Email Follow-Up and Personal Connection: Vashon Borich’s Full List-Segment System

You finally get a lead. Their name and email land in your system, and then what? Most people either go silent for a week or start pitching immediately, and both mistakes cost them the same thing: a stranger who was curious enough to opt in and then never heard from you in a way that felt human. Vashon Borich built her entire follow-up system to solve exactly that gap, and in this session she opens up the actual structure behind it.

As someone trying to turn cold opt-ins into a real team, you already know that a list full of names isn’t the same thing as a list full of relationships. Vashon’s system treats every single lead differently depending on where they are in what she calls the lead lifecycle. And she walks through the whole thing, email by email.

What is your email actually supposed to be doing before it ever tries to sell?

Vashon states her goal up front: every email exists to build relationships, provide value, and educate. Not to sell. Sales, she says, are the result of that goal, not a separate activity competing with it. That’s the whole logic behind what she calls attraction marketing: you’re not chasing the sale directly, you’re becoming someone worth following, and the sale shows up on its own schedule because of it.

She maps the entire journey a lead takes through a sales funnel into distinct buckets, because a warm lead and a hot lead need completely different messages. A warm lead has an email address but hasn’t opened anything yet. As Vashon explains it, “a hot lead is somebody that actually opens up your emails when you start sending them messages”. Which she tracks directly inside her email software. Most of the real work in this system happens with the people who haven’t opened anything yet, not the small slice who convert on the very first touch.

Why do new customers, team members, and black card members all need a different inbox experience?

This is where the system gets specific. Vashon keeps separate lists for new customers, people who started an order but never finished it, team members, black card members, and her general warm and hot leads, because sending the same message to all of them wastes the trust each group has already given her. A brand new customer gets a welcome email that asks them to connect on a personal level, followed the next day by their first two or three steps. Then a nudge to schedule coaching once those steps are done.

The people who started an order but never finished it get a short, direct sequence: a same-day nudge, a resend with a phone number the next day, and one final forwarded reminder on day three. Before she moves them into her general warm lead list rather than leaving them stranded in limbo. Black card members, her highest tier, get what she calls all the juice: a welcome to the club, a follow-up email with the specific links and passwords they’ll actually need, and an invitation to schedule coaching directly with her.

• New customers get a welcome message, then next steps, then a coaching invitation once those steps are done.
• People who started an order but never finished it get three short nudges across three days before being folded back into the warm list.
• Team members get an orientation invite, their own next steps, and a look at what an upgrade includes.
• Black card members get priority contact information and a personal coaching call.

How do you know when it’s time to stop emailing someone entirely?

Not every lead earns ongoing attention forever, and Vashon is direct about that too. Anyone who hasn’t opened a single email in three months goes into what she calls a dead end bucket. Rather than just letting those addresses sit there quietly dragging down her open rates, she sends a goodbye email first.

I noticed you haven’t opened any of my emails in a long time. And so basically I’m just saying, hey, I don’t want to fill up your inbox with unread messages. So if you aren’t finding value, click the unsubscribe link below.

That single email, she says, regularly pulls a thirty percent open rate, which is remarkable for a list segment that’s been silent for months. And a good portion of those people reply asking not to be removed. The ones who still don’t respond get one more nudge, and then she deletes them outright. Her reasoning is almost dating advice: if they haven’t opened your emails or joined you, they’re just not into you. So stop chasing them and let the list stay clean for the people who actually are.

What separates an email that gets opened from one that gets deleted on sight?

Vashon closes with what she calls her formula: an enticing subject line under seven words, a first sentence that pulls the reader’s own name in naturally rather than opening with a generic greeting, one to three images at most, links sprinkled three separate times through the body, and a signature that always ends in a postscript. Because she’s found the postscript consistently gets clicked more than any other link in the email. She credits that last trick to a mentor, Mike Hobbs, and says the pattern has held for years across her own reporting.

On subject lines specifically, she’s tested what works: words like sorry, a reply-style RE, or a forwarded FWD tend to outperform anything that announces itself as a pitch. While anything in all capital letters, anything with a dollar sign, and the word free are the fastest way into a spam filter. Her best long-term habit, though, is simpler than any single subject line trick: get on other successful marketers’ lists, save what makes you click, and build your own swipe file to learn from without ever copying it word for word.

The full session runs through complete worked examples of nearly every email type mentioned here, plus her exact autoresponder sequencing for each list segment. Create your free account to watch the complete session and download the audio at empowernetwork.com/watch.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Vashon Borich, and I'm going to be giving you a training on email follow-up and personal connections. So let's get started. We'll start off here with an overview of what I'll be covering in this training. So first of all, you're going to learn your primary communication goal when you are following up with folks with email.

Then we're going to go into contact methods, list categories, and we'll explain more about what those are. Types of emails and examples. And then my formula, or the secret formula within our tribe on writing great emails, or copywriting. Let's get started.

