6 Highly Effective Principles to Improve Your Email Outreach (2019) | Email Marketing Tips

If you had the power to make anybody say yes, would you use it for good or evil? 

Would you convince your friends to stop using plastic straws or convince your neighbor that you have a crush on to his or her spouse to be with you?

There’s definitely no denying that the art of persuasion is a seductive and desired skill to have.

Putting ethics aside for a moment, if you wanted to learn the secrets to persuasion, there is one man who’s worth listening to.

His career has been dedicated to researching the science behind persuasion and influence for the last three decades.

And no, it’s not me, but I’m flattered that you would think so. His name is Robert Cialdini. His work is best known for being the essential backbone for today’s marketing world with Fortune naming his book, Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion as one of the 75th smartest business books to read.

Now they said this in 2015 and the crazy thing is that the book was originally published back in 1984.

it just goes to show you that marketing never changes, no matter what platform you use to market.

In his newer research, Cialdini has demonstrated and observed that the best way to use these weapons of persuasion is for good.

So sorry, it looks like your neighbor is sticking with their spouse. If you’re generous and you’ve made it your mission to serve other people, you have a higher chance of getting the results you want in your business or your career.

I’m Christian Martin and in order for me to serve others and help you with your business, I had to get your attention and interest somehow.

So when writing the perfect cold email, I want to show you a specific template you can use to close clients for your social media marketing agency utilizing six of the persuasion principles in Robert Cialdini’s book. 

And I even have a perfect mad lib style plug and play template that I’ll show you at the end of this video. So stick around.

Let me show you an actual cold email we recently received from a freelance social media marketer. 

See if you can spot any issues with the email. 

Here it goes: 

Hi, 

You’re most likely missing out on a lot of opportunities since your site isn’t getting the potential traffic that it should. 

I ran a few Facebook reporting tests and the data showed some issues on your website preventing people from being able to reach you and become customers. I’ll fix that for you for cheap. 

If you’d like to know more about my Facebook ad services, let me know and we can set up a time for a free consultation. 

I’d like to speak with you and share some insights and show you the data about your site’s potential. 

So please let me know about the best time to contact you and the best number to reach out with.

I look forward to your reply, 

Jane Doe, Facebook ads experts. 

Now this email is not the worst cold email I’ve ever seen. 

Jane reached out and she told me some things that were wrong and then she might be able to help, but it does need a lot of work and it’s going to look like everybody else’s emails. 

So using the six principles from the book Influence by Doctor Cialdini, we can create a killer email template that Jane can use to drive more leads and serve more clients. Cialdini calls these principles his six weapons of influence. Let’s break it down. 

Number one is reciprocity. 

Cialdini states that humans are hardwired to want to return favors, pay back debts, and to treat others as they have been treated. 

And Jane’s email, she clearly isn’t providing any major value or giving away information that triggers me to want to return the favor.

Cialdini recounts a study where researchers were trying to sell raffle tickets and they wanted to test the reciprocity principle. 

The researcher in this example would step out of the room and ask the subject if they’d like something from the vending machine. 

Now, whether they said yes or no, the researcher would bring them a coke anyway. If it was a no, the researcher would say that he got lucky and the machine just happened to give out two Cokes. 

Now later on the researcher would ask the recipient to help them by purchasing $5 worth of raffle tickets, though the Coke only cost 50 cents. 

They had a separate control group in this experiment where no one got a Coke. The results show that the rates of buying raffle tickets were much higher than the control group. 

For those who did receive a friendly Coke first, I’m not saying you need a FedEx a bottle of Coke to everyone in your list, but you should provide them with something of value.

So what does the ol’ “give and take” principle have to do with writing emails? Well, by providing free value to your email recipients, they are more willing and even eager to give you the time of day and listened to what you have to offer. 

So when writing your email, think about what you can provide that invokes your potential client to want to return the favor. 

Now In Jane’s case I would recommend showing some common mistakes their current website or sales funnel has, showed them that their competitors are running ads, how they’re running those ads, or show them they simply don’t have their pixel set up to properly track and create the right audiences to get more leads and sales. 

Now the key is to do this without asking for anything in return. This is providing real value and it shows the client that Jane did her research, she’s creative, and it wasn’t just a copy and paste email.

The second principle is commitment. 

Have you ever publicly announced on social media that you were going to go to the gym and lose 15 pounds for your New Year’s resolution? 

Yeah, if you do that, you’re gonna want to stay consistent. So then when people ask you about it, you don’t have to look like a fool. 

Cialdini argues that human beings have a desire to be consistent and they value others who keep their commitments as well. 

So here’s a better example of commitment and consistency. Have you ever seen one of those website popup banners where they promise you 50% off your first purchase if you sign up for the newsletter and the two options you have are, yes, I love a good deal or no, I like paying full price for things? This is a commitment trigger and it works both ways. 

