The Campfire Rule: What Seven Trainers Actually Do After Someone Opts In

You finally got the traffic. The opt-ins are coming in. And now what? Most people building an online business treat lead generation as the finish line, then wonder six weeks later why a list full of names never turns into a single sale. A panel of seven trainers, each running a different platform and a different follow-up style, sat down together to answer exactly that question, and their answers converge on one uncomfortable truth: almost nobody buys the first time they see you.

Why doesn’t traffic alone ever turn into sales?

Justin Varangia opened the panel by naming the split at the center of every online business. One half is generating traffic. The other half, the half most people undercook, is what happens after someone lands on your list.

In fact, the majority of the people I know I’ve personally signed up don’t join me right away. But it’s through e-mail and values.

That single admission reframes the whole conversation. The internal conflict most new marketers carry is the assumption that a good enough capture page or a clever enough post should convert on contact. It rarely does. The real mechanism is patience paired with consistency, staying in front of a lead with genuine value long enough that they eventually decide the timing is right on their own schedule, not yours.

What does daily follow-up actually look like across five different platforms?

Each trainer described a different version of the same underlying habit. Anna Zubarev and her partner send several emails a day regardless of travel, built from a nightly to-do list they each keep themselves accountable to. John Oakes moves every new lead toward a personal connection on Facebook within the first email, so subscribers stop being anonymous names and start being people he actually recognizes. Lawrence Tam treats his list the way a good salesperson treats a slow-building relationship, moving people between email, blog, and video rather than pitching from day one, because as he put it, nobody gets married on the first date.

The common thread across all of them is a short list of habits worth naming directly:

• Send consistently, whether that means once a day or several times a week, and do not stop because a launch or a trip gets busy.
• Ask a genuine question in the very first message so the subscriber replies, which also improves how reliably your future emails land in their inbox.
• Move the relationship somewhere more personal, a Facebook message, a comment reply, a live video, instead of leaving it as a cold, one-way broadcast forever.
• Tell a real story instead of only stacking facts about the opportunity, because a story is what people actually remember and act on.

Why does the campfire matter more than the subject line?

Mike Hobbs made the point that reframes everything else on the panel. Everyone obsesses over subject lines, he said, but the name attached to the email matters just as much, arguably more, because a stranger’s subject line gets ignored on principle.

He described the actual goal in a phrase worth remembering: “I’d like to explain it like you want them around your campfire as much as humanly possible.” Every touchpoint, whether it is a blog post shared automatically through an RSS feed, an invitation to a live Periscope, or an occasional longer story email, exists to get a subscriber close enough to that fire that they recognize your name before they even read what you sent. Once that recognition exists, open rates climb, replies climb, and the entire relationship gets easier to build on.

Tracy Walker added the piece that ties the whole panel together: follow-up is not one script, it is several, depending on the temperature of the lead. Cold traffic from paid ads gets a longer autoresponder sequence written for someone who has never heard of you. Warm traffic from a live Periscope session gets pulled straight into a group where the relationship is already underway. Treating every lead identically, regardless of how they arrived, is one of the fastest ways to waste a list that took real effort to build.

What separates a list that produces sales from one that just sits there is not the platform, and it is not a secret script. It is showing up daily, being specific enough to be remembered, and treating the people on your list like people who opted in because they wanted to hear from you, not like names to be pitched at once and forgotten.

The full session covers each trainer’s autoresponder sequence and broadcast cadence in far more detail than fits above. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Now I'd like you to stay on your feet and welcome to the stage, Chris Rushlow. How'd you like it? Was that fun? Did you learn a lot?

Okay. One, two, three, five. Alright. So, that was kind of cool.

Are your brains still holding together after all that information? It's like a shotgun fire hose of like all these strategies that are going to make you all this money. So, hopefully a lot of you aren't having meltdowns right now. I love it.

So, hopefully your brain is still there because we've got just a little bit more. We're going to wrap this up and tie this all together by having a Q&A panel. So, if I could invite all the trainers that have come up, we're going to do a quick Q&A panel. Some of them know about it and some of them I was surprising them on purpose.

And we're going to do a follow-up to where now this… This session is going to be based on what to do next once you're getting that traffic. And once we do that, we're going to have how you're going to email your list. We're going to talk a lot about how each of them follow up.

