The Perfect Email Opt-In Gift Most Entrepreneurs Ignore

The world of email marketing is tough. This giveaway offer will make it better

Most creators get email wrong.

The email engagement process starts before we send our first letter. However, most folks (not you, of course) build a one-shot, free giveaway (Easy Invite) to entice prospects to join their list. We’ve all been on the receiving end of one of these offers. Probably more than once.

You know how this story ends.

The prospect joins your list to get the Easy Invite (EI). We send them a PDF. Cool. That’s why we have the EI. Nobody wants to join our list for the sake of being on our list. The problem lies with the single-moment giveaway.

We’ve given the prospect no reason to keep opening our emails.

Yes, you may have engaging email content (this is a must-have), but none of that matters if the subscriber has no rapport with you — no established reason to open more of your emails beyond the free gift.

These folks languish on our lists until they muster the energy to hit the unsubscribe button. They got what they wanted and left. Meanwhile, we feel like email is dead — that email doesn’t work anymore. Everyone must be over on social media selling their products and making a killing, while I’m here wondering why my prospects unsubscribe right away and never open my letters.

Email must be dead, right?

Nope. Not even close. But in order to keep her from going the way of the ghost, we’ve got to do email right, before we send our first welcome message. It all starts with sending the right kind of EI.

What makes a great Easy Invite?

The answer is overwhelmingly clear, takes time to build, but will help decrease your un-subs and increase your open rates. Ready? What makes a great EI is a multi-part course.

I do the same thing with my writing business. I help indie authors get their first 1,000 subscribers with a free, 7-day email masterclass. This masterclass is deliberate. I could’ve written a 10,000 e-book and tossed the thing on the first welcome email (like most entrepreneurs), but I’ve found something magic that happened.

When you send a multi-part course as an EI, your subscribers open your emails multiple days in a row. They WANT your emails, because they want to finish your free course.

I have people that miss one of the emails in my sequence and they beg me to re-send it. I do (of course). Automated sequences are never foolproof. But the point is, who asks for a re-send of an automated email? No one is emailing Best Buy and begging them for more coupons. No one’s emailing Coke and asking for that one ad they missed last week.

But my readers enjoy my EI so much they feel ripped-off if they miss a lesson.

Not only does it make me feel great that I can help so many indie authors grow their own lists, but the 7-day course has residual effects too. Instead of a one-off PDF document, I’ve got a seven-day-plus conversation happening with every subscriber.

They get used to opening my emails.

These awesome people email me, ask me questions, and I email them back (shocker!)

Once the first 7–10 days are over, we’ve got something going, me and this new writer. They learn to trust my content, that I won’t steer them the wrong direction, and how much I value their time and attention. I’ve earned their open rate.

Every email I send is valuable to my readers. If they continue on my list, they’ll get something valuable and actionable in their in-box, to help grow their own author business.

But I’d never get the privilege of high open rates (~58%) if I didn’t help convince them at the onset. This is the power of the multi-day EI. You eliminate the freebie-seekers (because you’ve got to open at least seven emails to get all the value) and you grow a trusting relationship with the people whom you want to do business.

This isn’t some overnight, magic pill.

Email takes time. My Easy Invite took me two months to write all the content. But it works. I only had to create it once. Now it’s delivered automatically, tens of thousands of times.

Try a multi-email Easy Invite

Not only is the value higher (I can offer a full, free masterclass now, instead of a floppy little PDF checklist), but the engagement is through the roof. My clients respond to me as if I’ve written the email directly to them, individually. Because I have. This is the language I use.

Not only will your follow-up emails get opened more, but you’ll show your clients they can trust you.

We’ve all got 10,000 free PDFs gathering digital dust on our hard-drives. Everyone gives away this stuff. A multi-part course takes longer to make (when done well), but there’s no graphic design work involved. I don’t have a single image in my masterclass.

If I had to create a free PDF I’d have to spend a bunch of time building a nice layout, or paying someone to do it for me. The multi-part course is little-more than a series of emails. We can all write an email.

But the content must be there.

Don’t give anything away that can’t stand alone. This is not a pitch-fest. There’s plenty of time for selling later. Your email course must deliver the transformation you promise, whether or not your client ever buys a thing from you.

We give first. We show we can help the person before we do a lot of asking.

Email courses make great EIs. I wish more entrepreneurs would create them, because I really enjoy getting them. So will your prospects. It’s time to re-think email. And the process begins with your free offer.

We’re waiting for you.

(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass: Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers)

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.