You commit to giving your email and in return the business will send you the 50% discount code as promised.

Now Imagine never getting the discount code after putting in your email, you’d feel cheated as if they tricked you into getting your email. 

They weren’t consistent. To Cialdini commitments have the most authority to influence someone when the commitments are public. 

Plus when someone makes a small commitment, that person is much more likely to make a larger commitments later. 

It’s like your girlfriend asking you to bring her a glass of water and all of a sudden you’re scrubbing the toilet vacuuming and taking out the trash because that’s commitment. 

It works on me and I’m making a living knowing these principles. Now this principle also states people live up to what they have publicly said they will do or what they have written down. 

So you can use the commitment principle in your email by having your prospects click through to your sales funnel, download a case study, check out your blog or subscribe to a youtube channel.

Now, why do this? Because smart marketers know that it can take seven to 13 touches before someone becomes a customer. 

So if your first touch point is the cold email, you can use a second touch point and a third. And you can even use a tracking software like streak so that you can see when they open the second touch point, the third touch point, and on and on. 

When they respond to you, you can send them a calendar invite for a free consultation, get another touch point, more commitment and you can see what I’m going with this. 

If you are consistent in every touch point and you keep your promises every step of the way, this is going to continue to build trust with your prospects. 

Now, Jane didn’t provide anything for me to see. In this example, I didn’t commit to a click or a download because there was nothing for me in that email.

So I actually rewrote Jane’s entire email to show you how the reciprocity principle works with commitments and consistency. 

I’ll show you the exact email template, but first let’s talk about principle number three. Social proof. 

People are more motivated to do something when they see someone else doing it too. I’m sure your parents said “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” 

To try and break you out of this cycle. Now obviously they want you to say no, but there’s a reason this is a cliche saying. 

It wouldn’t have the desired effect your parents want to and if they said, “If all your friends were investing in a profitable startup and making bank, would you do it too?” 

So this is the reason everyone bought fidget spinners or that we assume food is good at a newly packed restaurant just because there’s a lot of people there, or when everyone couldn’t stop talking about Fyre Festival because Victoria Secret models, we’re making posts about it on Instagram. 

Now we did a deeper dive about the Fiye Festival documentaries and the dark side of social media in another video. You can check out that video by clicking on the upper right if you’re interested. 

Now, if you actually went to Fyre Festival, I’m so sorry. So this principle is related to safety in numbers or the wisdom of crowds. Cialdini sees uncertainty as the cause of the behaviors behind this principle. 

It gives us trust in our decisions when we see other people making those same decisions. Now, when we don’t know what to do, we look to others for social cues to validate our actions. 

So how can Jane add social proof through emails? Well, she can provide case studies with other clients, a link to her linkedin account, testimonials, or she can name drop some company she’s worked with in the past. 

No, I don’t know her background, but in order to convince me that she’s a great social media marketer, I’d like to see some history or referrals that shows that she knows her shit.

Speaking of doing your shit, the next principle is authority. Now this one is pretty obvious. It’s similar to social proof. 

Cialdini uses the now famous Milgrim experiment on obedience to demonstrate authority. Basically of normal participants in a psychological study are told by a man in a white lab coat to little by little electricute, another study participant until they scream in agony and eventually die, at least in the perception of the person in the experiment. More often than not, the person will do this. 

Cialdini discovered that for the most part we have been taught to accept and to respect authority, everyone but me.

Now we want to follow the lead of experts, normally. 

The normal tendency of regular people is to trust symbols of authority like titles, appearance, trophies or accolades. 

However, if you want to work with profitable businesses, with very smart owners, you have to understand that a lot of them can see through these things. 

So how do we apply this in Jane’s email as an authority, you need to sell the transformation you can provide for your client, not information. 

So you can do this by showing your potential prospect what their competition is doing, leaning on previous case studies and testimonials. 

Or if you’re just starting out. There’s another way to show authority. You can cite professionals or industry specific institutions backing up any claims you make. 

You can showcase an image of any certifications you might have in the signature of your email. 

You can add a single testimonial about your services and your signature, or you can tell a story about someone else in your industry who had success with the techniques you’re talking about.

Principle number five is liking. Cialdini argues that we are more inclined to be influenced by people we like. 

I know this might sound obvious, but let me elaborate so you understand. If we like someone, then we’re more likely to do what they ask us to do. 

Now a salesman, for example, will try and befriend you and get you on his side before trying to sell you something. 

Cialdini sites, six factors which influence whether or not someone likes you. These include attractiveness. 

Now I’m not saying there’s a correlation between the size of my email list, 60,000 and my attractiveness. 

So the things that make us like another person, attractiveness, associations, compliments, similarities, flattery and common goals. 

