A friend of mine, and fellow publisher, has just told me about some startling results he got from trying something new with his email marketing.

In fact, this 3-step tweak, which I’ll share with you now, more than DOUBLED their sales.

Best of all, because they’ve set these up as autoresponders (emails which don’t need sending out manually) this actually works on autopilot.

Now I wouldn’t normally suggest one of the changes they made, but hey if it works, it works. That’s what I want to look at in this article.

First we’ll look at the three different steps involved and then why they had such a huge impact.

Just to explain…

We used to work together in a publishing company many years ago and we still stay in touch (in other words: meet up for beers and share strategies).

He’s an editor who specialises in email newsletters and at the moment is working with a small online business.

They sell nutritional supplements and natural pain-relief devices using the classic combo of blog + twice-weekly emails.

This is an online marketing model that’s been around since, well, before social media… and it still works.

In fact, it’s what you’re going to read about in the next issue of Digital Upstart Insider. The team and I have come up with a step-by-step blueprint for setting up an email marketing platform.

If you’re not a full member, I’d urge you to become one this week – click here for risk-free trial access – because the email system I’ll show you is undoubtedly the most powerful and profitable marketing tool at your disposal, and it’s not that hard to set up.

In a nutshell it goes like this…

• Send at least one email every week to a database of people who have willingly opted into your service.

• Make sure your emails are useful, personal and interesting so that the reader finds them of genuine value.

• Deliver that useful information on a ratio of 2:1 against emails that sell a product. In other words, send two free content emails to every one promotional email.

• In return for being lovely, entertaining and genuinely beneficial to their lives, your reader will be more likely to open your emails, trust what you have to say, and click on your promotional links.

That’ll work, no problem; these are your basic ingredients for a successful email marketing series.

BUT…

Whatever you do in online business, you must remember….

Rules are only a guide, the secret is to test, test, test

These rules are there to give you the basic structure of successful content marketing. They’re not set in stone. It’s up to you to then develop, evolve and personalise your business based on what YOUR particular database wants, expects and needs.

This is why truly successful marketing is all about TESTING.

Start out with a formula. For instance, your emails might go out on certain days, with a certain attitude or them. They might be of a certain length in a certain style or format.

This is called your ‘control’…

Once that is rolling, you can test new ideas against that control and see what happens to your open rates, clickthroughs, website traffic and sales (these are all measurable on Google Analytics and email broadcasting system analytics. And again we share which of these tools are best for the job with you in DU Insider.

So for example…

I have always maintained that the 2:1 rule is absolutely paramount.

But my friend has shown that it’s not always the case.

For obvious reasons I can’t disclose the name of his client, but here’s what happened.

3 email strategies that more than doubled their sales

This health business is fairly new and the newsletter was doing okay – with two emails going out each week. But sales were lingering at around the £1,000-£1,500 per month mark.

Once the owner had paid the writer and editor, there wasn’t really much left to re-invest in the business or even pay himself.

Even though he was playing the ‘long game’, he needed to see progress.

So they had a good look at their customers and tried to work out what they most wanted.

It was clear that all the products that sold really well were pain-relief products.

Almost all of their subscribers were coming onto the list having bought a low-price product – again, primarily pain-relief.

So they tried 3 things.

• First, they decided to change the ratio from 2:1 to 1:1 (“Nooooooo”, is what I’d have said to this). So in any given week there would be one useful free content email and one promotional email.

• Second, instead of making the free information about general health, they focussed all of the content on pain-relief and longevity.

• Thirdly, they set up a series of email autoresponders that sold 5 of their top-selling pain-relief products in a succession of emails to every new subscriber.

The result?

This month they’ve already made £2,300 in sales – and they’ve got another two promotional emails to go out, meaning they’re on track to smash through the £3,000 barrier.

And that’s just their weekly emails…

Their new autoresponder series has more than DOUBLED the sales they get from brand new subscribers.

Why has this worked?

Here’s my take:

• The subscribers were desperate to buy products to help control and relieve pain. Once they’ve come onto the database after buying a product they were “hot buyers” – and so the heavily promotional autoresponder series caught the most qualified buyers.

• The 1:1 ratio worked for them because it increased their exposure to promotions while ALSO being useful and enriching. After all, if you give free advice on pain-relief it’s more useful to also give a link to a product that might help. They also made sure that these promotional emails had the same format, quality and voice of the regular emails.

• Making the free content more focussed on one theme made the newsletter more distinguishable from other health services. It now had a clear purpose and a much stronger storyline on which to hang the promotional emails.

So look, these three things won’t necessarily work for every business in every niche.

You might find that FEWER promotions work and that 3:1 is an optimum ratio. You might find that too many sales messages in your autoresponders makes too many people unsubscribe.

But what DOES work is the testing process.

Don’t just assume that what you have set up is the best it can be. Check the analytics, work out what your customers most want (and need) and think of a way to deliver that more effectively.

Then test it and see what happens!

This goes for myself and the DU team, too. I have been in online business for so long that I sometimes forget to challenge the rules and systems I use.

I’ll make sure I do more of it, and get the results to you so that you can try the same.