Last week, I talked about why we should all take email marketing seriously. Today, I am going to share what I have found to be just about the most effective way to use a email list I have built from capturing any and all addresses that I can from a website. The more time I spend in marketing, the more I realize that marketing is like legos: you have a huge number of different pieces and principles to work with, the fun part is combining those elements into something that works for you.

Such is the case here. Hopefully this sparks some ideas about new ways to use email marketing to reach your own goals. Just know that this style of using an email list earns me tens of thousands of dollars a year with lists that have less than 1000 new subscribers during that same time. Marketing is about getting people excited enough to buy a product. The theory behind this concept is to use the ability to contact people over and over again by email to slowly get people so excited about buying something that they can’t wait to hand over their credit card. Let’s get started.

First, I’m going to explain some of the elements that you’ll need to use this method, tomorrow I’ll talk about how to combine them into a system. Think of this like a recipe for your grandmother’s brownies that just happen to bake up as revenues instead of a tasty dessert.

AN NEW, EXCITING PRODUCT
There are many ways to make your product exciting, among them: innovate by making a new pass or promo that you’ve never offered before, add lots of benefits that double a passes value, or adjust the price to a price poit you’ve never gone before (or not for a while at least).

SCARCITY
One way or another, you need to build some scarcity into this equation. Whether it’s offering a limited number of the pass you plan to sell or offering a limited number of passes that include all the benefits, scarcity drives urgency which drives sales.

A SPECIFIC DATE & TIME
Choosing a specific day and time the sale will start builds anticipation and buzz and lets you build an event around the sale and have a point to build the excitement toward.

ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS & CONCERNS
You’ve got to know what potential customers are going to use to talk themselves out of buying the pass or whatever it is you want to sell. That way, as you slowly build excitement, you can read their minds and eliminate concerns at the same time. People take notice when you say exactly what they were thinking before they ever ask.

BENEFITS & MORE BENEFITS
The more little add-on benefits you can have the better. What we’ll do is make the offer inticing to begin with, then keep adding on benefits until they can’t say no. Ideas here for a season pass might be: passes and discounts to partner resorts, discounts at resort restaurants, special parking, fast lift line access, etc.

Once you have those five elements, it’s time to organize them into a timeline of emails that slowly build up to your launch date and time in a way that by the time that day comes, they can’t wait to order. We’ll cover that tomorrow…

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.