R3 for Email - S1 Step 3: The Inevitable Customer
R3 for Email - S1 Step 3: The Inevitable Customer
R3 for Email I guardianmarketing.substack.com I ExperienceR3.com
Now we're at the fun part.
The part where we get to build our Email System - our whole strategy. The entire environment that is email for our business/project/venture/brand/etc.
While everything about our Email Strategy starts in Stage 4, everything about the execution of it starts here in Stage 1.
If you’re just getting caught up, I recommend starting at Stage 41:
Stage 4 brought us the principled and philosophical understanding of our ideal customer - our raving fan. The research should also have helped us identify the Market Awareness and Sophistication which will inform our copy starting in Stage 1.
Working through Stage 3 and 2 allowed us to backwards engineer the path from Stage 4 all the way to Stage 1. We now know exactly what's going to happen for someone the moment they buy something from us the very first time, all the way to raving fan.
In Stage 1, we're going to backwards engineer all the way from customer to the person who is just seeing our business/brand/personality for the very first time.
Steps of Stage 1 for Email: Back to Front
Step 3 - Leading People to the Inevitable (that they become customers)
Step 2 - The Great Filter
Step 1 - The Opt-In
Contrary to what you might expect, this is not going to be about guiding people from step to step and trying to convince them to become buyers.
The whole construction which begins in Stage 1 is about framing.
Framing of a particular experience, understanding, perspective, and expectation of your prospects as they enter your world, get familiar with it, get enamored with it, make it part of their everyday life, and beyond.
The email strategy that begins here will overlap into components that run through Stage 2 and 3.
You might think Stage 1 is just about getting a prospect. But, Stage 1 For Email is more than this. Stage 1 for email encompasses nearly the entire email strategy itself. We have to consider that only 15% of your buyers are going to become buyers in the first 90 days on average, the other 85% will take 2 years on average.
And recall that our R3 Stages are about customers stages. You can have someone in your world in Stage 1 for multiple years before they go to Stage 2 and beyond.
That means Stage 1 has to be:
The first touch and getting people into your world
Properly framing the experience, expectations, and connection that will happen
Transitioning from the introductory components to the long term components and settling your prospect into their new home for the long term
All the while we're going to give the "Good Fit Now" people (the 15%) the opportunity to buy immediately. We're going to help them understand what you are selling is the obvious next best step for them to take in whatever journey they are on.
Our framing and transition work is going to be designed to bring "Good Fit Later" people into our world, while naturally "NOT a Good Fit" people to self select themselves out of the picture.
Before we get into that, I need to touch on leverage.
Email ends up being one of the best tools for demonstrating - for little to no risk to your prospect - exactly how you will respect their leverage.
And because of this dynamic it must be addressed before we build anything.
From R3 Stage 1:
At this stage, in relation to you and your business, someone who is looking or interested in your services is a potential customer. It’s marketing and advertising.
Remember, the customer is thinking:
“What is going to happen to me or how am I going to be treated once I lose my leverage?”
Just like Stage 2, 3, and 4 ... our ability to create the impact we desire with our prospects and our customers, through email, necessitates that they be engaged and attentive to our email.
And if we don't respect the leverage2, we're going to lose that.
While in R3, the concept of leverage is talked about primarily in the context of someone becoming a customer ... what happens after they give up their credit card? ... this also applies similarly to the email opt-in itself.
What happens after they give up their email?
Now, it may be true that many people are used to the spammy nature of email and just assume that their email is going to be sold when they opt in to a business - BUT just because for some it may be a foregone conclusion doesn't mean they still don't think …
"do I even want to give my email to these people?"
And
"after I give up my email am I really going to get what is promised?"
And
"am i just giving up my email here for garbage?"
There are ways for the reader to overtly protect their leverage. Using a non-primary email (a "junk" email address) or using the newer technologies like Apple's secret email routing that can be just deleted if they don't like what they see (this privacy is just a growing trend so it will only become more prevalent).
You've got to respect the leverage not just because it benefits both of you for your reader to feel like they still retain power over their email (their leverage), but also because they can recapture their leverage at any point anyway whether that be by unsubscribing, ignoring your emails altogether, or even sending them to spam (which is bad news for your technical reputation).
Personally, I think it's foolish to ignore this dynamic of leverage, and the only smart move is to not only respect it, but actively make sure your reader understands they still retain that control (when they feel in control, they will be more likely to stick around and participate).