Alright, so here's your goal. Your goal, and you want to keep this in mind with every single email that you send out, is to build relationships, provide value, and educate. It's not to sell them. Now you're probably scratching your head, well wait a minute.

I want to turn these people into sales. Well, your sales will come. That's a result of your goal. Your sales will come because you built relationships, provided value, and educated them.

So if you keep your goal in mind, you'll find that it's much easier to sell, or to get sales as a result, because of you focusing on building those types of relationships. It's called attraction marketing, right? We're not pushy sales people. We are attracting people.

We are bringing people to us as they get to know us, and they see the type of value and education that we're providing to them. Alright, so let's talk about contact methods. I know primarily we're going to be talking about email, because that's really the golden ticket. That's what you're using in order to maintain contact and build those relationships.

However, your secondary part of building those personal relationships is Facebook. And so my goal, any time that I send out emails, I want to make sure that my goal is to build those personal relationships. And so my goal, any time that I send out emails, I want to make sure that my goal is to build those personal relationships. And so my goal, any time that I send out emails, I want to make sure that my goal is to build those personal relationships.

And so my goal is to build those personal relationships. And if I send out a free email, I will try to get them to become a friend of mine on Facebook, because now you have one more avenue to be able to communicate with that person and build that relationship. And vice versa, if somebody comes to me first through Facebook, my goal is to get them in to email. And there's a lot of different ways you can do that.

You can just be direct, too, and ask them to provide your email and you can add them manually. Of some kind that encourages them to enter onto your opt-in page and then join your email list that way.

Okay, we're not going to go really deep on the Facebook side of things, but I will tell you that they are both excellent ways to build your personal relationships, and you really need both in order to be powerful in building those relationships. So let's, let's press on here.

So I want to give you kind of an overview, this is the big picture view of the lead lifecycle. And if you're not familiar, first of all, let's explain what a lead is. A lead, to me, is somebody who I have their email address, and they've, they've given me their email address because they filled out something on an opt-in page.

Also known as our sales funnel, or lead capture page is another thing you might call it. So I've gotten that email from them. They've given it to me willingly because of that email. And they've given it to me willingly because of that email. And they've given it to me willingly because of that email, and of something that I have promised that I will give them in return.

Okay, so as long as you know what that is, you don't really have a business until you're, you're capturing leads. Those are your potential customers, those are your prospects. So here's the process, it starts at the very top here where it says sales funnel, opt-in page, just two different names for the same thing.

So somebody comes into your web page and they enter in their email address, so that's like the very top of the funnel. Now they're going to be pushed down into your funnel, and they're going to be spit out at the other end. At the other end, they're going to do one of three things, ok?

They're going to buy something from you right away, obviously, if you've led them to a sales page, then that's an option for them. Or they're going to become a partial buyer, and we're going to talk a little more detail about what that is. Or they'll become what I call a warm lead.

So let's talk about what each of these are, and then I'll explain a little more about how this chart works. So in an ideal situation, they immediately purchase something from you, right? So that's your buyer.

Now, I will just, I don't want to burst your bubble here, but the truth is only one to five percent on average will become a buyer on the first touch. So if this is cold traffic you've got coming in here, that's why this is blue, by the way.

If it's cold traffic coming in here, uh, the odds of them becoming a buyer right away are pretty slim, unless you've got something that they just need right away and they're ready to buy. Okay, so those folks, you got a one to five percent chance that that's what's going to happen on the first try.

This one here, this partial buyer, this is something relatively new, it depends on when you're watching this training, but this was something that ipass has started keeping track of. A partial buyer is somebody who gets as far as filling out the form to make a purchase, but maybe they got destroyed, or, you know, maybe they got called to dinner, for example, or perhaps what happened with them is, uh, you know, they lost their internet connection, and so they didn't complete the checkout process.

So ipass just now started tracking those, and so we have the capability to reach out to those folks that are partial buyers. So I don't really have an exact percentage yet, because this is new at the time of this recording, but I'm going to say maybe five to ten percent of folks that come through your sales funnel are going to be partial buyers, versus a full-on buyer. Okay?

We're going to talk about how to handle all of these throughout this presentation. All right, then the majority of your folks that come through your, your sales funnel are going to turn into what I call warm leads. A warm lead means you have their email address, however they have not bought anything, all right.

But they're on your list, that's a good thing. Ninety to ninety, ninety-nine percent of those folks, your funnel are going to be warm leads. Now the next step is to get them to be a hot lead. What's the difference? Well, a hot lead is somebody that actually opens up your emails when you start sending them messages.

Uh, they, you actually can tell in your back end, no matter what email program that you use, you can tell on your back end when somebody opens up your emails. So if they're not opening your email, it may be that they put in a bogus email address, or an email account that they don't ever use, or they don't ever check, or they rarely check.

So they're still just a warm lead, they're not hot until you see that they've actually opened any of your emails. So I'm going to say of that 90 to 99 percent, 10 to 50 percent of them are actually going to become your hot leads initially, really depends on how you got those leads to.