And it's going to be short. And if we have time, we'll take some questions. But it will be a panel and we'll have everyone back up here. But before we do that, we do have a special birthday in the house.

And it's your very own guys running the stage back there. Sam, who is the one that's always playing the music for you, putting it together, runs the whole production team. This is his show. Give it up.

And of course, we're going to sing you happy birthday. So, one, two, three. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you. Sam, happy birthday to you. That's all I got left for you, buddy. All right.

So, to anchor the panel, one of the kings of follow up himself, please help me welcome to the stage, the hippie Jedi, Justin Varangia. How's everyone doing? Please help me welcome to the stage, Miss Tracy Walker. Please help me welcome back to the stage, Mr.

Justin Holland. Mr. Mike Hobbs. Michelle Scherzer.

Schaefer. Did she do awesome on Twitter or what? Give it up for Lawrence Tam. Mr.

John Oaks held it down on Facebook this morning. And of course, Anna Z. Do we have everybody? I think we have everybody, right?

All right. So, we've only got a short time. And what I'm going to do is turn it on over to Justin. And we're going to start on how we follow up.

So, take it away. Awesome. Thank you, Chris. And give it up for all the amazing leaders so openly sharing this morning.

So, two core aspects of building your business. Obvious traffic generation. Without the traffic, you have nothing to share. The second part is follow up.

Without good follow up, it's very difficult to make a lot of sales. In fact, the majority of the people I know I've personally signed up don't join me right away. But it's through e-mail and values. So, we're going to pick their brains and have them share what their methods are because we all have different strategies.

And I'm anxious to hear, like, what you all are doing. And maybe I'll start down there with Anna. What kind of follow up do you do once you have the traffic, you have the leads? What do you do after that?

What's your process? Well, first and foremost, when I create my graphic images, which I pin, and there are new sites. And there are new sites. And there are new sites.

And there are new sites. And there are new sites. Because I create all these feeds of my followers. I drive with value, guys.

I drive value content. I create content based on my passion, which is Pinterest. So, 80% of my blog is about how tos. And I give a lot, a lot to my blog post.

And my blog post consists about a thousand words and I give literally how tos. So, my blog post is ready when, it's my store front, guys. So, like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it.

Make sure that your blogs will be your storefronts just like a brick-and-mortar businesses So if you're selling Socks and underwear make sure you talk about that if you sell about you talk about finances make sure it's all about that so Targeted orients is extremely important with that When they come to your blog, I would definitely have side banners. I would have pop-ups and make sure it goes to When they sign up for your email list you have that stuff ready for them with your offer awesome And let's say you already have the leads.

What kind of strategy? I know you and Alex work together I know I'm on your list, so I get lots of emails. What kind of strategy do you say? I need one email a day two emails a day What do you do to be consistent with that follow-up and to be in their faces on a consistent basis?

Well? in the power network business Alex mostly He is the one who emails I'm We work together and in that sense, so he sends out at least several emails a day And it doesn't matter whether we traveling or we're at home or anywhere We could be he has a to-do list before he goes to bed He creates himself a to-do list and he literally wakes up He has that he's following through his steps what it is that he needs to be doing every single day and the same Thing with me I've create myself a to-do list every night before I go to bed What it is that I need to do but first and foremost on my mother so it's you know it's important to create a to-do list And keep up with that absolutely how many people are on Anna and Alex's list raise your hand I know I am I know I guess at least one or two emails a day and something I realize is how consistent they are even when on vacation like the email still gets sent And I think that's important and definitely a gold bar to write down to email regardless Let's move it on to John Oaks.

What's your email strategy look like for follow-up? What's your secret? You know the the most important thing for me is to get my leads connected with me on Facebook as soon as possible You know Facebook is kind of my social home, and then my blog is where I provide lots of content about Marketing tips you know helping people solve the common problems that they have and for me my market is the struggling marketer Whether they're an internet marketer affiliate marketer or network marketer They have those same common problems And so I focus a lot of my content around just providing solutions for that through sharing my personal experiences and my journey over the last Decade you know I've faced all those same challenges, so how did I solve them?

