Email marketing for consultants is necessary if you want to make a killing in your business.
Why?
After all these years of digital marketing, email still reigns supreme.
Every day there seems to be a new way to communicate a marketing message, but email is so popular that in 2019 over 293 billion emails were sent daily.
This year alone, there are over 4.26 billion email users, and almost every one has two different accounts, sending 3.13 million emails every second. (Sources – Radicati, Internet Live Stats, and Lifewire)
Boom!
Hear that? That’s the sound of email marketing breaking the sound barrier.
Why Email Marketing for Consultants is a Perfect Fit
When it comes to marketing, email is still the top dog.
As you can see by the chart below, email’s popularity is still growing.
Email Can Be Personal
When marketing any business, it is good to establish a relationship with your clients. As a consultant, you are in the people business, so it’s even more important to use email.
The next closest thing to writing an email is a phone call. It can even beat the phone for communication because it allows people the opportunity to engage the message when they want to.
If you use email tools like MailChimp or Constant Contact, you can personalize your messages when you send them. Again, data has proven that a personalized email works.
So, if you want to make a personal connection, it’s clear that email marketing for consultants can be effective.
Email is Everywhere You and Your Clients Want to Be
Everyone uses email, and it’s even available on your cellphone. Sure, most people don’t check it every five minutes, but it is readily available.
And because of it’s availability, everybody on the planet could be a prospect if you know how to use it right.
Email marketing has gotten even better over the years. Now, you can tailor your messages in so many ways. Email used to be plain text, but it can be a full-colored blog post. It’s easy to send messages with images, links, and formatting that will engage your readers.
Email Is Instantaneous
Besides a phone call, email is the fastest on speed of delivery. When using an email service like MailChimp, you can send a tailored pitch or message to thousands of people in seconds.
A lot of people check their email accounts frequently. Forbes Magazine reported that the average person checks their email at least 15 times a daily. Email marketing for consultants is a perfect fit because you can maintain relationships quickly and frequently.
In case you are wondering, these are the times most people open their email:
Email Keeps You in Their Mind
Your email can be seen daily by your circle of followers – therefore, you can remain in their minds.
(Unless they decide to unsubscribe from your list.)
This is one area where email beats using the telephone. Cellphones usually interrupt people, whereas email gives your circle the option to engage your message.
Email is a two-way system, and your followers know you will read their responses. Once again, this is a part of building a relationship vital to the consulting industry.
If some of your followers and prospects don’t have the time to read your message, they will at least see your subject line when their email is delivered.
This aspect allows you to stay in their minds; if they get time later, they can always read your message.
Try doing that with a cellphone.
Email Marketing for Consultants is Affordable
If you are getting started in the consulting industry, you know that traditional marketing can be expensive.
What do I mean by traditional marketing? Direct mail campaigns, radio and TV ads, print advertisements, and billboards to name a few.
If you look at the price of sending direct mail letters, it can cost you around $.50 each. Sending bulk mail and postcards are cheaper, but you have to presort these pieces to get the cheaper rates.
However, the cost of sending an email is free unless you send loads of emails. If you use a service like MailChimp, Aweber, or Constant Contact, it will run you $20 to have 500 subscribers and send over 3,000 emails a month. (I’m not going to list all of their rates here because they change frequently.)
I don’t want to tell you that email doesn’t have a downside. The open rates for email messages will never beat the open rate of a well-written, properly formatted direct mail piece.
Here is some data to consider:
Yes, it is hard to beat getting a letter directly into the hands of a hungry audience. But with great cost comes great responsibility. If you are creating direct mail campaigns, your message, prospect list, materials, and delivery must be spot on.
Because email marketing is so cheap, you can afford to make mistakes now and then without losing a ton of money. Email marketing for consultants is a good solution if you also want to stay in the minds of your circle of followers. Also, it generates the highest return on investment (ROI) of all other marketing methods.
Email Is Easy to Measure
Have you ever watched one of those ridiculous insurance commercials on TV like the ones from Progressive or Liberty? These commercials tell you very little about their products.
By the time you’re finished watching progressive’s Flo and Jamie or the Emu and his buddy from Liberty, you barely have a clue what the product is.
These types of commercials are called branding commercials, and tracking their results is difficult.
If you contrast those commercials with a product commercial, like the Slap Chop, you’ll see a 1-800 number at the end of the commercial. These are direct response commercials, and it is very easy to track the results.
