgio Letters” – a restaurant owner named Giorgio mails out an invitation to romance-starved couples to come to his Italian Grotto for a lovely, intimate evening of linguini, red roses and chocolate for dessert.
A week later, those who don’t respond receive a follow up letter reminding them how they’ve tragically neglected their romance lately. Giorgio reminds them how many couples divorce for lack of romantic excitement in their lives.
Then a week later, all those who didn’t respond receive ANOTHER follow up letter from Giorgio with a penny glued to it.
Giorgio laments that he’s throwing a penny in his fountain, a sorrowful romance wish for a couple whose love has grown cold. He pleads with you one last time to come to his restaurant and save your marriage.
It’s OUTRAGEOUS.
By the third letter you’re saying, “Dang, this guy just doesn’t stop, doesn’t he?” You’re tempted to show the letter to your next door neighbor and say, “Did you get a letter like this too?”
The first thing that separates the winners from the losers is that most restaurants never send a letter in the first place. (How many letters have YOU gotten from a restaurant? Or even emails? Restaurant guys must not write letters all that much.)
And secondly, most people who send one letter, never send a second, let alone a third.
After Giorgio got letter #1 to generate a response, the big profits were actually in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th letters.
And furthermore if you poured on the gas to those who responded to any of it, you were on your way to cultivating a relationship with a responsive customer.
I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a perfect application of the 80/20 principle.
In marketing your #1 job is to SORT. Sort the interested from the disinterested, so you can start funneling your resources towards profitable customers.
What you and I can achieve today with Autoresponders is far more rewarding than those ancient Giorgio letters, but the concept is the same.
The other day I mentioned the Grand Canyon. It would take hammers and trucks and dynamite and vast amounts of force to carve out that crevice, but water did it almost effortlessly over a long period of time. And water isn’t even hard!
I hope you can see the awesome power of this concept. An autoresponder sequence is THE heartbeat of a successful online business. If you use the MAZE, it does the sorting FOR YOU and there’s almost no effort on your part. It happens automatically!
I know for a fact that 98% of all marketers don’t have even a basic AR sequence in place. I think it’s because they don’t really know how to put it together to achieve their goals.
The other thing that holds people back is:
People say, “I’m not a writer.”
That’s OK.
That’s why I’ve teamed up with professional copywriter John Fancher who will personally work with you – and if you wish, write the message FOR YOU during the next month, in the Autoresponder Boot Camp. We start August 31, I teach you my entire bag of tricks and a in the Gold version, a pro copywriter writes 10 AR messages for you.
Guarantee #1 - If your annual online sales exceed $75,000 per year, we guarantee that if you implement what we teach and do not realize a minimum 10X ROI on your tuition 12 months from now, you can get your money back.
Guarantee #2 - By the end of the training, you’ll have no less than 10 emails that will EACH generate an additional $1,000 a year in documented revenue for your business or you’ll get a prompt and courteous refund AND you can keep the DVD’s of the $4,000 AR Seminar.
Go here now to get the full details on the Autoresponder Boot Camp. It starts August 31 and you can attend without ever leaving your home or office.
Perry Marshall
About the Author
Entrepreneur Magazine says: "Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world's most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax."
He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.
Last 5 Posts by Perry
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Hey Perry,
That’s a powerful concept.
Man, until Infusion came along, doing something like that was a real pain in the (*&S …
Which is kind of surprising considering how necessary creating a “maze” is if you really want to blow your results out of the water.
Not sure why it took so long to get a system up and running that actually lets the BUSINESS drive the technology, instead of the other way around, but I’m glad it’s here.
Great video.
Great actionable information, as usual, Perry.
For those of us who would love to attend the boot camp, but don’t have the resources at the moment, will you be putting out an intro product on autoresponders?
@Moe: Eventually yes. A good product right now is http://www.perrymarshall.com/next-step/
Isn’t this spamming, to automatically put someone on different lists, one they have not subscribed to themselves?
Ruth,
It’s not spamming if it’s done tastefully and in accordance with “the conversation inside the customer’s head.” Actually what MOST people do is spamming: Just putting everyone on one big email list and treating them all the same. Great question!
Perry
This only works with Infusionsoft, correct? How about a service like aweber?
Aweber is fine. Infusion gives you more features and options.
Thanks for your answer Perry. I appreciate that
what is the price to join and will i get one on one training.
Details at http://www.perrymarshall.com/autoresponder-bootcamp
Man this is some good info – I’m still trying to wrap my head around using autoresponders in general and I’m quickly finding out that there’s a lot more to it than just hammering somebody with a series of messages
Perry,
Love your article and response to Ruth’s question. I use Infusion to manage my real estate practice and I have to admit I’m a bit behind the curve on implementing an effective auto-responder strategy into my system. I come from the “old school” smile and dial method — recently molded with yours and Ari Galper’s “chatwise”/”utg” approach. I’m curious to get your thoughts on effective auto-responders for the high level consultancy and sales in a “service industry” like real estate. I get it for selling products…for sure…but would this course be effective for a someone like me?
Joshua,
AR’s make sense any time there is a long sales cycle. Especially if it is to any degree predictable at all. Real estate, the drip drip drip can definitely be an asset to a buyer. Works in B2B industrial sales, works with consumer stuff and everything in between. If a relationship makes sense then AR’s make sense.