I share that exactly with them so getting them connected on Facebook first gets them connected to me personally And when you can develop that personal relationship with your subscribers, that's where they really get to know you They start really paying attention to the stuff that you send them and so You know as far as emailing goes I will email Typically at least once per day, but then also on occasion if I have a promotion going on or something happening I'll definitely hit them another second time sometimes even three or even four times in a single day But I don't do that every single day right on awesome, and so I'm curious to connect with them on Facebook What do you say in your first email?

Do you put like PS feel free to reach out to me on Facebook and shoot me a private message? What kind of lingo do you use in your email? It is it's just as simple as that you know really the the first email that I send out Encourages them to get to know who I am because I recognize that a lot of times depending on where that leads coming from They have no clue who I am so I just tell them you know hey if you don't know who I am Get to know me a little bit better We can kind of get to know each other connect with me on Facebook take a cruise through my Facebook timeline see what I post about Interact with me send me a friend request and be sure and also send me a personal message on Facebook so that I know that You're one of my subscribers, and that's important because you know when you get tons and tons of friend requests Then it's hard to discern who a subscriber is versus just random people sending your friend requests And I like to prioritize and I'll tell my subscribers that look you're special because you're one of my subscribers I want to be sure that you get to be one of my 5,000 friends So send me that personal message so I can approve you over and above the others that are sitting there waiting to be approved Thank you.

I love that personal connection. That's absolutely genius. Thank you John Let's move on to Lawrence. I know I'm on Lawrence's list as well Very good at sharing value something I notice is you don't try to sell me on your list You're just like here's some you know solve your problem sort of deal Yeah, I mean my goal is to be in business for a very long time And I know there's gonna be people who just will never buy for me, so it might just take a while It's kind of like in dating Anyone get married on the first date?

Well, I mean that's kind of the approach Has anyone ever bought a car or been in a? Timeshare sales presentation right so if you think about the way the psychology of what they've done That's kind of what I like to do. I like to take people from where they are to different Sections or different rooms or different networks kind of what John does with through Facebook? If you're in an email you want to take into a blog post or to a video?

Or maybe even to back to your Facebook? you kind of want to move them to different aspects of your life and I Incorporate that with that with my email because I mean if why recreate the wheel I mean timeshares they sell a lot through that. When you go into a car dealership, come to my office, let's talk numbers, and they move you. So psychologically, I mean, you can move them to Skype, you can move them to your text, you can move them to anywhere.

But by doing that small process, you're actually getting to a more intimate place. And Facebook chat is a fantastic way to actually have that live conversation. And then if you want to sell, you can. But I use email that way.

But I would definitely say everyone needs to be treating their email list, not so much as a inanimate object, but as people. I mean, people actually opted into your list, and they want to learn more. So give them some value, connect with them, and then treat it there. And statistically, I say we don't check email enough in terms of stats.

But I know John does. We were looking at this. But if you guys are not broadcasting, actually manually sending or scheduling, you're missing so much traffic in your email. Absolutely.

Awesome. Thank you, Lawrence. And something I realized, like, the purpose of the subject line is to get them to open the email. And then the content you have in the email is specifically for one purpose, to get them to click and take an action.

So it's like subject line is to get the open, and then the email body is to get the click. But I personally never try to sell somebody in the email, because typically it don't work for me personally. But I'm curious to hear Michelle's strategy with Twitter follow-up. Michelle, via email.

Mike? Is this one on? It's off. This one?

Okay. I follow a similar strategy to what Anna shared. As far as what I share on Twitter, it's usually links to my blog. Twitter's job is to do two things, drive traffic to my blog, and to give me somewhere to engage with my followers and talk to them.

Once I get them to my blog, my blog's job is to get them on my list. So like they've said, you know, the pop-ups, the call to actions to get them to some of my followers and subscribe. Once they're on my list, there's, I guess, three things that probably are key for me that have been effective. One is the very first email message in my autoresponder series asks a question.

I don't send them to Facebook, because I'm not on Facebook that much. Instead, I ask them a specific question based on what they opted in for. So it's something like, what are you struggling with right now in blogging that I could help you with? They hit reply, and then I can engage in a conversation from there and follow up with them.

And then I can send them a question, and then I can follow up with them. So that's something that works really well. The second thing is, as you mentioned, the subject line's job is to get them to open the email. Email's job is to get them to click a link.

