Membership Marketing: 7 Types Of Emails That Turn Your Members Into Eager-To-Buy Customers

Emailing your members is a vital part of keeping the communication alive and building rapport with them. However, it’s not a good idea to send promotional emails often; people don’t like to be hard-sold right in their face. 

So does that mean you should constantly give pure content without promoting anything? No! In fact, you could send them emails that they will appreciate and be thankful for… yet you can still make boatloads of money in the process.

Here are some ideas that could skyrocket your profits:

1) Give them informative reports or e-books with your website or affiliate links within.

You give them great content, and earn money when someone buys from any of the links in the report.

Better yet, your report could go viral, especially if the reader has found some value from it that could benefit their friends. The key is to actually ask them to pass it on to others who they think would be interested in the information. Tell them they have permission to share, or even resell, the report.

2) Send them great videos to watch.

Videos are extremely powerful tools to convert viewers into buyers. They could entertain, educate, and build rapport. They satisfy both the visual and auditory senses, so they could produce better results compared to e-books or audios.

What types of videos could you make?

- You could take a video of you speaking casually in front of the camera, like you’re talking to an old friend. 

- If you’ve delivered a seminar, you could let your members watch it entirely or in parts.

- You could convert your powerpoint presentations into video format. For the voice-over, just read along like you’re giving a speech or lecture.

- You could also use Camtasia to record whatever you’re doing in your computer.

- If you’re a bit camera-shy, you could always outsource the video creation task; although it would be more powerful if people could actually see your personality.

So how do you make money with videos?

- You could give your members excerpts or parts from the entire video, then send them to an order page if they want to watch the full version.

- Put your videos on a webpage and insert ads near those videos where the viewers can see them. (By the way, if you don’t want to make your own videos, you could always leverage from other people’s videos. Find videos from Youtube, Videojug, Howcast, Metacafe, etc. related to your niche. Then get the embed link to post the videos on your site.)

- Aside from telling your members to watch your videos, you could also submit them to video-sharing sites like Youtube, Revver, Metacafe, Yahoo videos and Google videos for the public to see. Use a video submission program like Tubemogul to submit the videos faster, but read the policies in the video-sharing sites to make sure that’s allowed.

3) Update your members on your newest articles or blog posts.

You could email your members a teaser or first few sentences of an article, then ask them to login to read the whole article. You can put up banners or special offer links that they can see once they’re logged in to your site.

This is similar to blog posts. You could put non-distracting ads or promos on your blog. The advantage with blogs is that they get excellent search engine rankings, they are great places to establish a relationship with your audience, and they could spark hot conversations (since people can comment on your posts).

4) Make money from your P.S.

If you’re sending a purely content email, you could add a P.S. at the end where you subtly promote a product related to the topic of discussion. If you’ve given them some helpful information in the email, they wouldn’t mind a P.S. that complements the content you’ve given them.  

5) Offer time-sensitive discounts or bonuses to either your own products or affiliate items.

Sure, you’re promoting something; but just imagine if someone is eager to buy your product but can’t afford the full price. Then you suddenly give them the opportunity to get it at a much lower price; don’t you think they’ll thank you for it? You bet!

6) Conduct webinars or tele-seminars.

You can do it solo, or ask an expert to do it with you. Then email the details, date and time to your members. You’re not pitching in the email, and you’re giving something beneficial in the webinar or tele-seminar before ever selling anything. Give value first; and at the end of the webinar or tele-seminar, invite them to take a look at your product offer.

7) Add them to your social network. 

Ask them to follow you on Twitter, add you as a friend in Facebook or Myspace, or join your forum. You’re not marketing to them now, but you’re enhancing your social networks and building relationships, which will help build a solid business and earn more money for you in the long run.

These 7 methods are far better than the traditional promo emails because they give value, which makes people actually want to buy from you. Perhaps you could think of other ways to make your members happy or thrilled with your emails. All it takes is a little creativity and customer-oriented approach, and you can become a trusted friend they’d be willing to part their money with.