It’s the same thing with a direct mail campaign. If you send out 100 direct mail pieces to a targeted list and 30 people respond to your call, your response rate is 30%.
It is invaluable for marketers because it is easy to track results in a results-driven industry.
Email is even easier to track.
Why?
Because if you are using an email service like Aweber or Constant Contact, you can track your results without any effort. These companies give you real-time tracking data as it occurs. This makes email marketing for consultants very easy.
If you send an email and someone opens it up to view it, your email marketing platform will immediately show you the results.
If one of your respondents clicks on a link to buy one of your products or decides to remove themselves from your email list, you will know it instantaneously.
So, email is the easiest way to track results, by far.
Email Marketing Basics for Consultants
Tools to use
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of sending emails to a list, you need tools to get the job done. If you are a consultant who hasn’t been using email to market your services, don’t worry. I’m going to show you free tools and some that are paid services.
Email Marketing Services
You should subscribe to a service that will make your email marketing easier. (If you are already using an email service and know this stuff, you can skip this section.) There are companies that provide this service, and I’ve mentioned some of them earlier: Constant Contact, Aweber, and MailChimp.
The main reason why you need to use these companies is they will save you time. If you have a list of people and need to keep in touch with them, you can send a mass email to a group with a mere touch of a button.
Consulting is a people-oriented business, and you are not selling screwdrivers or golf balls.
Staying in touch with your circle of prospects and clients is a must. Email services can help you do that.
Most of these companies’ subscriptions start at $30 a month, and you get a lot of tools and services with them. I like to use MailChimp because you can start for free.
On their 2022 plan, you can send up to 10,000 emails a month for free. You can also have up to 2,000 subscribers a month. So, you can start your email marketing program very cheaply.
Keep Your List Clean
If you think you need to send more than 10,000 emails, let me give you a tip.
Most of these companies have all kinds of tracking reports they give you automatically. You will know who opened your email, who is clicking on your email, and other data.
Most email experts will tell you to remove these dead addresses from your list.
It is a process known as cleaning your list.
If you schedule this process several times a year, you won’t have to pay higher rates for sending out more emails.
Almost all professional marketers do this, so don’t feel like the Lone Ranger when you perform it.
I used to get Dan Kennedy’s marketing materials through the mail. One day, I noticed he was not sending his sales letters to me.
Apparently, I had not purchased any more of his materials, so he removed me from his mailing list.
You should do this with your email lists, too. If you see that certain people are not opening your emails, dump them and make room for better prospects.
Opt-in Boxes
You will need a simple way to collect email addresses. The easiest way to do that is to have an opt-in box.
If you have been online for more than 20 minutes, you have seen one of these boxes on websites. Marketers usually tell you that if you give them your email address, they will send you a gift.
(Usually, a digital download of an eBook, whitepaper, or a free report.)
Here’s what my opt-in box looks like:
Once I get a potential email subscriber to put their name into a box like this and click on the button at the bottom, an automatic email will be sent.
This email will be a thank you note for subscribing, and it will have instructions on how to get your free report or eBook.
A Free Tool I’ve Used for Years
One of the best free tools I have used for years is Neil Patel’s Hellobar.
I am not affiliated with his product in any profitable way, but this man is a genius.
Hellobar will let you collect emails on your website easily.
For example, when you go to my site for the first time, you’ll see a popup screen that appears after a few seconds.
The screen gives you a message about how to get a free gift and asks you for your email address.
Hellobar’s response rate is far greater than any static opt-in box. (Static means it is a box that merely sits on your webpage.)
But I’ve been using a static box and Hellobar on my site, and most of my email subscribers come from Hellobar.
Once again, you can use it for free and the company offers you different kinds of upgrades for other actions and services.
First Steps to Starting Your Email Marketing for Consultants
At this point, I will assume you have a website and an email service provider. You should now have a good idea of the tools you need to get your email campaign started.
Get to Know Your Audience First
You must know ahead of time who you are writing to. In my case, the offers on my website are people who want to know how to become a copywriter/content writer/content marketer.
So, I assume most of my subscribers want to do one of those three things.
And since those three subjects are interrelated, it is not a big deal to segment them.
(More on segmentation in a minute.)
But what can I do if I’m not sure why they subscribed? I can determine who is going to my site by observing who clicks on my messages. MailChimp will show me how many and which subscribers looked at them.
If the subject line was about writing blog posts, I know how many are interested in writing posts.
If I mention copywriting in the headline and see that people clicked on that message, I’ll know they are interested in copywriting.
