TAM 017: Jake Hower – 4 Key Automations For Any Business
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In episode 17, we continue our series of practical automation sequences you can go away and implement in your business straight away. We welcome back Jake Hower from episode 7 to share 4 key automations every business should be using.
Jake shares the why and how of four key marketing automation sequences.
The Automations Are
- Cart or Process Abandonment Sequence
- Onboarding Sequence
- Referral Sequence
- Reactivation Sequence
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Links Mentioned In The Show
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PODCAST TRANSLATION
Jake: These all come from me implementing these with [inaudible 00:00:03] and with the travel agency. All less than ten minutes work each, so you're going to invest less than an hour.
Announcer: Welcome to The Active Marketer podcast where we talk about how to design, automate, and scale your business to the next level using sales and marketing automation. You can find out all the tips, tactics, and techniques you need to get more customers and sell more stuff over at www.theactivemarketer.com. Now, here's your host, Barry Moore .
Barry : Hello, podcast listeners and welcome back to episode 17 of The Active Marketer podcast. I'm your host, Barry Moore and I would like to welcome you back. We've been getting a lot of feedback about how you guys like the sequences that you can put to work in your business straight away. We all know marketing automation is a powerful tool for creating leads and creating sales in your business, but a tool is no good if you don't know how to use it, as I always say. We've got some of our former guests back on the show to talk about some of the automations and some of the sequences that are working really well in their business, as an example of how you can use it and put it to work in your business, as well.
I've got Jake, one of our former guests and one of my favourite marketing automation guys back on the show to talk about four automated sequences you can put to work in the business. Four sequences that probably every business should probably have. Before we get into that, I just want to give you some news and some updates. I've also been getting a lot of questions about tagging, how you can use tags, and some practical advice on using tags. We've created a ninja guide to tagging on the website. You can do and download that at www.theactivemarketer.com/taggingguide.
On the upcoming episodes for the month of May, we're going to be talking all about sales funnels. If you have any sales funnel questions, by all means, send them to me at barry@theactivemarketer.com or just head over to the show notes and put a comment in the show notes. Anything you'd like to know or anything you'd like to hear about sales funnels. That's all coming up in May, leading up to the funnel hacking event in Las Vegas at the end of May. I'll give you more information about that in some upcoming shows, but for the time being, lets get into this week's episode with Jake.
We've got a very special guest back with us, Jake Hower from Fuzed App. He's agreed to come back and share with us some of his favourite sequences that you can go away and implement inside active campaigns yourself. Welcome back, Jake Hower. Thanks for coming in.
Jake: Thanks, Barry. I appreciate it. This is certainly probably the most exciting thing that I can share.
Barry : We mentioned in your previous interview that active campaigner, [inaudible 00:02:59], any of those products are all just a tool and if you don't know how to use that tool, it's not much good to you. What we really want to get across to the users is [inaudible 00:03:09] advice they can go away and build their own sequences or build their own automated series in their business and start, as you alluded to in your interview, getting the product to pay for itself straight away with increased sales and increased customer interaction.
Jake: Absolutely.
Barry : We also mentioned funnels in our last interview and there seems to be a lot of funnel products out there on the market now. You've got lead pages, click funnels, ten-minute funnels, and funnels, funnels, funnels. What those are great for doing is getting people onto your list and buying your product, but they don't really address what happens to those customers once they're already on your list. Once you've got them, how do you handle them and how do you continue to use the tool and use the automated series to go with them? Jake has generously said he would share four really easy to implement automated series that you can put in your business. What are those going to be, Jake?
Jake: These all come from me implementing these with Fuzed and with the travel Agency. All less than ten minutes work each, so you're going to invest less than an hour, maybe half an hour to actually write the emails. These are things I recommend every business starts with. Whenever I start a business or start a website, these are what I put in place straight away. I'll just quickly go over them. We have an abandonment sequence, which we'll explain a little bit in-depth in a second, an onboarding sequence, a referral sequence, and a reactivation sequence.