Here’s some examples. Attractiveness is easy. It’s, I know I’m easy on the eyes. This is also showing up as a professional, so if your market thinks it’s attractive to wear a three piece suits to the office, then you might want to show up in a three piece suit.

The second thing is associations. It’s like, oh, you know Becky from Boulder to? Yeah, she’s pretty great. 

The third thing is compliments. That’s a really Nice Gucci Watch you have. Oh, it’s an Apple Watch? You definitely had me fooled. 

The next thing is similarities. Sweet Lambo. I have the exact same model back home. 

Next we have flattery. You’re seriously a genius when it comes to sales funnels. And finally we have common goals and that’s the exact reason I’m doing this as well. I want financial freedom. 

People that share your goals. How do we use the likability principle for email outreach? Well, if you did your research and you understand what niche you’re serving, you can do the following: Share common business goals. 

Flatter your prospect by pointing out the quality of reviews, their business, getting on Yelp. Show them that you’ve worked with similar businesses in the area or even show them you have a mutual acquaintance.

Now the principle can be countered by the prospect separating the offer from you and making decisions based on the merits of the offer rather than how much they like you as a person. 

But don’t worry because I have one last principle that’s going to put a fire under their butts when it comes to decision making, and this is scarcity. 

The 6th and last principle is one of the most important. 

Remember when Facebook only allowed college students with a university email to sign up for their service? 

This is Facebook’s attempt to utilize the scarcity principle, and they did it quite well. Now remember how literally anyone could join MySpace? 

Well, where’s my space now? It’s nothing but a vast no man’s land of hopeful Djs and stripper bots. There was no scarcity. 

The scarcity principle is extremely powerful. It operates on the value that people attach to things and what you might know as Fomo, fear of missing out.

In economic theory, scarcity is similar to the idea of supply and demand. The less there is of something, the more valuable it becomes. 

As long as people demand more of that thing than there is supply. So I have a buddy that buys and sells retro Air Jordans. 

I thought he was a lunatic until I saw the, he bought a pair of shoes for $190 flips him over for $500 he couldn’t pull that off if Nike didn’t limit the number of those particular sneakers they released. 

So gym shoes, beanie babies or potato chips that look like Abraham Lincoln’s profile. These all have high value because of scarcity. 

Through Cialdini’s research, he concludes that humans are challenged emotionally when freedoms are threatened by limiting free choice. 

In other words, Fomo. So how can we utilize the same principle to improve Jane’s email? One form of scarcity is saying she has limited availability for a free consultation.

So you want to schedule now if you’re interested, or for a limited time, she’s discounting her normal rate in return for guaranteed testimonials and the case study, or she’s doing a free Webinar with limited access in the next 24 hours. 

So those were all six principles, reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, likability and scarcity. 

Now let’s take a look at Jane’s new email utilizing these principles. In this example, we’re reaching out to a chiropractic business. 

Let’s say that I own the chiropractic business. 

Hey Christian, 

You don’t know me, but I thought that this might help. 

We’re looking for a chiropractic business owner to help. 

I always look for those who truly care about their patients and you seem to be just that I came across your Facebook page and noticed a couple of things that are costing you money and losing your clients right now that can be easily and quickly fixed.

You can do it yourself. I put together a free video analysis of your customer acquisition funnel and identify three common mistakes you’re making that when fixed, we’ll get you more clients revenue and sales. 

I’ll show you how to fix them in this video and then I would link to that video. You seem like the type of business owner who is always trying to get better and serve your customers at the highest level so this could help you make a bigger impact. 

The strategy I outlined is the same strategy that your competitor, Friendly Chiropractic Care, uses to bring in more than $3 million a year using digital marketing. 

I’ll show you what I mean in this five minute video. Just to let you know, to save space, this video expires in five days, so be sure to check out before then if you’re curious. Here’s that link again.

Thanks, Jane Doe. And then in the signature we have Denver, Colorado and include a photo if you’re attractive. Otherwise maybe post a pic of your cute dog. Just kidding. 

Definitely include a photo of yourself and then you can also use a call to action to a strategy session, I help chiropractic specialist to do what they do best, which is serving their patients by breaking them qualified leads through social media marketing. 

Schedule a free three step patient attraction strategy session here. Include the link to your calendar. 

That’s a much better email. Can you spot where I use the six weapons of persuasion? Leave a comment down below with the ones you recognize and I’ll let you know if you’re correct or not. 

And as promised in the description below is a link to the download for the email template. Download it now while it’s available because I won’t have this up forever. So once I decided this is gone, it’s gone forever. 

That’s scarcity. 

Thanks for watching this week’s video breakdown. 

If you want to see us break down more pop culture trends, viral videos, or digital marketing tactics, and I know you do, check out our last video and if you’re back watching this new episode and you still haven’t subscribed, what are you waiting for? Hit that like and subscribe button right now, you won’t regret it. I will see you guys next time.