Relationship Marketing & Making Customers

Friday, June 5 (2020) / 7 min read

This email is part of our email series for the June 1-8 (2020) enrollment of SOI & ARM. If this resonates with you, you can find the rest of the series here.


Voiced by Amazon Polly

On Wednesday we wrote this (bolding added for emphasis):

Like the German fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, insights are like breadcrumbs for the best prospects. They lead them along a path, all while upgrading a prospect's worldview in a way that is fundamentally valuable to them.

[..]

When Matt creates marketing that intentionally lays down a path of insights, a prospect EXPERIENCES a “force” as a sense of being willingly PULLED towards a better place/world.

Along the way, these well-placed insights have an effect of upgrading, transforming, leveling up a prospect towards WANTING to be a customer — even way before the opportunity to become a customer is available or presented.

[..]

Better prospects who “become” customers before money ever changes hands. Exchanging money becomes an inevitable downstream formality through the fascia of relationship marketing (AutoResponder Madness).

Let's continue the narrative from where AutoResponder Madness takes over from the work that Sphere of Influence did to produce a better prospect.

There is a beautiful elegant simplicity to email.

The famous Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it nicely:

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity; but I would give my life for the simplicity the other side of complexity.”

Elegant Simplicity

Image inspired by Carl Richards from Behavior Gap

Someone gives you permission to contact them from the closeness of their personal inbox. The same inbox they contact people they have relationships with — friends, family, people who matter to them. Our email could be waiting for their attention right above or below an email from the most important person in their world.

When we think of it this way, it's a real honor to share an inbox with people they trust, love, and care about.

That's a thing of beauty when you stop and think about it.

But it's not the reality for most marketers. Most marketers don't share the same inbox.

At best they're alongside a thousand other marketing emails in the Promotions tab. At worst, their emails go somewhere isolated from personal space. Completely separate. A silo for marketing communication and the relentless onslaught of promotions. A different email account, rarely checked.

Why?

Because email marketing is so accessible and acquiring leads so easy, marketers have become blind to the nuance and beauty of it. It's just another direct to consumer channel to promote their stuff.

Click. Send. $$$.

Short-sighted. All focus on the immediate return. Not of the benefits once a long-term relationship has been established.

They forget that prospects only “rent” us their email addresses and attention. There is nothing permanent about it.

You will hardly ever get the primary (personal) email of a prospect whose trust you don't yet have. You'll get the disposable email address reserved for untrusted marketers.

Which is almost everyone.

We believe there is a better way. An opportunity to forge a meaningful relationship with another human being from a place that's close and personal.

When we zoom out and look at the big picture, important nuances are revealed about the stages that every prospect goes through — customer, happy customer, and finally, superfan.

Superfans are mythical creatures — Unicorns — for the majority of direct response marketers.

Under certain conditions, “superfans” are made as an inevitable byproduct of producing happy customers. For that to happen, one ingredient needs to be plentiful. But, that ingredient needs to be made.

Earned.

This email is about that ingredient.

Prospects are not commodities. They're people with needs and problems they would love help solving, and desires and dreams they need your help achieving.

The fascia that holds everything together is the RELATIONSHIP we form with the people we seek to serve. This is the asset that matters.

If magic exists anywhere in business, under the right conditions it can be experienced when email marketing is approached from the perspective of service instead of promotion.

When we serve first, when we work to matter, people matter back and become willing buyers. When trust is earned, the conditions for magic to flourish are produced in abundance.

We believe email is the perfect close and personal environment where we get the opportunity to begin a journey towards understanding what better prospects need and want.

We get to learn what matters to them.

We get the honor — the privilege — of helping them move closer to solving problems they care about solving, and realizing goals worthy of achieving.

We get to take people on a journey along a narrative arc and share insights that are meaningful.

That tug and pull starts to channel desire towards what we have, without the need of shoving it down everyone's throat.

When we do this in service of helping first, prospects start to see themselves as customers before a transaction ever takes place.

Think about the dynamic between you and us right now.

Over the past ten emails we've had the honor and opportunity to learn more about your needs from the closeness of your inbox.

Two weeks ago an email we carefully handcrafted found its way into your inbox. A level of trust and attention already existed. So you read the email, then responded with your desire to be sent more emails. You took an action and raised your hand.

It was never presumed you would be interested. Interest, after all, is in constant flux. So the first insight is that we respectfully asked.

Think about what that meant.

We're not talking about the underlying system that powers ARM. Forget about that (the high level of which is all laid out here in detail and for free). We want to call attention to the result of the system.

The byproduct.

Where one person communicates to another in a respectful caring way.

This posture, this behavior, and the result of it, is the fascia — the connective tissue — that separates ordinary email systems from the extraordinary ones.

One leads with service and empathy and, like the nurturing a mother gives a newborn, the inevitable result of a bond is formed, and a relationship forged.

Email marketing doesn't need to be hard.

With the right framework, it's not.

It's simple, elegant, and direct.

We write emails.

We send them. Sometimes manually (like this one), but mostly automated.

But we're not in the email writing and sending business.

We're in the relationship business.

When we change how we see our role — from a place to promote stuff, to a place to help and serve — what happens between us and our subscribers can feel a bit like magic.

We turn prospects into customers within a timeline that feels natural to the recipient. Where prospects see themselves as customers long before money changes hands.

And, when trust has been earned, happy customers reach out and ask for weird things you don't see elsewhere — like, “Dude what else can I buy?” Where they seek to be sold more to. This happens, a lot btw.

AutoResponder Madness is the step by step framework for creating emails your prospects want to read, and the connective tissue around a world they want to be part of.

ARM and SOI are available until midnight PST, June 8. If you're interested, we invite you to enroll.

You'll have immediate access to all course content, and you'll get upgrades for life. (ARM4 first this summer, and SOI2 this fall).

(Note: If you're already a customer of either course, no need to buy again. You already have access, and will receive the new editions when they're released.)

If now is not a good time for you, ARM and SOI will be available again in the Fall. We're going nowhere. We're here to stay.

— Shawn

Shawn Twing

P.S.

If you have questions or comments, reply to this email or post a comment on the website.