Perry
“Some time around February 2012 you will have received all the messages. (Isn’t Nostradamus also predicting the world is going to end around that time?) You can then study how the whole thing was put together. Won’t cost you a thing. But if you’re a Return-On-Investment type of person, there is a much faster way…”
HaHa! I love it!
Hi Perry,
This is great info. Are you using InfusionSoft for autoresponders?
Yes I am, have for 3 years.
This concept is sound. However, you need to have enough content, products, and offers to make the system work. It’s email segmentation. There are services out there like constant contact where upon signing up, an email subscriber can choose from a list of LISTS to be on, according to their interests. This way, you don’t have to segment them later.
You just present them with all the available lists, and they tell you the ones they want to be on. Seems logical to me.
Henry,
Do you use IContact? How can a subscriber choose from a list to be on? I have been very frustrated with this company.
Hi Perry,
Would this be of use for a SOA software agile data integration consultancy? They might become my client. They have no salesletter and a crappy corporate-like site. Would your team be able to deal with this niche field?
Yes CatCamille, we could deal with them – IF they can deal with us. And yes it can work VERY well. Be warned, this will be completely foreign to them.
Thank You Perry!
@ Henry:
Seems that presenting a prospect with “all available lists” is a bit like pulling back the curtain on the great Wizard of Oz. Anticlimactic, for sure.
A key point to Perry’s “Maze”, as I see it, is that the prospect doesn’t know (at least not before getting to know you) how often they’d like to hear from you. Asking them upfront which “list” they want to join defeats the purpose. Checking a box to join a list has the potential to alienate your prospects – viewed as just another interruption to deal with. This is about permission – something earned, not asked for. This is about relationships (trust) forged over time. Not about joining “lists”.
As an example – I’m surely on most (if not all) of Perry’s lists by now. I’m not certain how I got there, but I do enjoy hearing from him daily at this point. It’s as much a part of my routine as a daily 3 mile jog and a morning cup of coffee – and we’ve never met.
We use Constant contact AND aweber. Nobody says you have to limit yourself. Aweber has excellent tools in optimizing opt-in conversion rates. CC has better database management tools and more professional templates that get high click-thru rates.
“Seems that presenting a prospect with “all available lists” is a bit like pulling back the curtain on the great Wizard of Oz. Anticlimactic, for sure.”
It depends what your goals are. This works in some scenarios but not others. The devil’s in the details.
thanks for this info
Hey Perry… I’m somewhat concerned with the “tasteful listning” vs. spamming – if the “spamming” is in line with the conversation in the customers head then the degree of spamming obviously is less… mostly because she will agree to the information delivery, with interest, even… question would be then: The subject of next strands of the maze has to match the thing she agreed to in the first place closely, right? otherwise it would fast become more like spam.. Is this a relevant question? It seems to me to touch the central “nerve”, if you like, of the maze… if next mails goes to far astray, it would become spam fast…
Peter,
The emails the customer gets are a direct result of what the customer has responded to. So it always follows the conversation inside their head, at least to the extent you do.
Perry
Hey Perry,
Can your email marketing information be used without Infusionsoft?
Yes, I have another project where I use Aweber. I used 1shoppingcart for years. Infusion has the most flexibility and ways it can be used.
I have the Autoresponder DVD’s and anyone not buying them is foolish. The Maze is pure genius. Literally, genius.
I have started building an AR sequence, and was interested in your Maze idea. It’s a novel one, and I’ll see where I can take it. As a consultant with just one product – me – it’s difficult to see where to differentiate the message.
Break the AR’s into specific topics
Some people think the Grand Canyon was carved out in a very SHORT amount of time because of a massive world-wide flood 4000-6000 years ago.
I currently use an online shopping cart software called Volusion and would love to be able to implement an autoresponder strategy that can fully integrate with my shopping cart software. Are you aware of any AR software packages that can integrate with Volusion?
I don’t know volusion very well. Have you asked them?
Big segmenting problem – when you sell as an affiliate, how do you segment the buyers? You can’t. What Perry is teaching only applies to marketers who have their own products. Example; you have your own product in weight loss and for the 95% who didn’t buy, you want to set up an AR sequence for a product at an affiliate network. Infusionsoft, Lyris and the other email clients instantly become useless in segmenting your list. If anyone knows of a solution, please advise.
90% of my segmenting is not connected to sales, but interest topics.
Perry,
This is brill. In both its logic and its simplicity. Thanks so much for sharing.
Best to you,
Jim
I’m sure segmenting by interests is effective. But I can’t imagine anything more important than having buyers on a separate list. They’ve raised their hand and actively demonstrated their interest. Interest topics of buyers and non-buyers would be the best play. Tracking companies use affiliate network API’s all the time – pulling out and organizing data. When is an email co. going to realize what email marketers really need? Their business would explode.
You can always offer a bonus to buyers who come back to you with their order # or something. Doesn’t matter HOW you segment as long as you do it.
When people on your main list respond on A or B, and are going to receive messages on subject A, they will have opt in again on a new list, right?
When just using services as Aweber for instance, I think you don’t have a choise then that people have to opt in again?
Thanks,
Tom
In Aweber, people have to move themselves onto a new list. In Infusion you can move them at will.
This is truly a powerful strategy. I’d say about 1/3 of 1% of my subscribers are most profitable. Finding them is a process though for sure. Infusionsoft is a big help but without Perry’s Autoresponder camp I attended in 2008 I doubt I’d have fully understanded how to find them…
Danny Welsh