How best to make more sales without being salesy

Getting some great subscriber questions on email lists, one of my fave topics.

Last week I talked about email open rates, this week I cover another good subscriber question:

“How best to include a CTA, if any (in emails)”

Great question.

Now first, a caveat. If you’re trying to build your business and/or personal brand and not building an email list, I think you’re missing out. If you want to know the 3 reasons why, definitely check out my youtube video here.

If you’re already convinced, let’s talk about CTAs which will also explain one of the core benefits of email lists.

The question above can really be broken down into 2:

1. Should I always include a CTA in emails?

2. What’s the best way to include them?

My answer to #1 is “yes”, you should always include a CTA but in a non-salesy, smart way.

Let’s take a quick step back and talk about why you even have an email list, which should be to build a loyal following of people who know, like and trust you because you are sending them valuable content.

Doesn’t matter what it is: could be educational, funny, entertaining, thought provoking, whatever. As long as it’s valuable then (at least some) people will read them.

And it’s my opinion that if you’re sending people valuable content and they’re enjoying reading it, there is no harm in including a CTA (call-to-action) in every email, especially if it’s at the end.

Best case people take you up on your offer, worst case they enjoyed your email, have no interest in your offer and move on with their day.

Now to question #2, what’s the best way to include them?

My best tips would be to:

• include the CTA at the end

• make sure the email itself is worth reading so they’re still happy to have read the email, even if the CTA doesn’t pique their interest

• make it more of a “soft sell”, as in don’t make it super spammy or lame. A spammy CTA can ruin all of the goodwill you built from the content of the email itself

• have an offer that is an extension of the content of the email, or in other words, don’t write an email about business and then try to sell them cat food. At least, I probably wouldn’t

For service businesses especially, the last part is pretty easy.

Let’s say you’re an accountant building up an email list to teach people about tax (you’ve really got your work cut out trying to make that exciting :P). You’re probably sending emails on a variety of ways to save money on taxes, prepare for tax season, leverage different strategies, etc.

Draft your email, keep it interesting and educational, and at the end, soft sell how you can help people with the next step. Something as simple as: If you’re interested in learning more, hit “reply” and let me know so we can schedule a quick call.

Hot tip: we (humans) are really pretty stupid and lazy at the end of the day, especially if we’re busy, so I usually like to type out the literal steps they should take (the “hit reply” part).

I’ll end with one more example, it also happens to be a real life CTA:

Hopefully you found this helpful. If you want more of my help getting an email list off the ground so you can build more trust and make more sales, hit “reply” and let me know where you’re at and how I can help ;)

Have a great day,

- Josh Schachnow

Canadian immigration lawyer, CEO at Visto.ai