Okay, down here, obviously once they get to be a hot lead, your goal is to help convince people that you're a hot lead, and you convert them by, of course, sharing good content, good value, building those relationships, educating them, right?

You're not going to be a pushy sales person, I hope you get, you're getting that from my presentation. All right, so that's the goals, to get them to that point. Now some of these folks, at any level of this, even after they become a buyer for the first time, they could turn into what I call dead ends or unsubscribers.

Now a dead end and unsubscriber are pretty similar. A dead end would be somebody that never ever opens their email, okay? Unsubscriber is pretty obvious, that's somebody who's opted out of your list.

So if that happens, all is not lost, we're going to actually show you in today's presentation on how you can convert some of those folks back over here into warm leads or even hot leads and then potentially a buyer. All right, hopefully this makes some sense to you, so we're going to press on. Let's talk about list categories next.

So what is a list? You really need to understand that concept. A list are emails that are captured from your sales funnel, again that could be also called an opt-in page, that get pushed into a specific directory in your email management system.

Now I'm not going to go deep into the email management system, because depending on you, when you're watching this you may be using a different email management software, but this is a system that you can use to manage your email management system.

So let's go ahead and get started. So let's go ahead and get started. So let's go ahead and get started. An email management system is something where you store all those leads that are coming in, and then you can automatically send out emails to those folks.

So another thing, another name for list is campaign, segment, folder, or section, okay? So these are just different terms you may hear when somebody is talking about your list. So I just wanted you to be familiar with that, so you don't get lost as we continue on through this training.

Alright, so here are some categories that I have, and I've set these up as separate lists within my own email management system. So I'm just going to go through them, and then I'm going to define them and show you different examples today, so that you get the idea as to how you can set this up.

Before I go through them, though, what I want to share with you is if you are in I pass, and I'm assuming you are if you're watching this training, then you should always be aware of the fact that already have some pre-built emails, that's part of the I pass system.

So what I'm teaching you today is how to take that to the next level, how to, you know, maybe modify those pre-built emails or add your own. So this is taking everything up a level, so that you can become, you know, even better at what you do. All right, so let's talk about buyers.

You're going to have people that buy, so you're going to have separate, a separate bucket or list that you're going to have, a list that you're going to have for those folks. You also are going to have those partial buyers, so you want a separate bucket for those guys, or list.

Team members, these are different to me than buyers, and I'm going to explain why in just a little bit. Then, of course, you've got your black card, all-in members, so you want to treat them a little differently because they have made the commitment and gone all-in.

And then you've got your big bucket or list, that's your warm and hot leads. Now I put a little star here, or asterisk, because I split those up. I've gotten to the point now where my warm leads are in their own directory, and my hot leads I have them in a separate directory, just so I can send out specific emails to them depending on what part of my email autoresponder that they're in.

For now, if you're just starting out, just make that one directory, and it's going to save you a little bit of heartache until you get good at it. And you know what you're doing, then you can change, and you know, segment out even further. And then, finally, my dead-end bucket.

This is where I put folks that have opted out. Or actually, if they've opted out, they'll automatically get pulled off of my list. But these are for people that never ever opened an email, and to me that's somebody that's been on my list for a minimum of three months, and they have not opened one single email in three months.

So that I put them in this dead-end bucket, I pull them out. And the reason I pull them out, just to give you a little background, if you keep sending emails to people, never open your emails, your open rate in your email management system is going to go down dramatically, and that looks bad, and it can cause problems with, you know, with your opens for the future.

So I like to call those folks out of my email management system and put them in their own separate list, and that way I keep everything clean, and I, my open rates get a lot higher that way as well. All right, let's go into more detail, so what is an autoresponder?

This is another word that you may have heard, or term. So autoresponders are emails that are pre-written and set up to automatically be sent out to a subscriber at a specific day or time, based on when they are added to your list.

So it's kind of like having your own little robot that starts sending out emails, you know, whenever you want. From the time that person signs and joins your list and gives you their email, a series of emails will go out based on the day, based on the hour, however you set those up.

So it's really great, saves me a ton of time, I don't have to send out emails manually to every single person that joins my lead list. Alright, so the very first one that we mentioned in our list categories with were buyers.

So here is an example of autoresponders, or emails that I've already pre-written, that'll go out to a brand new buyer. So the very first email that a brand new buyer gets from me is a Welcome To The Team email, it's very basic, it's just going to welcome them.

And then what I always do in that welcome letter is I ask for them to become friends with me on Facebook if we aren't already, ok? That way we've got that connection that I spoke of at the very beginning of this training, is so we can press on now that I have both connections.

Once I've ensured that we've got those connections, the second email that goes out, I usually send this out the next day, the, the next one that goes out is the first two to three steps that I'd like them to take in their new business.

And these are really simple steps, like go through the, you know, the first five training videos, you know, set up, you know, your domain, choose your domain name, and just very basic things that they, they should do in order to familiarize themselves with the system, go through training modules and things like that.