As I mentioned above, copywriting and blog post writing are similar, so I don’t need to segment them into different groups. However, if I had a sports website and knew I had three distinct groups like basketball enthusiasts, skateboarders, and hockey fans, I could split them into three separate campaign lists.
Most email services have an easy way for you to do this, and it is called segmentation.
So, these email service companies make it easy for you to address different audiences with different messages.
Use Surveys to Assess Your Subscribers
Another way you can find out what your subscribers are interested in is by sending out a survey. Most of email platforms like Aweber or MailChimp have a way you can send out surveys to subscribers.
They even have prebuilt templates to make it easy for you to design a survey for your list to respond to.
Different Email Processes
By now, you’re probably chomping at the bit to get started.
So, the first thing to cover is the different email formats.
But if you are a consultant who doesn’t have the time to write your email messages, then you should hire someone to do it for you.
Almost 50% of business owners work with agencies that have email copywriters.
But you should still learn as much as you can about email copywriting.
Why?
If you don’t know anything about this aspect of marketing, then how will you know who to hire? How will you know if the people you hire know what they are doing?
So, it pays to learn about this subject, so you will know how to hire the right team or person to get the job done.
Start With the Sales Process in Mind
Different business situations require different kinds of email campaigns.
First, you should consider how your email campaign fits in with your whole sales process. (Rarely does an email campaign run independently on its own.)
Here are some questions you must consider:
- Is this a new campaign to promote a product or service you’re selling or just a part of your overall marketing strategy?
- Are you promoting a product or gift you’ll be giving away when people give you their email addresses?
- Is this email campaign generating new prospects and clients for your consulting business?
- Will you be asking people to go to a landing page or some other way to become involved in your business, like calling you up?
- If they sign up for a free report or eBook, what email follow-ups will you send them?
If you are going to collect leads from your site, is the signup offer a part of your sales process where you’ll eventually contact them?
Email marketing for consultants has many different pieces that you must consider before starting. You have to consider where this campaign will fit in with your overall marketing plan.
A Common Scenario for Consultants
Let us say, for example, that you have a list of prospects you have gathered from doing workshops and free seminars.
What you may want to do is write a series of informative emails. This will help you stay in the minds of the people who have given you permission to email them.
Note: There are free and paid services that will show you who has been opening your email messages, how many times they opened them, and even what devices they used. That way, you’ll know who has been opening your email and whether or not they will remember you when you call them. I will talk more about these services later in this post.
Email Can Help Consultants Sell Products
Consultants make extra money selling products too.
Let’s say you’re a sales consultant and have created an audio CD with recorded sales pitches. You can also use email as a part of the process to sell your CD.
You can have a VIP group of salespeople who can sign up for an email newsletter. In reality, the email newsletter keeps you in their minds and can build your relationship further. Because they are a part of your VIP list, you can send them special offers for your CD or other information products you have.
The email newsletter is a part of the process of selling your CD and other products. It builds familiarity and trust and can also help you sweeten your offer.
Once you get your VIPs to buy a product, you can offer them companion products or upsells. You can email your list about these products and services too.
But the point of these examples is to demonstrate that email is not an isolated action. It is always a part of a sales process. And you must consider where your emails fit in this sales process.
The Five Ways Email Marketing for Consultants Can Work for You
#1 Generate and Follow Up on Leads
If you think back near the beginning of this guide, I mentioned that you should offer free stuff so people will give you their email addresses.
You can offer to give them free webinars, white papers, eBooks, email newsletters, and other information products. This method is for generating leads for your consulting business. Once you have them, you can follow up on them with a call or another email campaign.
This method is usually the most popular way to use an email campaign.
#2 Build Relationships with Potential Clients
People like to do business with people they trust. Email marketing can help you build that trust because you can reach out to them frequently and build a relationship.
It is a good idea to treat your email campaign like it is a regular newsletter. You should have a weekly schedule so that people see your brand. All you have to do is offer up good content (much like writing blog posts) that is helpful in some way.
Even if they only see your email subject lines in their email boxes, they will see your name and remember you. That way, when you present them with an offer, your prospects will be more open to your message.
#3 Build Loyalty with Your Customers
Once again, keeping in touch with your clients is super important. You can segment your list and send different email messages to your clients rather than your prospects.
Building relationships with your clients is important because people will do business with consultants they know and respect.
So if you want to build your business or offer more products and services, people who have already worked with you are your best bet.
#4 Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
You can promote all kinds of products by email. For example, if you were a sales consultant, you could sell books on the subject of sales or relevant products from other sources.