Barry : Definitely four tools everybody should be using. The abandonment sequence for those people who probably don't know, that's when someone has gone to your shopping cart, they've started the process of buying a product or buying a service from you, and then, for whatever reason, they bailed out without actually going that final step and giving you payment, yeah?
Jake: Exactly. This can actually has a wider use case than just a shopping cart. Now, this is where it really has become popular with shopping carts. It's usually for product. People put something in their cart, they go through to start the checkout process, they've entered their email address, and they don't put in their card details and they don't complete the purchase. What this abandonment sequence does si it puts them into a sequence where you might send them some reminder emails to actually encourage them to go back and continue or complete that purchase.
Barry : Amazon is the king of that.
Jake: Absolutely. The [inaudible 00:05:47] case, and I think it's more relevant for most businesses is not necessarily ... A lot of people don't have a shopping cart, but everybody will have some point in their business where they're collecting leads, where leads are coming into their business. That might be a simple 'contact us' form on your website. This sequence can actually be used more widely for anywhere that requires action from your prospect. Just close your eyes and imagine that you've got a set of questions that you need to ask and that you need to qualify leads coming off your website. That might be their name, their email address, their business name, and business size, et cetera, et cetera, and what market category they're in.
When people see that form on the website just sitting there and looking straight at you, they might think, "Ugh, that's so much work to go off and complete tat particular form. I'm not going to do it." Where this abandonment sequence works incredibly well is that you actually remove all of those fields, you collect first name and you collect email address, or you just collect the email address. That's step one. Then, what you do is, you redirect them straight from that step one to the secondary form with all of this information.
Barry : Are you tagging them with something in between those two steps? Are you tagging them with step one and step two?
Jake: Yeah. Step two is then to create a second form for that same list. You'd create [inaudible 00:07:21] step two. On that form, you're putting across all that extra information you need to capture. What you can do then is when the user [flows 00:07:31] through the site, they go through their email address. I'll enter their first name and I'll click submit. At that point, you add them to an automation series and this is where we're going to pop the abandonment sequence. If they go through and complete the rest of the fields on the secondary form, they are added to an automation series and a step in that is to remove them from series one.
Barry : So, you might add a step two tag and remove a step one tag?
Jake: Yeah. Actually, there's a function to be able to remove user from series. You'll literally do that. In your automation series of lead form step two, you would remove contact from automation series lead form step one.
Barry : Cool.
Jake: I guess why this two-step process works is that there are less fields. People feel like, "Okay, this is simple. I'll just quickly enter my email, my first name, and I'll go." Because you've then gotten them to make that [inaudible 00:08:40] commitment, they're more likely to fill out step two, the rest of the lead form.
Barry : And if they don't, you've still got their email address to follow them up?
Jake: Exactly. For this sequence to work really powerful, I would suggest three emails, but start with one. All you need to do is, twenty minutes later ... the automation series one, they'd be added to it. You can tag them, whatever you want to do, and then, you'd have a wait for twenty minutes and then, send email. That email will say something like, "Hey
Barry, I saw that you started the application process or you started filling out the form but you weren't able to finish. Can I help you with anything? Did something go wrong? Here's a link to complete that second step if you want to."
If you wanted to add in the other emails, you can add in an email a day later and then, an email three days after that. That completes your abandonment sequence. That's typically what is used for a shopping cart, but this can be used for pretty much anywhere where you're going to require your user or your prospect to do something else. Complete the form, book an appointment with you, et cetera, et cetera.
It's more like a process abandonment sequence?
Jake: It is. What will end up happening if you'll get more or less qualified people into your funnel with just their email address. As a result, you'll be able to increase the number of qualified leads who go on to complete that second form, but probably about twenty percent is what I'd suggest you're going to increase it by.
Barry : So, that's the abandonment one and I'm sure at Fuze, you probably have an onboarding sequence?