Then the third is I will resend number two, just to make sure that they've got them all done, and I'll have them schedule some time with their coach. So I, I use the coaching system through I pass, so they, they get scheduled, they'll make a, they'll set an appointment with their coach after they've completed the steps that I asked them to complete.

And I want to make sure that they've got that all taken care of before we, we give them some additional information. And then, once they've done these things, then especially once they've signed up and signed up and signed up and signed up and signed up and signed up and signed up with me on Facebook and we're friends there, I move them over to my team member list.

So this is a separate list that I, that I categorize just for team members that I already have both the Facebook connection and their email address, so now we're completely synced up.

So I put this here, the slide here, so I remember to go and show you my example. So I wanted to show you one of my emails as an example, just to give you a good idea as to how you might want to format your.

Now please don't copy what I'm about to show you word-for-word, you know, make it your own. You have to target people in your voice, don't try to sound like me, when you targeting people, you, you probably not hitting the same audience that I am.

All right, so let me go here. So this is the first one, this is my team, I tried to keep as much branding off here as I could. But you'll see, here's the subject line, it just says welcome to my team friend.

Now it says friend, but what I did is I set this up in the middle here, and it says welcome to my team friend. Now it says friend, but what I did is I set this up in here, and I'm going to go ahead and click again.

I'm going to go back and click my email management system so that it actually pulls in their first name. It's saying friend because you're just seeing it as a preview on my screen, but everywhere it says friend, it actually would say their first name if I collected their name in my sales funnel.

If I did not collect their name, or they didn't fill it out, then it will say friend instead of their first name, okay? So then here's what I asked them, I said, you know, I just wanted to send you a personal message and welcome you to the team.

And then it says usually I connect with people on Facebook, but I couldn't find you through your email address. You may not know this, but one of the ways that you can connect somebody with Facebook is if you plug in, in the search bar in Facebook, their email address, and then usually can find them that way and send them a friend request yourself.

But personally I like it better if they send me a friend request, it's just quicker, it's easier, and it takes less time for me, um. And then I give them a link so that they can add me or go and friend me on Facebook.

And then once they do that, then the next email that I send out automatically is they're getting started game plan. And you'll notice down below on all my emails, we're gonna go through some of the kind of my formula for emails, but I always put, you know, my branding image, I'm the tough mama, so it kind of looked like Rosie the Riveter there.

And then, not down here, I've got a link to my blog so they can get to know me better. And then I, I, I put another link to my Facebook page so they can get connected. All right, so let me go back to the slide presentation.

Okay, so now here we're going into the next list, what do you do with partial buyers. Partial buyers are those folks, like we mentioned earlier, who started to fill out the form, but they never completed it to purchase something from you.

So I have an email that goes out automatically to these folks, and it basically says uh-oh, did something go wrong, wrong, and then I send them a link to directly to the form so that they can buy. All right, so that way they don't have to go through and watch the video again, and you can go in your back office and pull that link and include that in the email.

I'm not going to show you examples of all these emails in the interest of time, but I'm just giving you some ideas on how you might want to set up your own autoresponders in your back office going forward.

The second email that goes out, and this goes out is the process of getting your email to your, out the next day, I resend the link. So I'll resend this if they haven't bought already, and then I also give them a phone number.

Now I have been giving them, uh, the phone number for ipass, uh, and or the link, I should take that back, I give them the link for ipass support. But I tell you what, if they, after I send this email, and this is just my own personal thing that I do, if I haven't heard for them, or I don't see that they've bought after 24 hours, I give them a phone call, if I have their phone number.

You know, sometimes I, I have their phone number, you know, they filled something out and I got that somehow. But if I, if I don't have their phone number, I resend this, this email to them, and then I give them a phone number, either ipass support or my own.

And by my own, and this is just a bonus tip for you, I use google voice. If you're in the u.s, that, that should work for you. There may be other options if you're not a u.s citizen or living in the u.s, but google voice is a free service you can use to have your own phone number and then forward that to any phone number you'd like.

Look that up, google it, and you'll get more information. And then I also give them my facebook account so that they can message me if they're having trouble. All right, then we go over here, I will forward them again so they get one last chance, this is their third chance, uh, for them to, to finish their buying process, is I forward them number two one more time, and I actually do put in my autoresponder email FWD in the subject line, and that stands for forward.

I'm sure you've all received forwarded emails. They're more likely to open it if they see that FWD than they are if it was just the same subject line again. And then finally on the fourth day if they haven't responded then I actually move that person into my warm lead list because I don't want them to just sit here as a partial buyer. All right let's go to the next one.

The next one are team members. So these are people that have bought and we are connected on Facebook and they have completed the first two to three steps that I emailed them from the buyer list. Once they've done that then I move I had moved them into team members and then I'm going to move them into my warm lead list. So I'm going to move them into team members and then the very first email they'll get for me is an invitation to a new member orientation.

