Recently, I was sitting at my computer, when a strange notification popped up on my screen.
Two, in fact.
Apparently I’d just received two emails from myself.
These emails were promoting an eBook we’d written, showing examples of real-life sales funnels.
I distinctly remembered writing these emails… Six months earlier.
In fact, they’d already been sent to our list many months ago, and hundreds of people had downloaded the resource back then. They weren’t scheduled to go out again.
I quickly checked our email automation platform. It showed that the emails were in the process of being sent out to all our subscribers. I must have been one of the first to receive them.
Cue panic.
I didn’t want the entire list to be spammed with random old emails. Plus I had other emails that were going to go out that week and this was interfering with our carefully planned schedule… And I was a bit worried about which emails would fire off next!
I quickly contacted John, our technical guy, who cancelled the rogue emails within three minutes.
Long story short, it later turned out that there was a bug in our email marketing platform, Active Campaign, which had caused it to rerun some old A/B tests. (Always a relief when it turns out it’s not your own team’s fault 🙂). Their support desk was extremely apologetic.
But here’s the strange thing.
In those three minutes, the email got sent to several hundred people….
And dozens of people downloaded the Sales Funnel Playbook.
In fact, several straight away booked a consultation to talk to us about how to implement a sales funnel for their own company.
And all because of two emails which were never meant to go out, and which the entire list had already read before. (Dang! I really shouldn’t have cancelled those emails 🙂)
The lesson is clear.
We all spend a lot of time and energy producing new resources to push our businesses forward online — new lead-magnets, new products and services, new offers.
But have you made the most of your old resources?
Most marketers do, in fact, relaunch their flagship courses and programmes every six months or so. By then, lots of new people will have joined their lists.
And as for the ‘old’ people who have already seen the offer, their circumstances may have changed and what was unsuitable six months ago may now be perfect for them.
Here’s another little secret…
Many people who saw your offer several months back just won’t remember it.
So while new is great…… Getting additional mileage out of old can feel even sweeter.
Give it a try and recycle your most successful old offer.
And if you’d like help selling to your email list, just drop me a line and let’s talk.
Miriam Shaviv is director of content at Brainstorm Digital, which helps companies generate enquiries and sales over email. Check out Inbox Express, our library of email templates to turn your email subscribers into paying clients. And get a sneak preview of some of the templates here.
