How to Increase Longterm Leads & Conversion Rates – Part 2
“Zig Ziglar wrote a new presentation for almost every event he spoke at. I used the same presentation over and over again for years, refining and perfecting every detail, updating when needed. I believe that that is the reason I outsold Zig and every other speaker at Success Events during the years I spoke on stage. I also believe that’s the reason why I was able to transform so many businesses.”
~ Dan Kennedy
The Power of ‘Evergreen’ Campaigns
Q. What is the ‘shelf life’ of the average marketing email?
A. From zero (deleted immediately) to the time it takes to read it through.
Q. How does that awareness affect your creation process?
A. It erodes your care and interest and often contributes to a ‘just get it sent’ mentality especially if you are already familiar with the product or service.
Now… Imagine that you are writing an email for a campaign that will be used and reused… Or a sales letter that you hope will become the ‘Control’ for your product or service… Or a book that you know will be read and re-read…
You care.
You revise.
You work it over.
You may add complexity in the form of additional steps and different media.
What’s the difference?
The anticipated longevity and persuasive power.
When you create evergreen campaigns and collateral you are planning to use them repeatedly so it makes sense to refine them, and put in more effort to plan, analyse, and review at every stage of the process. Yes, you get them out there quickly… But then you pay attention to any gaps and observe where people drop out and lose interest so that you can go back and make changes to the campaign and it’s collateral.
What Does an Evergreen Campaign Look Like?
‘Evergreen’ doesn’t necessarily mean complex… although it may include complexity.
An evergreen campaign is simply a campaign that is used repeatedly. It might be an ongoing campaign, it might happen at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc). It is evergreen because it needs very little modification each time you choose to run it.
Some evergreen campaigns are quite simple and may just involve an advertisement or call to action, delivery of a lead magnet, and confirmation of the email address.
I am a fan of the ‘modular’ approach to evergreen campaigns in particular because it creates additional versatility.
What is a modular campaign?
It’s a campaign in which the various stages are separate but linked together. Depending on your campaign software this approach makes more or less sense, but in a sophisticated system like Infusionsoft or Salesforce it adds to the power and versatility of your creations.
If you build your whole system in a single campaign and one thing changes in any stage, then you could be going through a campaign with 50+ emails and 80+ steps. However, by creating modules, you can link one lead generation stage to multiple different campaigns and easily refine the targeting and nurture of each quite separately. This means that if you decide to reach out to a new audience segment, or drop a segment because of your changing priorities you can build and refine a new campaign without interrupting your existing one. It’s especially powerful because different audience segments prefer different media and are motivated by a variety of calls to action.
Examples of Evergreen Collateral & Campaigns
Here are some examples of contexts for your evergreen campaigns:
- Lead Generation. Every business needs a steady stream of leads coming in and you should definitely be refining this process to qualify and attract ideal clients.
- List Building. An engaged and growing mailing list is the heart of a healthy business and something that you should be working on every week.
- Monthly Campaigns. Themed monthly campaigns that can be rolled out virtually unchanged year after year are a valuable investment and help your business stay top-of-mind even when you are focused on other things.
- Seasonal Campaigns. These will vary depending on your location and culture, but they represent opportunities to reach out to your community and beyond with offers for Easter, Christmas, End of Financial Year, New Year, School Year, Australia Day, etc.
- Birthday/Anniversary Campaigns. This is a great way to remind your community of their engagement and celebrate with them.
- Cyclical Campaigns. Things like Leap Year, State and Federal Elections, Milestone Anniversaries, New Decades etc. are great excuses for evergreen campaigns.
I’m sure you’ve got the idea… Any event that occurs more than once is worth investing time and effort into setting up and refining.
One of my ghostwriting clients has a “New Book Launch” campaign that we have now run thirteen times with only slight adjustments. Using the campaign merge fields in Infusionsoft we are able to update almost everything without re-reading the emails at launch. In fact, most of the adjustments are made after the campaign has run to ensure that it is even more successful the next time and each time we’ve used it our conversion and retention rates have increased significantly.
How ‘Evergreen’ Campaigns Work?
I’m a big believer in automation and for many businesses investing in systems that help you communicate more effectively is a wise move. Adding automation to personal interaction increases consistency and enables you to deliver more value to your customers and community. However, you don’t need an expensive CRM to create effective evergreen campaigns, you can do most of it with some planning and organisation plus your existing email, phone, and social media accounts and Australia Post.
The Basis of Evergreen…
Dynamic Direct Response Copywriting provides an insight into how to research and write powerful advertising copy that irresistibly attracts your ideal prospect and pre-disposes them to work with you.
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