My goal is to train them to listen to me. So every email I send, there's a specific action, one action that I focus on asking them to take. And it's not direct to a sale or that type of action, but just getting them used to doing what I ask them to, whether it's do this one thing today. Sometimes there's not a link in my email.

Sometimes it's, today I want you to stop and think about X, Y, Z, or follow this specific strategy. But there's a goal and an action that I'm asking them to take so that they get used to listening to me and seeing results from what I share with them. And then I like to engage people by doing hangouts. That's a fun way to kind of get to know them better and do a lot of Q&A.

But that's the type of follow up that I use. Thank you, Michelle. And something she said that I started to do a lot of is to get them to reply to me. And I like to reply to your email.

Why? You automatically go on their whitelist, which means better chance of email deliverability when somebody responds to you. Because you're basically telling their email provider, you're not spam. So oftentimes in the PS line, I'll do something similar to engage them.

I'll put like, you know, respond back and let me know the biggest struggle area I can help you with. And my inbox blows up and it's all that personal connection, similar to what John's doing on Facebook. And it's very simple to do. And a lot of people will reach out to you.

And that personal connection helps separate you from everyone else. Mike Hobbs, YouTube follow up. Cool. So really, YouTube follow up.

It's not really YouTube follow up. It's just follow up in general. It doesn't really matter where a lead comes in. They're in your email, right?

But I'd like to explain it like you want them around your campfire as much as humanly possible. Why? Because think about this. It's not really the subject line.

I know everyone says this. It's the subject line that they open. But it's actually the name is the most important. Like, it goes name and then subject line.

So if you have a, if they know who you are, then they will look at your subject line second and they're like, okay, now I'll open it. So it's really that name. So how do I do that? I do a varying follow up type approach.

One list, I do a RSS to email. So they opt in on my blog. Every time I do a blog post, I do a follow up. And then I do a follow up.

And then I do a follow up. So that's one way. And you can do that and get response or whatever you're using. That's one approach.

Another approach is I periodically send them broadcast emails to get on my periscopes or to get on hangouts that I do or whatever. So what is this doing? It's getting them, you know, to know me, getting them around the campfire so that they recognize my name. And then they will open up my emails more, right?

Another approach, and I know this kind of goes against a lot of teaching, is periodically I do sell in the email. And here's how I do it. I do a story. I tell a story about my past.

And I literally, the email is really, really long. I don't know if you guys have ever seen one of my long emails. It's like super long. But I'm telling you, I get more signups from my long emails than any other email.

Long email. And then I give them a join link right from the email. And then I get more signups from my long emails than any other email. Because the email, I take them through a story and I'm selling through the email.

And the cool thing about doing that, you don't want to do this all the time. Once they get to know your name and once they trust you, you can do a story email and then have a join link to it or a sales video or whatever you want to do it. But I'm telling you guys, my last story email that I did, I had four signups in one email. Nice.

So if you can get good at telling story, then you can get signups directly from the email. And the cool thing is, they don't have to watch a sales page. They don't have to go anywhere else. But you have to be kind of good at telling the story first.

So don't just, you know, there's two schools of thoughts there. You can go for the clicks or you can go for the sell. But, you know, those are just some varying ways that I do follow up. And Mike, quick question.

Do you ever, like, feed two birds with one seed? Like, maybe you use that story because you just put some good thought, you put your heart into it. Do you also ever post it on Facebook? Or use it somewhere else versus just the email?

Or do you just stick it in the email only? You know, I haven't really multi-purposed the email story, but I have done stories and blog posts. So, yes, that's the same concept. But, yeah, I mean, why not?

I know Paul Hutchings does that. He takes his email and puts it over on his blog and on his Facebook. So I see people do it, and it's definitely effective. Awesome.

Thank you, Mike. Mr. Justin Holland, everyone give it up for him. Incredible Instagram training.

Love what you're doing, man. And share your secrets with follow-up, brother. Yeah, it's actually kind of a new method for me, which has been working wonders for the past couple of months. And it's the first email follow-up series in my autoresponder.

I actually asked the lead to connect with my Facebook fan group rather than a fan page or a personal page. And the reason I do that is because you actually get $100. Yeah, 100% interaction, 100% views, as long as they're online, compared to, what, 15% on a Facebook fan page. And basically that takes out, as I know John was talking about how he asked them to send him a message before he adds them.