Jake: Correct. For me, with Fuze, you start with one email. They go through that lead form or whatever it is and they decide to become a customer. They pay, they become a customer. Most businesses have some information that they need to share with their users. That is common across all their users and usually it is relatively ad hoc about how that information is shared. What we do is look at an onboarding sequence. For me, it started with one email. As soon as someone became a member of Fuze, I sent out one email and it basically said something along the lines of, "Welcome aboard, great to have you here. You can find out more information about how to use the product at this link. If you have any questions at all, here are my direct contact details. Please, let me know."
Barry : Very cool.
Jake: That's simple. That is better than having nothing and that's what I suggest you start with. This is great because you can build onto this sequence over time.
Barry : Especially if you're offering a service like a Sass product. I think what happens with a lot of sass apps is people join up and they go, "Wow, this looks really cool," and then they never implement it. Then, you're just [churning 00:11:46] your customer base. A good onboarding sequence will one, make sure that they start using the product, and then, there's a high exit cost to get out of using the product. Number two kind of quashes that buyer's remorse that they might have. "Hey, congratulations. Here's your first step in getting started, here's your second step, here's your third step."
Jake: Exactly. Some other really good use cases for this is most products you buy have a bunch of different benefits or a bunch of different [inaudible 00:12:16]. Usually, as a purchaser, one of those features or a small subset of those features is what pushed you over the line. You might have signed up for one particular reason, which doesn't mean that you can't take advantage of the other features of the particular offer or product.
What I find an onboarding sequence great for is that you can break out all of those features and actually go into more detail. You can explain about the use cases and why you would actually take advantage of using x and x. If you're in a services business and you sell products, you can use that sequence to educate your customer about the different services you offer.
Barry : For sure. Fuzed app, there'd be so much you can do with it. An active campaign is the same. There's so many features in there. It might be nice to have an onboarding process that explains the major features so people go, "Oh, yeah. I didn't know you could do that. I just bought it for x, but I didn't know it could do y.
Jake: Exactly, and that's exactly what we've done with Fuze. Fuze, most people buy for one specific feature. We just have a seven-day sequence, which goes through all the different features. We go into it and show a bit of a case study on all the different features, et cetera, et cetera and I guess that serves for my selfish purposes of getting them more embedded in the product, which means they're less likely to go off, and as you say, churn.
Barry : Exactly right. Easy to do a simple onboarding process.
Jake: Start with one email, less than ten minutes.
Barry : Cool.
Jake: The third one is referral sequence. Most businesses, their biggest source of business is usually referrals. There aren't many businesses that don't, where that isn't the biggest source or one of the biggest sources and most businesses don't have a structured way in which they ask for referrals. Again, this can be very, very simple. It could be as simple as one email saying, "Hey, thanks for purchasing x. We really love you as a customer. We'd love to have more people just like you. If you've got any friends that you think would benefit from using our services, please refer them on. We'll make sure we look after them as we look after you," or, "We'll look after them as well as we look after you."
Barry : What are you using to trigger that, just a product purchase? Are you waiting a certain amount of days after product purchase or straight away?
Jake: Generally, what you're trying to play on here, I believe, is trying to find the point in the process where your customer has the adrenaline at the highest point or the purchase high, I guess you would call it, is at its peak. In most cases, that is actually just after they've made a purchase rather than when the product is delivered or when they utilise the service.
Barry : Are you sending it out, wait ten minutes, and then, bang or is it straight away?
Jake: Within twenty-four hours, but this, again, you have to think about your business and when this point in the conversation is. The other thing with referrals is that it's generally not a one-time thing. If you want to consistently share that message that you're looking for referrals, et cetera, et cetera. In a trave agency, for instance, we ask for referrals when I book a trip and we ask for a referral when I return from a trip. Then, we have another sequence which triggers three months after they return to actually start planing for the next trip. In theory, over the course of the year, we're probably touching them two or three times about getting referrals if they're booking one trip a year.
Barry : What have you seen as a result of that?
Jake: I don't put in place any way to really measure it apart from the point of fact that we ask the question, "Why did you choose to book with us?" It makes a difference, there is no doubt about it.
Barry : It's be very hard to track, I would imagine.
Jake: The other thing is that when I say a structured referral programme, that one email uses structured referral programming as far as I'm concerned. I also don't believe that if you're doing it right, you don't necessarily have to offer some sort of discount or some sort of benefit to the actual person in order to have a referral programme that works.
