Congratulations! You’re getting more email subscribers every week.
Now… What do you do with them?
In Russel Brunson’s New York Times best-seller Traffic Secrets, he explains that the average entrepreneur should expect to make about one dollar/month per email in their list (imagine if you have 10,000 subscribers). Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs are sitting on hundreds and thousands of email subscribers with no idea what to do with them or how to make money from their list. Every month, they’re missing out on massive passive income.
But if you learn how to build a real relationship with your email list and start implementing passive income streams, you can start making serious money in just a couple months from now. You just need to learn the three phases of successfully utilizing your email list: The nurture sequence, the value ladder, and the high-ticket sell.
Phase One: The Nurture Sequence
A nurture sequence is simply the first few automated emails you send to new subscribers when they first subscribe. It’s one of the most important parts of your entire relationship with them – the first impression. If you do this right, massive passive income will follow.
This is a critical time period for your relationship with your new subscribers. They want to know who you are, what you stand for, and if they have anything in common with you. Research suggests the first week is one of the most critical time periods to make sales from your email list – these are people that have just said yes to learning about you and are open to learning more.
→ Click Here to Launch Your Online Business with Shopify
I subscribe to lots of email lists. It’s usually not for personal reasons – I’m really just studying and gathering intel on what other entrepreneurs in my space are doing.
After subscribing to countless email lists, I can say with full conviction that most entrepreneurs don’t know how to build a real connection with their audience.
Most of the time, the email lists I subscribe to are owned by entrepreneurs who opt to send dry newsletters, humble-brag business updates, and the occasional sales letter, none of which really help me in any meaningful way. I don’t buy their products or even want to hear more about them.
But sometimes, I come across a winner. I come across someone with an excellent nurture sequence, and I immediately feel a genuine connection with them. I’m interested in buying into their message and products. These are the kind of entrepreneurs that make massive passive income each month.
Most entrepreneurs aren’t focused on building a true connection with their audience; they’re either jumping right into sales or just throw you into their regular weekly emails. You could be one of the select few entrepreneurs who do it right and get massive money in return.
A great nurture sequence has four key ingredients: a compelling story, an authentic main character, a personal epiphany, and an urgent call-to-action. As the old marketing phrase goes, “Facts tell. Stories sell.” No matter what industry you’re in, you need to learn how to craft great stories to truly connect with your readers.
I’ve gained nearly 100,000 email subscribers in the past few years, and they’ve all seen the same nurture sequence: It’s a deeply personal story about my struggles with addiction, my eventual recovery, what I learned, and finally, the self-improvement course I’m selling that ties it all together. I’ve gotten above-average sales conversions for years based on the nurture sequence from this simple list because I’ve been able to make a real connection with new subscribers.
The point is to build a real connection with your audience as soon as possible through the tried-and-true strategy of the hero’s journey. Most people are afraid to openly reveal their flaws, rejections, and mistakes. But it is these very things that get people to connect with you the most.
All heroes have flaws, but that’s why we love them. Craft a great nurture sequence that shows who you really are – and what you’ve learned along the way. This primes your new subscribers to want more from you.
Phase Two: The Value Ladder
If you want to make money, you have to sell something.
But if you want to make massive money, then you need to use the value ladder.
A value ladder describes the different products/services you sell in your business. The higher a customer goes up your ladder, the higher the cost and value of your products/services.
A lot of entrepreneurs and creators try to sell all kinds of random products and services with no apparent connection at all. That was me. For years, I tried selling all kinds of products about writing, personal growth, entrepreneurship, podcasting, etc. It never really worked because my readers couldn’t see any kind of clarity or cohesion with my products. My products didn’t flow into each other, didn’t make logical sense.
But once I aligned my products with each other, everything started to click. I started making way more passive income, and everything became easy to automate. If you want consistent sales and massive passive income from your email list, your products and services must be aligned and ascend in price and value.