And I don't have to do that. So what I do in my group is I just share value every day, similar to like a blog. A blog or a, it's kind of like, it's combining your blog, your Facebook fan page. Yeah.

And your email follow-up series in one. Nice. So I can provide value, video value, inspirational value, and even business posts, because Facebook can, Facebook don't mind that you do that. Right.

So even when it comes down to Facebook ads, you can direct them straight back to Facebook groups, and Facebook will love it. So there's a tip for you. Beautiful. I'm curious, how many emails are in your autoresponder campaign?

Do you have like three, 10, 20? How many autoresponders that are automated after somebody opts in? Probably about 16 or 17. Okay.

Yeah. 16 or 17. 16 or 17. Over about 25 days.

Cool. And how often do you broadcast? About three times a week, and that will be quite warm. It won't be, it'll be more like a travel post or something like that, direct them straight back to my fan page or my group.

Awesome. Yeah. Cool. Thank you, Justin.

Appreciate it, man. And you have a cool name, by the way. Absolutely. I love his name.

Bromance. Total bromance. So what's up, Tracy? What's your follow-up look like?

You know, as I listen to everybody, my follow-up is a little different. My follow-up is a little different depending on what I'm doing. It's not the same follow-up. If I'm doing a paid advertising campaign and people are coming straight to my lead capture page, I have an autoresponder sequence, right?

Minus 10. And that format talks to someone as if I don't know them. So I'm going from a cold to a warm environment. That's one strategy.

But if I'm doing Periscope, for example, I like to take them to the group. I'm warming them already on Periscope. I don't want to take those people and stick them into my autoresponder sequence where people from cold traffic are coming. It's two different conversations.

And so I get the Periscope people into the group. I have in my description in the group the link to my blog. Nice. Yes.

And then things that we do in the group, I'll post in the group, but then some things I'll put on the blog and tell them they have to be a subscriber. Nice. So I'm a subscriber of the blog to get the email for whatever I was sending out on the blog post through Mike, I think, because you use more GetResponse, so you do RSS feed. I use Aweber.

It's called a blog broadcast. Same thing for the most part. So it's those two. And how do you get your emails to look so pretty?

Because your emails kind of just look unlike everyone else's, like you have like a header. Is it through that feature you just mentioned? Yeah. Now, if I'm just doing a broadcast, a regular broadcast email, it looks like everybody else's.

But if I'm sending it from my blog, with blog broadcast inside of Aweber, you can choose a template, and it looks like a newsletter. Right. So you write a blog post on your blog, and when you hit send, it reads the RSS feed, Aweber picks that up, and then they send out your blog post as a newsletter, and it captures a blurb. It takes like the first little bit of the description of what it is.

It takes the description of what your blog post is about. It has a read more button, and so they get that. And you can make it look however you want it to look based on the templates, because you can kind of customize those templates. Yeah, they look really good.

And one last question. How often are you broadcasting, or typically how often do you broadcast? Me, typically like once a day or twice. I haven't been doing a lot lately, but no more than two in a day, unless I'm doing a webinar or I'm doing something else.

Okay. And if I'm doing something that I want people to register, or I want to make sure people are taking advantage of something, then the day of the webinar, for example, I might send out five. Right. Reminders.

Reminders. So it varies. But just on a regular, everyday, consistent type of situation, one or two a day. Awesome.

Cool. Well, we are out of time, so I just want to everyone give it up for the panel here. They're amazing. All right, everyone.

Give it up for your servant leader trainers who unveiled their secrets for you today. Get on your feet and show them the gratitude that they deserve. They just laid it out for you today. All right.

Thank you. And give it up for Justin Varangia for hosting the panel. One, two, three. All right.

All right. So it's time to take a quick stretch break. All right. We've got one hour.

So you're back here at 3 o'clock. I would encourage you not to go and sit down and order, because you may not get back in time. Because what we have right after lunch, I mean, you've got to just grab something and make sure you're ready. Don't eat too much.

What's happening next is Alex and Michael Martin, and they're coming up here and showing you the paid traffic walking you through iPass. You don't want to miss it. We'll see you guys in an hour.