Certainly for a sass product, which uses a [inaudible 00:17:01] model or uses a really low cost base, offering a discount or month free works incredibly well, but many service businesses, usually why people are [inaudible 00:17:14] is because they want to look good to their friends and they want their friend to actually benefit from the same services that they use. All they really want is that they want to enure that their referral that they make isn't going to come back and burn them.
Barry : Fair enough. I know this great [inaudible 00:17:32] or, "I know this really cool tool."
Jake: Exactly. The benefit to them is that they'll look good in front of their friends, they feel good about it, as long as you look after that referral. That's the important part.
Barry : [inaudible 00:17:46] also psychologically also cements in their head that they've made the right decision [crosstalk 00:17:51].
Jake: Yes, exactly right. If they're referring, exactly. That's a good point. The last one is a reactivation sequence. We all have customers that we lose and in some instances, they're customers we don't ever want again. In other cases, there are people that we want again. Maybe it's not even a reactivation sequence. It could be as simple as an outgoing sequence. What I like to do with Fuzed is that when somebody cancels their account, we send two emails. The first one is a transactional account has been cancelled email so they know it's been cancelled. The second is sent twenty-four hours after they cancel and it comes from me.
It's just one line. "I saw that you cancelled. Is there anything I can help with? Can you give me some feedback." This one email is incredibly powerful. Obviously, I engage with anyone who replies. I'll, obviously, engage in conversation and start talking to them or email. Number one, it leaves a really good taste in their mouth as long as the product hasn't been playing out for them. It means that A, they're going to hopefully remain a referrer of our business for people who would be suitable or they'd be willing to come back when it was right or them again. That's purpose one.
Barry : From your viewpoint, I would imagine you probably get great feedback on how to better design your sales process or your product.
Jake: Exactly. This is something I didn't expect to be such a great benefit, but it is. I get feedback as to what problem was in a platform that caused the reasoning for their cancellation or I get feedback on their actual use case or their situation. A lot of times, what I've found for webinars, for instance, is that people would use the platform to run one webinar and they wouldn't run another webinar for three months. It'd be like, "I'm cancelling because I don't want to pay for three months worth of service." That question got notified to me a couple of times. That's what triggered the onboarding sequence for me.
Barry : Here's all these other things you can use it for.
Jake: Exactly. I started with that first email, "Welcome aboard, here's how you can use Fuzed," and then after a few months, I started to get a couple people who said, "I love it for [inaudible 00:20:33] webinar, but I'm not running a webinar for the next few months, so I'm just cancelling." I'm like, "You know what? I want to keep them as a client consistently, so I need to show them how else they can use it."
Barry : Very cool.
Jake: It's fantastic that you can go to that particular level. If you wanted to extend it out depending on your product, you could start offering some sort of 'come back and sign up again' offers a couple months down the track or you might, over the course of two months, offer an increasing discount if they come and sign up or blah, blah, blah.
Barry : Fair enough.
Jake: One email, though. One email made such a big difference. In all these four sequences, with each of them, one email made a huge difference.
Barry : Fantastic. Well, that's a great place for people to get started. If you need an active campaign and you're wondering what to do with a tool, there's four really super quick, easy automated series you can put in place straight away. We'll have little diagrams of these on the show notes. If you want to know how to implement them, all that will be there on the show notes over at theactivemarketer.com. Thanks, Jake. Thanks for coming in and helping people get started with their new automation tools. Appreciate it.
Jake: Thanks, Barry. I appreciate it.
Barry : We'll see you over at www.fuzedapp.com.
Some great information from Jake there and you can find out more about everything we talked about in this episode over at www.theactivemarketer.com/episode17. We'll have a little bit of a breakdown on all the sequences that we talked about.
Thank you very much. I do appreciate you stopping by and spending some time with us. We'll see you on next week's episode.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Active Marketer podcast. You can find the show notes and all the latest marketing automation news over at www.theactivemarketer.com.