But if you're running a list of hundreds of thousands or millions of contacts and your goal is to churn and burn ... that's a choice which seems to serve an end for some businesses.
It's not my way.
I want the relationships.
And critically from the business's perspective, I want the inevitability of the outcome I desire.
This is why we began our work in Stage 4.
Because everything we design in Stage 1 is going to be based on the ideal raving fan customer and where they were when they first found your business and started in Stage 1 themselves.
We know that path.
Because we backwards engineered that path from Stage 4 to 3, 2, and now 1. We know exactly what to talk about and how to transition people from the very first point all the way to super fan.
It won't happen with every person.
That's not realistic.
But it will happen - and we know this because it has happened. We're leveraging The Science of Hindsight and the power of The Rear View Mirror3 to design the perfect front end email marketing system.
All we have to do is build that system where the inevitable happens enough that your business grows consistently and reliably because of it (most of this ends up being optimization).
In Stage 1, that starts by making sure we're speaking to the right people.
We need to be able to make sure that whoever is coming onto the email list, they are "a good fit" - and that "good fit" is defined starting in Stage 4. We know what "good fit" means - the characteristics, the interests, the problems, the psychology, the life progression. We know all this.
And while you can take that information and do a really good job speaking to those "good fit" traits, what we can't control as easily is all the people who step up into our email world in the first place.
Leading People to the Inevitable
This is how you create a situation where you can easily lead people to the inevitable conclusion that they buy from you.
All you need is an audience of "Good Fit" people. Those who it's either an obvious choice for them to buy now, or will become an obvious choice when the right things (outside of your control) align in the future.
You don't actually need to create any inevitability yourself. You don't need to create demand. You don't need to create interest.
It's already there.
You just need a way for the right people who fit those categories to naturally emerge from the construction of your email marketing strategy.
One obvious away to address this is by targeting "the right people" with your ads and copy up front.
Ad Targeting and Copy outside of your email system can do a huge amount of heavy lifting. But it can take time to figure this out, and even in the situation that you figure this out, you're still bringing people into a completely different environment with email.
(Side note, there's one advertising strategy I've seen which does this well and perfectly meshes with the R3 methodology - that is Laurel Portié's ad strategy4)
A Good Fit email subscriber is not just someone who is likely to buy, it is someone who is going to be engaged and interested to read your emails for a very long time.
Remember from Stage 4 and 3, the only way someone can be engaged as a Stage 3 and 4 customer and fan, by email, is if they are still engaged and reading your emails after all that time. Comparatively very few people are going to be Stage 3 and 4 after just a few weeks on your email list.
It can take years.
(To become Stage 3 or 4 after a few weeks, someone has to buy immediately and then buy again, AND go down some fan based rabbit holes which typically take a long time to engage with)
Yet what we do want is to make sure that after just a week or two, when we transition people into our ongoing long term email marketing strategy (which is likely to be a mix of broadcast emails and occasional series around events, launches, deep dives, sales, etc), is that the people at that point are Good Fit Now and Later and critically NOT the people who ARE NOT A GOOD FIT.
Not only do we need to figure this puzzle out,
But it needs to happen passively so that our email marketing system can scale well with our ad spend and natural audience growth.
In some markets, this is much easier to do.
When you have a market that is higher sophistication and higher awareness, who are especially used to receiving a lot of communication by email, it can be effective to just straight talk directly to them about what is going to happen, and even tell them "here's how you aren't a good fit and why you should unsubscribe."
As an extreme example, an email list designed to speak to email marketers, can be highly direct and can even benefit from pointing out the structure of what is happening. It pays to break the 4th wall in some of these high awareness audiences, because they are there FOR that understanding and clarity.
But if you're in a market with an audience that is really averse to email spam and does NOT want to be receiving emails all the time, how can you build your strategy in a way to create an audience of Good Fit people who really want you to email them more?
We need a fundamental approach with R3 for Email which works across all markets and all levels of awareness and sophistication.
This is why I designed The Great Filter as the centerpiece of my email marketing systems.
(In the R3 for Email book I'll bring in more detail and examples of ways you can sell to a Good Fit Now while also feeding the attention and interest of Good Fit Later people -- The Doorway to Inevitability)
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO Man Bites Dog
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