For example, you could sell a wide range of software products for sales through email. Make sure you’re not over-promoting products to your email list. Your clients and prospects may eventually view you as nothing more than a salesman.
#5 Selling Your Products and Services
Sometimes you can immediately sell to people who sign up for your list. You can run an ad online with a special offer.
Interested people will know from the start this is a sales process for your business. There is no lead generation, just a “buy now” or “Contact me to get started” link or button.
An Example of a Consultant Email Piece
I want to give you some examples of emails I’ve seen from consultants. The first example is from business consultant Jennifer Dawn who has an aggressive email campaign.
I receive email messages from her three days a week.
As you can see, there is nothing complicated about this email. Jennifer uses it to keep prospects and clients familiar with her consulting. It is an example of how email can help you stay in touch with people on your list.
Some email messages use copywriting elements like headlines, subheads, and calls to action. As you can see, you don’t have to write all of your email messages like that. In this case, Jennifer is sending out a piece of advice like she was writing a letter to a friend.
Now, let’s take a look at one of Jennifer’s more salesy emails where she does use copywriting elements.
But Wait – There Are More Copywriting Elements!
Below the first link, Jennifer uses another important copywriting element – the bullet statement. The reason copywriters like to use them is they know most people quickly scan their messages.
So, bullet points like this are easy to read and transmit the message quickly and clearly.
Remember, people are impatient because they are bombarded with messages all day. (There are undoubtedly people who read email messages while listening to TV commercials.)
Near the end of this email are several calls to action, some a bit stronger than others.
Here is the rest of this message:
There are other copywriting parts I want to call to your attention, like several more calls to action.
Pay Close Attention to Your Words
You must be careful when writing a sales page like this because every word counts.
For example, any hint or suggestion of being told to stop in your sales message is a bad idea. Sales copy is a sensitive medium that you must constantly think about what you are saying.
The words at the top of this section say, “Walk away from this workshop…”
I think that is a poor choice of words, especially when you consider that most people are straddling the fence on whether to take action or not.
They might think, “Yeah, the heck with it, I’ve got better things to do.”
Perhaps she could have had these words in that spot instead:
Grab your seat at this workshop before it gets filled – Make 2022 the most profitable one yet for your business.
Or something like that.
I used the words “your seat” in my revision because it sounds like you will be losing YOUR seat.
(This is the principle of creating scarcity in your copy.)
But overall, I think this email did a good job promoting Jennifer’s event.
One last thing I’d like to point out was she did not discount her services. A lot of people will do that with their services and products, but it’s not a good idea. The reason is it devalues your offer.
When you slash the price of what you’re putting out, people will think your products and services are cheap.
Instead, Jennifer layers her offers with workbooks and audio recordings – a smart idea.
Once you click on one of her links, it will lead you to a landing page. This webpage has professionally written sales copy on it where she will try to make you an offer you can’t refuse for her event.
If You Are Serious About Email Marketing for Consultants – Do This
Since you’ve seen what a good email example looks like, let me give you a tip you can use: start collecting email messages.
I have several email accounts, and I use some of them to collect email campaigns. You don’t have to be picky about what email campaign you are signing up for, either.
For example, I’m not a fan of motivational coaches and speakers, nor would I use their services.
But many people follow them and sign up for their email lists.
One of the big dogs of this arena is Tony Robbins, and I’m on his email list. Tony understands the importance of marketing with email, and he hires top-notch email copywriters to write and run his campaigns.
So, I’ll collect and analyze Tony’s email messages to see how they are written and view his landing pages. I have several free email accounts that I use for this purpose. These kinds are throw-away accounts because you can ignore them.
I highly recommend you get one of these email services. I use Yandex mail, and it is excellent. There are thousands of these companies online, and very easy to find, set up, and use.
One More Thing About Collecting
if you get a good copywriter to write email campaigns for you, make sure that you keep those campaigns on file so you can use them later.
You can learn a lot from those files. If the campaign worked well, you can easily see why it worked by reading and analyzing them.
Another reason for keeping your professionally written files on hand is in case you hire another copywriter. You can hand those files over to them, and they will be able to use them to write your next campaign.
4 Different Types of Emails Companies Send Out
The Solo Promo
The solo promo (solo promotional) is a stand-alone email message that promotes a specific offer. Not linked to an email series; it is a single communication written and designed to get readers to take a specific action.