As part of a tribe as far as part of the unstoppable tribe we have a new member orientation that we do. So this is something that I'm sure that you could do something yourself or if you're part of a group or a team or tribe then you would send them a link to that or you could send them a replay. If you know maybe they just missed it maybe they signed up on a Saturday and they missed the Friday. Orientation.

Then you could always send them a replay link in that first invitation. I've got it set up to go to our replay page. We actually have a page that shows it live and or the replay. And then the second one is I give them the next two or three steps that they should take as part of their game plan to get their business going.

And then finally the third one they get is a bonus list of kind of sharing with them what they get when they upgrade to black card. Now this is for people that aren't currently a black card member. Most of the time somebody who joins they don't join right away as a black card. So they'll go right here into the team member list.

If they're a black card member I move them out of here. You know I don't put them in the team member list. I automatically put them in my black card all in list. So black card upgrades get moved to my black card list.

All right. So now that kind of leads in nicely to the black card member list. So what I do with these guys is they get all the juice. They get all the special stuff.

So the first thing they get is a really nice welcome letter to the club. And with that you know they're going to get all different types of contact information and they'll get an invitation to our special exclusive all in Facebook group that we have. And then there's a few other things that we give them. You decide you know what your bonuses are.

So you know you can follow what some of the people in the Unstoppable Tribe do. You know reach out reach out to us and I'm sure we could get you some information. And then the second one is I send them you know on the next day or even a few hours later I think I've got it set up to send it out like four hours later. And I say this in the welcome letter that they're going to get another email shortly that has links to all their special bonuses.

And that email is like the one they need to print out and keep in store because it's got special links and passwords and stuff like that that they're going to need in order to get into their all in. specials. And then finally I send an email on the third day that's an invitation to schedule elite coaching. So with my black card members what I do and you choose what you want to do is they get an opportunity to meet with me personally.

So we schedule a phone call. They get so many per month. And then from that you know we set up a phone call and it's their responsibility to set a time with that and work that out with me and my schedule. All right so that kind of gives you an idea.

So now let's get into the really the meat of this because most of you aren't at the point yet if you're new to have all of the other stuff built and that's something you can kind of work on in the back end as you grow your team. So here's what I do for my warm slash hot lead list. For everybody that's in there the first thing I do is I send them out a thanks for subscribing. And this is just a very basic email.

No sale stuff is in there. It's just a thank you and I'm glad to see you on my list. The second one that goes out and this would be on probably the same day is I would send them a link to their lead magnet and the lead magnet is something that that person was promised when they gave me their email. It depends on which list they came from.

For most of mine, they get like a free ebook or they get a free video training. So depending on my list, I'm going to make sure that one of the emails they get from you right at the beginning is a link so that they can get that information. That's really important and it shows consistency with what you said you would provide for them. After that, I give them straight value for a minimum of three days.

Most of them, I've got like five of them. Value would be a special video that you're training them on something. It would be maybe a special ebook or a one sheet. One sheet would be just a document that you've made like a PDF document that gives them some pointers or some things that are going to help them in their business.

So I set up all of these different things and every day for the next three to five days, they're going to be receiving the next part of the series. So you decide what's going to be the most beneficial for your audience, okay? So this is how I set it up. Let's just say I did three of them.

After the fifth day is when I start sending them manual emails. Now these manual emails are ones that I wrote that day or that week and I send them out to everybody, everybody that's on my list. So this just gets them started so that I don't have to email them every day. It gets them kind of integrated into what they can expect from me and then from there, I'll start adding, you know, manual emails that I've actually created.

Okay, so now I'm going to show you an example of a hot list or a warm lead example. Go to the next one here. Okay, this is one that has done really well and what this, the headline worked really well to open it, the subject line. We're going to talk about that but I had the subject as charge up the EKG and then my first sentence.

It says online marketing needs to be revitalized and see it says friend, that would say their first name. So you can kind of see it just kind of gives them some details and then, you know, it also gives them a link. I like to make my text, the entire text a hot link versus just plugging in, you know, www. That way they're more likely to click on it and you'll see that I try to include three different links, one, two, and a third is actually a button that I've added.

And then I have, I finish here with my, you know, with my photo and then, you know, my closure. And we're going to talk a little bit about my magic formula but you'll see I also have a PS at the bottom. Okay, so that's one example. I'm going to go back because I think there was another one I wanted to show you.

Here it is. This is my, my lead magnet, one of them that I gave out for them in exchange for them giving me their email address. So here's the subject line. It says, hi, here's my contact info.

And then it gives them, you know, just thanks them for watching the video. Gives them a link back to the video if they missed it. And then right here is the book that I promised them. And so they can click here to download it.

They can click on the book to download it. Or they can click right here on this button that I created to download that. And then I just give them a little bit more information about Team Tough, which is my team. And then down here I give them all my contact information.

My personal page, said Facebook, LinkedIn, my YouTube channel, and then my Skype ID as well. And I even give them my, my office number also. So that, you know, these are just things that I do. Again, there's a PS.

