How many times do you follow up with your prospects when they’re not buying? Understanding what sequential marketing is will help you determine how you can plan your marketing and methodically implement it to achieve great results. You are going to learn how to set up your sequential marketing as part of your product introduction strategy and also strategies and techniques to get started right away. Once you understand this, you will be able to plan your follow up marketing campaigns with your customers much more efficiently.
What Is Sequential Marketing?
Sequential marketing is the follow up steps you take with your new or potential customers within your marketing strategy that is planned and then sequenced over a planned and calculated time. This involves continued communications with your prospects to ensure that you are in front of them several times and in several different ways so you are able to reach them in the way that is most receptive to each prospect. Also, sequential marketing involves calculated timely communication with your customers when they are most in need of your other products or services.
Setting Up Your Sequential Marketing as Part of Your Product Introduction Strategy
You can have several various tools you can use to communicate with your customers but the most basic tool is your email list host. When setting up your email list host, you want to make sure you are able to segment your list so you can send specific messages to specific types of people on your list. The more you know about your customer and prospect lists the better and more targeted your messages can become. You also want to make sure your list host allows for connecting lists. For instance, if you have a customer that bought product A, but has not bought product B, then when they do purchase product B, you want to remove them from the product A customer list to the product B customer list to ensure they do not receive repeated messages attempting to sell them on product B.
When writing your passive follow up sequences, you want to make sure you are using evergreen type of messages. In other words, messages and content that does not rely on specific events or current events as those can and will change over a period of time. You can do a great deal of damage if your messages are confusing to your customers. Also, make sure that you are not solely sending your customers and prospects 100% promotional messages. Give value that is at least worth twice as much as what you are attempting to sell and give it much more often. A good rule of thumb, depending on the market you are in is to give 3-5 pieces of useful content to your list before you ask for the sale. This builds a relationship with them as well as builds up reciprocity.
Setting Your Follow Up On Fire
Now that you have begun to outline your messages, you want to set them on fire. The best way to do this is by setting up a buying cycle with your customers to follow. Once they’ve purchased product A, now they would be best fit to purchase product B, which will make product A much more effective. You want to strike when the buyer is hot in most cases. So if product B will have an immediate amplifying affect on product A yet would not interfere with initially utilizing product A, you want to offer that right away after they have purchased product A, often times, while they’re purchasing product A.
The next thing is promoting around events. Now I know I mentioned above not to include events in your sequences, but promoting around events is extremely effective as long as you are not doing it 100% passively. This type of promotion requires you be present with the message and ensure that the message is not only timely but makes sense relating to the event.
Next, offer special offers throughout the customer lifetime buying cycle. First you want to make sure to offer a complimentary product or service when the time would be appropriate for a customer who has bought product A. If they do not purchase on the first offer, make sure you offer subsequent offers, at a discount. What works even better is if you offer the complimentary product B to the customer with a time limit on a promotion that you are specially running for the customer. What this does is add in a great persuasion element of scarcity. They have a limited time to get such a great deal. This will prompt many to act quickly.
How This Benefits You
Now you understand how to plan for and set up your sequential marketing as part of your business marketing strategy. Understanding the process implementation of the sequences is of the most importance. It is highly important that you pay close attention to your timing of your messages to your prospects and your customers. You can also use this as part of a continuous product launch strategy, sometimes referred to as a rolling launch. Lastly, as you mature in your product marketing strategies, you will be able to implement special offers right when they are needed most, use event based promotions and the effectiveness of offering complementary products or services to strengthen the value of the customer’s original purchase.
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