The first step of the ladder is your smallest, cheapest product. I’ve seen journals, video trainings, consulting calls, blog templates, even whole books as the first step of a value ladder. For my business, I offer a short online course on behavioral change for $37. I like information products best (online courses, recorded trainings, books, self-led classes, etc.) because they’re 100 percent passive and infinitely scalable (a million people could buy it with zero extra work from me).
The second step of your value ladder is a more in-depth, focused version of your first product, and so on – each step should be a bigger, better version of the last. It can’t be more of the same, though; people don’t want to keep spending money on the same things, they want new products for new problems.
Interestingly, each step of your value ladder actually presents all kinds of new “problems” for your customers that you can solve.
If someone buys your book, maybe they don’t have a lot of time to read it – sell them audio versions.
If someone buys your online course, maybe they need additional one-on-one tutoring and help – sell them a coaching call.
If someone buys your coaching call, maybe they don’t know what to do after the call – sell them a group coaching package.
Make sense? The more problems you solve, the more money you’ll make. Solve the problems your products create. Make sure your products solve the right problems and that they all align together in a cohesive value ladder.
With each step, you want to increase your price and value by about five to ten times. If your first product is $20, then your second product should be between $100 and $200. If you do this right, you’re going to start earning massive passive income from automating a natural sales sequence that makes sense to your readers.
I’ve seen value ladders go all the way to literally $25,000 for a single product/service (more on that in a minute). Best of all, it’s all automated through your email list. If you craft a great nurture sequence, the next step is implementing a value ladder with your products. Every subscriber must see the first product of the value ladder at the end of the nurture sequence. Then, it’s just a matter of getting more subscribers.
A good rule of thumb is about a one to three percent conversion rate (for every 100 subscribers, one to three will buy the first product on your value ladder). Then, about five to ten percent of those buyers will buy the second product on the value ladder, and so on.
Your business will live or die based on how strong your value ladder is.
Phase Three: The High-Ticket Sell
Now that you have your value ladder created, it’s time to let you in on an industry secret:
Amateurs and beginners focus on the first steps of the value ladder: the cheaper, simpler products.
But true professionals focus on the final steps of the value ladder: the high-ticket items.
Once you have a solid value ladder with truly high-ticket items ($2,000 to $25,000 range), you’ll find that most of your income will start coming from high-ticket items. One of these high-ticket sales is better than 50 or even 100 low-ticket sales and takes far less mental energy to fulfill.
It’s a bit harder to sell these high-ticket items strictly over email – most readers will need longer, in-depth trainings and sales pitches to actually buy something at this price. That’s why I’d recommend using webinars, video trainings, or even in-person speaking events to sell something this big.
But you need a great nurture sequence and the first steps of a value ladder to even reach this point; every part of your messaging and products are priming your subscribers to either spend money on you or not. You must start building trust from the beginning – everything must be aligned from day one.
If you want to scale and start earning massive passive income, you need to start selling high-ticket items. Don’t worry if you don’t have one yet – you can make a lot of money from the first few steps of a good value ladder. But once you create a high-ticket item, you can unlock your earning potential and make enormous money very quickly.
In Conclusion
It’s time to start automating your business through your email list. You should be shooting for at least one dollar/month for each email on your list.
Every month you don’t automate your processes is another month where you’re wasting enormous potential income.
First, build a great nurture sequence. Tell your story, reveal your flaws. Let your readers know you’re a real person, and that you understand where they’re coming from.
Then, tie in a natural, logical first product to finish your story: your epiphanies, your lessons, your knowledge, your tools.
Then, put that first product into a cohesive value ladder that keeps giving your readers bigger and better solutions in naturally ascending steps. Eventually, you’ll have enough knowledge and expertise to craft a high-ticket item, earning you massive passive income each month.
Want to Learn More?
- Anatomy of a Killer Email: 18 Email Marketing Examples To Copy
- 10 Email Marketing Stats You Need to Know in 2020 [Infographic]
- Email Marketing 101: A Cheat Sheet for Email Marketing That Works
- 8 Vital Email Templates Every Online Business Should Steal