One thing I will tell you that's really been helpful for me in my list is I always include within the first or second email to make sure that they add my email address to their contact list and safe list and their email address. That way my emails don't go into their bulk mail folder or spam folder. Okay, let's go back to the PowerPoint. Okay, so now we're going to talk a little bit about dead ends.

You know, what are dead ends? Again, those are those folks that never open up your emails or they haven't opened them in a really long time. So I have two emails in that bucket. One is a goodbye email.

And the second one is a full email. Okay. So I'm forwarding of that with a last chance message that, you know, I'm getting ready to remove you from my email list if you don't, you know, open or click on some link that's in there. I have had a lot of success with this.

So let me show you an example of a dead end goodbye email. Okay, so here is the email that they get right when I put them into that, that list. The subject line is goodbye. And then it says this may be your last email from me.

I'm doing some house cleaning for 2015. And I noticed you haven't opened any of my emails in a long time. And so basically I'm just saying, hey, I don't want to fill up your inbox with unread messages. So if you aren't finding value, click the unsubscribe link below.

And then, you know, they can also private message me on Facebook. I tell you what, ever since I started doing this, it actually has helped me to convert people back to warm leads. I have gotten, I get over a 30% open email. 30% open rate on this email alone, which is pretty good, especially for somebody who hasn't opened one in a really long time.

To all of a sudden get a 30% open rate is pretty exciting. And then most of the time when they open it, a lot of the folks actually reply to the email. So I get emails back from people saying, hey, you know, I'm sorry I haven't opened them. You know, maybe they've been out of town or maybe, you know, I don't know, who knows what happened.

But they always are like, no, please don't take me off your list. And so then I move them back. I'm going to my warm lead list. So it's a really great way to kind of give them a heads up and get them to start opening your emails.

Now let me go back over here. And remember, after I send that one, I do resend it again. I think I send it like four or five days later. I give them some time to open that email.

And then if they haven't opened that last email after a week, then I go ahead and I stop emailing them. They stay in my dead end bucket or I delete them entirely. And just recently I finally got brave enough. To just delete them.

And here's my philosophy on it. I know it's hard at first when you're brand new to get leads. You don't want to delete anybody. You're just so excited to get leads.

But I found that if they haven't joined me or they're not opening my emails, it's kind of like going on a date with somebody and they never call you again. So they're just not into you. So stop chasing them. Let people come to you.

Stop chasing them. So if they're not opening my emails. Then I'm just going to let them go. And that's what I've started to do.

I've started to just delete those folks after they've been put in my dead end bucket. And I tell you what. It's really helped to clean up my email list and help to have a much higher open rate. So I hope that helps you.

Let's press on here. Okay. So this is the magic formula. This is probably what you've been waiting for now that I've summarized all this other stuff.

I'm going to share with you the magic formula for writing great. Great emails. And by great, I mean emails that actually are going to get opened and people want to get from you. They want to hear these types of emails from you.

So here it is. Number one, you need an enticing subject line. The subject line of your email is the key for them even opening that email. If you don't have a good subject line, forget it.

It's just going to sit there in their inbox. They're going to delete it. We're going to tell you how to get a good subject line. We're even going to give you some examples here in just a minute.

The second thing you need is a catchy first sentence. That first sentence should really get them going, oh, wow, what are they going to talk about? It should be something that's congruent with your subject line, but it should be something that leaves them wanting more. And I'll give you another hint before we go into this.

I try to include their name in that first sentence, and I don't include it always at the very first because most people get an email and it's like, you know, your name, comma, or hello, comma, or dear. To me, that's so old school. I mean, we hear that a lot. But when you get an email from a friend, a lot of times they'll put your name somewhere in the body of the email.

It's not necessarily at the very beginning. So I found that if I put it somewhere in the first sentence, I'm getting a little bit higher read-through rate and click-through rate. All right, the other thing is, oops, I skipped ahead here, going back, one to three images. Okay, don't put a ton of images in your first sentence.

Don't put a ton of images in your email because, number one, it takes load time. And a lot of people don't even open images, you know, especially if they're reading it on their phone. They may just read the text and not open the images or vice versa. Some people on their PCs don't have time to load the images.

So one to three images is the max that I would put in an email. Sprinkle links three times. People are not going to click on a link the first time they get it in your email. So sprinkle it three times.

Have a link to wherever it is you want them to go at the very beginning, like right after the first paragraph. Have one towards the middle of your body. And then finish up with a link down below underneath your signature. And usually I do this in my PS.

And that kind of leads me into the last part, the closing and contact. You want to give them something that they want to click on at the end of your email. So I always include links in my email. My salutation, so I'll put my name.

And then I'll include a link to my Facebook page. I'll include a link to my blog. I started including a phone number to my Google Voice, which has really helped. I've gotten some phone calls from that in sales.

