Email Sales Funnels: How to Automate Your Sales

Do you have an automated way to market to your email list?

Are you thinking of creating a sales funnel?

To explore how to automate your email marketing, I interview Yaro Starak.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Yaro Starak, a blogging expert who specializes in helping people turn their blogs into profitable businesses. He's the author of the ebook Blog Profits Blueprint. Yaro also is an expert in building automated email sales funnels.

Yaro shares what you need to know to build successful email sales funnels that sell for you.

You'll discover how to create a successful automated email sequence.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Email Sales Funnels
Yaro's Backstory

Yaro discovered blogging in 2004 after someone suggested he start a blog for his editing company. While many bloggers were spending a lot of time writing content, Yaro knew of people who generated $30,000 using email.

To avoid becoming one of those bloggers who was trapped writing 20 posts a day and to automate the sales process for his course, Yaro built what he now calls a blog sales funnel.

He set up a series of blog posts to go to his email newsletter once a week for 52 weeks. Then at intervals throughout the email delivery process, he would include a sales message for his course. Yaro notes that it took him six months to write a year's worth of messages, so he recommends starting smaller.

He's spent the last few years building and perfecting his process.

Listen to the show to discover when and why Yaro first went online.

How an Email Sales Funnel Works

Email sales funnels deliver sequenced pieces of content to anyone who opts in, Yaro explains. When automated, those emails (autoresponders) let marketers deliver trust, educate, and sell their product on autopilot.

Businesses have customers at different levels of interest, he points out. Some people are ready to buy a $30 ebook but aren't ready to invest $1,000 in a course. Some want to purchase everything you offer, while others just want to explore your free information.

After you set up an email sales funnel, it automatically meets the needs of all of those different people. As each person goes through the email sequence and various product offers, they self-select to enter the next sales level.

Yaro now markets a range of ebooks, his membership site, and a flagship course. Because he set up a range of email sequences to market each one, he's free to spend his time blogging and doing podcasts. When someone new discovers him via a blog post or a podcast, his sales funnel automatically goes to work.

Listen to the show to hear Yaro discuss the old-school way of doing email newsletters.

Examples of Successful Email Funnels

Yaro shares that he uses an event-based direct selling launch sequence, similar to that of the Jeff Walker school of marketing, to sell his flagship course. The launch includes a series of free videos and a free copy of his Blog Profits Blueprint report. At the end of the launch, he delivers an offer to join his course.

To automate that process, he's set up an email sequence that's triggered when someone visits his site and opts to receive a copy of the Blog Profits Blueprint report. Once people opt in, they receive a series of video trainings over three weeks via an automated email sequence. On the fourth week, he invites people to enter his course.

Comparing the two processes, Yaro says it's not necessarily changing the way you sell; it's applying automation to create a more hands-off business process.