Using Relationship-Building Triggers In Your Email Marketing

What needs to be inside of an email campaign?  Again, I would recommend that any email marketer have a copy of this book at their disposal at all times.  The book is, The Seven Triggers to Yes by Russell Granger.  His book transformed the way email campaigns were viewed.  Remember, it doesn’t really mention emails or emails campaigns, but Granger has created a brilliant framework.

He calls it “Trust Triggers,” and when we have these 7 triggers, when we move through these 7 triggers, we create a relationship.  It doesn’t matter if you’re offline or online.  The more of these triggers that we use, the tighter that bond is going to be.

One of the things that I personally argue is that when we build a relationship using the exact same process that we use offline, we are able to closely simulate the trust level that occurs offline.  Going back to what most people do online, they attempt to create an email campaign that’s based on best-selling email practices.  “What can we do to create an email campaign that gets people to buy?”  The focus is just “buying, buying, buying.”  There are a few savvy individuals who instead of focusing on “buying, buying, buying,” focus on content.  Their focus is on content.

Make This Your #1 Focus

Now I believe that if we take the trust building mechanism to the next level, maybe even 5 levels higher, we get away from just trying to apply persuasive techniques.  We get away from just trying to add content that builds trust. Instead we actually integrate all of the trust triggers that we use in the offline to build a relationship.  We combine these with our great content.  When we do that we will be able to build tight relationship in email campaigns.

I believe that that’s why my campaigns convert as well as they do.  Because my single focus is building trust.  People buy from me because of trust, not some fancy sales letters with fancy sales words.  They buy based on trust.

Let’s review the 7 Triggers:

The friendship trigger: that’s just basic human liking: “I like you, you like me, we connect well.”

The authority trigger: We do this in the first 7-14 days of our campaign.  This is a place where people view us as being an expert in whatever it is that we are teaching.  Why do we want people to see us as an expert?  Because if people see us as an expert, they’ll trust what we say in relationship to our niche.  They know we have deep knowledge that’s not going to change (it will just get deeper).

We’re not schizophrenic or manic, we are the same every day.  If you contrast that looking at the friendships you have, most of those friendships are with people that are the same every day.  We probably cannot relate with people that are on the top of the world one day and depressed and unsure of themselves the next day.  That’s not normal, and it’s very hard to have relationships with those types of individuals, unless of course that’s our own personality.  Then we have to have a good understanding that people may not be on our wavelength every day.  This concept goes a lot deeper and Russell Granger does a great job dealing with that in the book.

Reciprocity trigger: We give something to someone and in some way, whether it’s subconscious or not, they feel like they have to give back.  A lot of times giving back does not have to mean buying, if giving back means that they’ll read the next couple of emails, then that’s really strong.  This is a good element in a sales campaign, to show how we are different than others.

Contrast trigger: So often in sales, I hear people say, “Oh, I’m better.”  There’s this game out there, “I’m better than others.”  “I’m faster, quicker, smarter.”  The problem with positioning ourselves as better is that there’s always going to be someone better.  If you think about all the services out there, there’s always something better. There’s a better builder, there’s a better plumber, there’s a better writer.  It’s very difficult to position yourself as “The Best.”

However if you position yourself as being different than the competition, people will appreciate what that difference is.  You can position yourself as being different by being the person that cares more about XYZ.  And by being different, you can separate yourself from the competition who try to win by being “the best.”

Let’s say that insurance sales is your niche, and maybe your competition is people that claim that they’re the very best at closing insurance sales.  You can position yourself against that and say, “Look, I’m different because I don’t try to focus on closing everyone around.  Instead, I choose to build on relationships because I believe that people who buy insurance do it based on building the relationships, not on you being the best closer.”

Think about it, I’ve already showed you some of my own feelings about selling. I believe that people buy based on relationship not on selling.  So I can use that to position myself as being different.

Let’s say that you’re in the weight loss niche, just throwing another niche out there just as an example.  What do people in the weight loss industry try to sell?  Usually it’s the fastest weight loss, or the easiest weight loss possible.  “Lose all of the weight you want while eating all that you want.”  Think about it, that’s where most people in the weight loss niche try to position themselves.  What if you were in the weight loss niche and you said that you want to position yourself differently?  We could position ourselves and say, “Instead of trying to lose the most weight possible and then gaining it all back in 6 months, instead we’re going to focus on being different and losing weight safely.”  Instead of eating all red meat, which can have severe health problems… anything we do excessively can be harmful to us…  Instead, we are going to be different, we’re going to be balanced and genuine.

The question is, “How can you contrast yourself against everyone else so that you’re different?”  A lot of times if we are different, people see that we are sacrificing ourselves to be Number One.  If we contrast ourselves to be different, people can see that we are real.  Because we’re not just trying to “keep up with the Jone’s” for example.

The “reason why” trigger:  This is the “reason why” and we can use this in a lot of different ways. We can say, “This is the reason why you should listen to me.”  This goes back to the Authority trigger. “The reason why you should trust me” goes with everything we’ve been talking about.  “The reason why my training really is the best for you”  “The reason why if you work with me, you’ll probably get better results in working with me than with someone else.”  We may have a number of reasons why, “I can talk with you personally,” “I really care,” “I do this myself, I don’t pay anyone else to do the work for me.””  Whatever your area of differentiation is, you can use that reason why.

The Hope Trigger:  Most people, no matter what they’re buying, no matter what you’re building the trust in, there’s always hope.  Think about it, in every relationship there’s always hope.  When we meet a new person, “I hope that I can make a good friend out of this.”  “It’s going to be a better friend than I’ve had before.”  We meet a new person romantically, what is our hope?  We hope that it’s the best relationship we’ve ever had.  If we enter a new money making training program, what are we hoping?  We hope that we can become rich beyond our imagination.  We enter a new program for giving help, what is our hope?  Our hope is that we are giving more help than we have our entire life.  When we build hope, and we cannot build hope just all by itself.

When we build hope and we look at all of these other triggers, we greatly increase the level of trust that occurs.  I don’t want to harp on the book too much, but from a psychological perspective, Russell Granger’s book, The Seven Triggers to Yes has been the biggest single thing that has helped me with my email writing – more than anything else that I’ve done or bought.