And then I always include a PS. That's your little postscript at the bottom. That's extra information. And I learned this from Mike Hobbs.

So, Mike, if you're watching this, thank you. He taught me this years ago. But when you add that PS, you have a much, much greater opportunity for somebody to click on that than any other link in your email. I don't really know what the percentage is, but I find that more people click on that link than anything else when I check my reporting and analytics in my email management system.

So that's my formula. So now I'm going to show you some samples using that formula. So let me flip back over here. All right, so I think this was one of them.

Okay, so this is one. The subject line was a reply. Even though this was actually the first email that I sent to them, it wasn't an actual reply. It helped for them to open it, Reply Tribe Secrets.

And so here it shows there's the first link, and this was an invitation to an actual hangout. And then it gives them some information about what they're going to be sharing. Then over here, here's the second link. And every paragraph is kind of leading into the next thing.

And then I have a picture here of our tribe. Some of them. We've got a lot more than this. And then we shared on this hangout Tribe Secrets of Duplication.

And this has been from a while ago. Then down here, this is another link. They could either click on the image or they could click on this button, and it would take them to the hangout that we wanted them to go to. And then down here in the bottom, check this out.

I've got my closing. It has my brand. It tells you who I am. It has a link to my blog.

It has my Facebook link. And then here's that PS. And this was a sale. I don't do a lot of pushy selling in my emails, but in this case, I wanted to give them an opportunity to join the tribe.

So they could click on that, and it would take them to my join page within Empower Network. So just a really good example there for you. All right. Now we're going to talk about enticing subject lines.

So these are some subject lines that have worked really well for not just myself, but other members of our tribe. So the first one is sorry, and then that person's first name. You can actually plug a little script in there in your email marketing system, and it will allow them to pull in their first name. I don't know why, but people really want to open it.

When they see that you're sorry, they want to know, well, what is she or he sorry for? The other one, and I just gave you an example of this, was using the RE, which means that you are sorry. You are responding to an email. What's cool about this is it makes people think that they maybe had a communication with you already, and so they want to open it up and say, oh, well, maybe I already talked to them, so let me see what it says.

The blank here is just fill in whatever the subject line is that you want or that you're talking about. Another one that's similar to that is FWD. That stands for forward. I'm sure many of you have received emails that have been forwarded to you, and I've had success with this.

Especially if it's a photo or some kind of hangout or something like that, I will forward it to them saying, hey, I'm just letting you in on this. I don't normally give this out to people that aren't on my list, that aren't on my team, but I really think that you might find this interesting. I get a lot of people to open that. This one is simple.

Please open this. It's a great way to get them to open it, right? Then this one, heads up. I don't know why, but people want to see what should they have their heads up for.

Here's some other tips for you. These are things to just keep in mind. Seven words or less with your subject line. Then negative subject lines get opened more.

Like the one I had that I gave you an example of, your EKG. Let's go back to that one. I don't remember the exact subject line. Charge up the EKG.

EKG is like an electrocardiogram. It's for if you're having heart trouble. People who know that, they might see that and go, oh my gosh, what's happened? It's kind of negative.

People might want to open that one. Then don't use things in your subject line that it's going to be filtered out by your spam filter. These are emails that will never actually get in your prospect's inbox. Don't use dollar signs in your email.

These are just a few ideas that you should stay away from. Don't use all caps. All of my slides here are in all caps. I would not use the subjects in these slides as an example because they're all in all caps.

Those tend to get blocked by spam filters. Don't use the word free anywhere in your subject line. Don't use the word free. That's a big red flag.

If you want a whole list of these, do a Google search for, Google search for spam filters. There are a lot of websites and blogs and stuff like that that'll give you a whole list of things you should not use, words that you should not use in your subject lines. Then here's the biggest tip of all that I'll give to you on subject lines is get on other people's lists. Go out there, follow the leaders within Empower Network, but also follow people that are not in our business or industry.

Start following them because, number one, you want to look at their subject lines. If there are any subject lines in there that just make you open that email, make note of it. In fact, I even have a little folder I have on my computer called the copycat folder. I drop really good email subject lines and whole bodies of email in there to model after.

I'm not going to copy them word for word. Don't do that. People will get, if they're following the same people you are, they will see that you're copying them. Don't do that.

But you can model them. You can use certain aspects of their email, maybe how they have it formatted, and also the way that they did their subject line. You can use that a lot of times when you're developing your own emails. All right, what types of emails do I send out?

These would be the manual emails that I send out to my warm and hot list. I send out four main types of emails. You'll notice here, number one, one of them say sales email. I do not send out a direct selling type email to anyone on my list.

I believe in what's called the soft sell. That's getting to know them, building that relationship. Remember at the beginning of this presentation, we talked about that, what your goal is. Number one, I send out blog teasers that link to my full story, my full blog post.

This would be just like a first paragraph or the second paragraph of a blog. I'm going to show you some examples of these. Another one that I'll do is social proof. This is showing them that there are other people, or even myself, that are doing well in this business.