The action could be to buy a product, download a white paper, print a coupon, sign up for a course, come to an event, or any other profitable action they want to promote. So, it is a single email that does all the selling on its own, and that’s why it’s called a solo promo.
You can have more than one solo promo in an email series but remember, solo promos are stand-alone pieces designed to convert lookers into buyers.
Here is an example of a solo promo from John Lee Dumas, owner of Entrepreneurs on Fire (EOF):
John’s EOF podcast is one of the most popular on the planet, and he freely advises business-minded people almost daily.
This email is a solo promo piece for a live event with several of the world’s most prominent success coaches. And what John is trying to do is get you to convert from being a reader to an event attendee.
If you click on one of the orange links, you will be taken to a sales page that promotes the event further.
Note: Research has shown that people respond more to the color orange than any other color.
Go back and look at Jennifer Dawn’s email…Yep, orange links again. Neil Patel’s Hellobar website is entirely orange. Talk about overkill!
Of course, there are more elaborate solo promo emails with images and longer messages but the main idea is this is an email that does all the work on it’s own.
As a consultant, you can use an email of this type to promote books, events, and other stand-alone products.
The Sales-Lead-Follow-Up Email Series
Some email messages are a series linked together by a specific purpose. They are a chain of emails that follow up on a generated lead. Once you go to a website to sign up for an offer, you’ll receive these communications.
These email marketing for consultants messages are what is known as the Sales-Lead-Follow-Up series. They are communications that number from two to six emails or more and follow up on generated leads.
A generated lead is a person who has responded to your offer. There are different ways you can do this, either by running ads or by people coming to your site to read your content.
Suppose you are offering a free guide (eBook) on how to invest in cryptocurrency. Once a person clicks on your offer and gives you their email address so they can download the eBook, they become a generated lead.
This means that the people who have raised their hands and agreed to your offer are interested in your services or products and are prepared to receive more email messages from you.
Of course, some of the email messages they receive from you will be a Sales-Lead-Follow-Up series which may convert into sales.
A lot of companies, like software businesses, like to offer free trials of their products. These companies will give thirty to sixty days of free usage for people who sign up for the offer.
While using the software, they receive follow-up emails pitching all the benefits and features of the software to sell it. Once prospects get addicted to using their products, they will probably buy the software.
The Interest Building Email Series
Email Marketing for Consultants doesn’t mean you have to constantly make offers.
Once you have a list of people who have signed up to receive your email messages, you can use the Interest Building Email Series to generate more revenue.
But to be clear, you have already built up your email list with previous offers, and this is a stand-alone series that promotes a new product or service that you have not offered before.
These are not people who have clicked on an ad or responded to an offer on your site. These are people who are already on your email list.
If you are planning a workshop, you can use this method to build interest in your event. You could send out eight email messages that gradually build interest in your seminar. And your goal will be that by the time your readers get to the eighth message in the email series, they are salivating to go to it. If you want to see an example of this, get on Dan Kennedy’s email list. Here’s one of his interest-building-email-series messages that I received today.
(Note: This is just part of the email because it is too long to post here.)
Bonus Tip: Email Marketing for Consultants – Make Offers in Person
If you are a consultant who gives speeches at conferences, you can get leads from people attending them. It is very similar to trade shows where vendors will have you fill out their cards with your name, email address, and phone number on it.
Once you get their email address, you can send them email messages with your irresistible offer on it.
Relationship Building Email Marketing for Consultants
If you think back to the beginning of this guide, I mentioned the concept of having relationships in your business. People love doing business with whom they are familiar.
The last email series we will talk about is the relationship-building kind. This is probably the most common type of email marketing for consultants, and the purpose is what it states – it builds relationships.
It is just like writing a blog post or a series of posts – a series of email messages that offers helpful tips, tricks, and ideas. Some businesses refer to these as E-newsletters or newsletters.
Usually, these are separate from a series of email messages trying to sell you a service or product. They are merely written to keep you in the minds of your email readers.
Here’s an example of this kind of an email from Dr. Daniel Doan:
Let’s Wrap This Up
Almost all consultants need email marketing to promote their services and products, and hiring an email copywriter is the solution.
A copywriter who is savvy at email marketing can give you the edge you need to achieve the goals of your business.
I can help you with this by saving you time and money while reducing the stress of creating your campaign and messages.
I have the copywriting expertise and knowledge of how to perform email marketing for your consultancy and can get you on the fast track to increasing your bottom line. Contact me here: Mark Elmo Ellis’ Email Marketing Services