I have found personally that when I share my own results, I do not get as big of a response as when I share other people's results. I don't know why, but I think by showing, and this is my theory at least, by showing other people's results that are doing well. It proves to people on my warm list that this is real, that it's not just me alone, that there are other people that can do it too. It gives them hope and it gives them more belief that what I'm doing is for real. I'm going to show you an example of my formula for setting up social proof emails.

The third type is invites to live webinars or hangouts. I do a lot of hangouts. I'm a part of hangouts. I even have my own hangout.

I send out emails related to that. Then finally, updates. Updates would be just kind of, hey, where's Vashon right now? What am I doing?

What's going on in my life? What's coming? I share value. I say, hey, I've got this great webinar that I'm putting together, or what would you like to hear?

I ask questions of them. I get them involved. I talk to them like they're a friend. I don't talk to them like they are a group.

This is another big tip. When you're writing your emails, write them like you're talking to them in first person. Say you a lot, or put their name in there so that they feel like you're talking directly to them. I also do surveys.

I'll send them a link to WebMonkey, or not WebMonkey, what is it called? SurveyMonkey. I'll send them a link to that. What I'll do from there is just ask them a few questions about their business and what they're looking for or about their life.

I'll send free gifts, like eBooks, or special reports, or videos, trainings that I've done, and then videos. A lot of times, instead of writing something, I will just shoot a video. And then I will post it to YouTube, take a screenshot of the video, and paste a screenshot or a snapshot of that video on my email. When I do that, it looks just like a video, and when they click on it, I link it in my email, so it goes right to my YouTube video. That's a really great way to get people to watch your videos through email.

All right. Now I'm going to show you a few more sample emails, and we're going to wrap this up. I know this has been about 45 minutes here, so we're going to wrap everything up. All right.

Let's see. I think I showed you this one. Yeah, I did. Here's one that I got a lot of open rates on, and this is an example of a social proof.

The subject line was, is this for real, which was a great subject line. This particular subject line I got, I think it was close to 35% open rate. Again, it says friend here, but that would say their name, and then I just kind of talk about this pyramid scheme thing. A lot of people say that we're in a pyramid scheme, and then I show them a real pyramid scheme.

It's kind of fun, and then I come down here, and I share about my friend Nicole. So Nicole Barham, if you're on this, you're watching this, hello. This was an email that I specifically shared Nicole's story, and she wrote this great blog post on we are all being scammed. However, only some of us will admit it.

It's really good. It talks about this picture actually, and then down here, I share a picture of Nicole and I, and this is another little tip for you. When you go to events, get pictures with as many leaders as you can. That's why they're there.

They want to know how to help you as well, so get pictures with them. Because what's going to happen is you can then use those pictures in your emails to show social proof. So Nicole is the one on the left, and that's me on the right. And we were in Vegas at one of the events, and this is some of her social proof, and this has been a little while ago. She's done even better than this, but this shows her I Pass Back office and how well she did. She had a $3,000 day, and she had a $12,000 month, so pretty exciting.

Obviously, results are not typical, and I even include that. This is really, really, really important. So if you're compliance and you're watching this, compliance, I love compliance. So down here, make sure you include any income discussed in this message or any message you received from me are not average, so neither am I.

Be sure to check out this page for the average earnings of affiliates. You've got to include that any time that you share something. In fact, I even include, I think a link in here, one of these links to that as well. It's important to put the link to compliance as close to it as you can, and this may even link over to it as well.

And then down here, I included a quote from Nicole that she had on her Facebook page, and I thought this was really, really great, and that's where I got this from because I'm friends with Nicole on Facebook, and she had posted her quote and her results, so I copied that and put in the quote that she had on Facebook. So this is a great way to share somebody else's results and get people excited about what you've got going on. Okay? All right, here's another one for you.

This is one that I was trying to drive people to my blog. And so the subject line was, this really got to me. And then in here, this was based on a link that I saw. And there's a website that claims to predict the day that you will most likely die, and I shared a link to that in my blog post. It's really, really interesting. And then down here, I just talk about, you know, living your life to the fullest, and I didn't share the whole story. But I talked about my Aunt May and that I'd received an urgent message from her, and then I shared the rest of the story that I got from her on the blog post.

I got a lot of people who clicked over to this blog post because of this. And then I also include a picture, and obviously another link. I try to include up to three links that drive people into my blog. All right, one more, and then we're going to close this up.

This one was called, The Secret Sauce. That was the actual subject line, The Secret Sauce to Success. This was another blog post example, and I kept it a little shorter this time, but I like the first sentence on this. It got people into the actual email.

You know, let's talk about the elephant in the room, and then, you know, it just talks about success in general. And then down here, it gives them a link to my blog post. So I hope this has given you some ideas on how to format and put together your email campaigns so that you can have success in your business and in your follow-up series. So with that, I'll leave you, and I look forward to seeing you on future trainings and at future events.

Take care.