Email Marketing for Business Training Companies - case study # 2

“One of our most successful marketing campaigns has been our GQ [Genius Quotient] Playbook, a weekly LinkedIn-based newsletter where we provide unique and useful posts to fuel success,” said Catherine Mattiske, Inventor, Genius Quotient. The team’s goal was to get closer to its ideal target market: business leaders and decision-makers in large global corporations. “Despite having a sizeable Facebook following, nearing 100,000, we knew our business audience was on LinkedIn,” Mattiske said. She already had a fairly successful LinkedIn network in this demographic — almost 14,500 people were already LinkedIn connections — but simply having connections is no guarantee they’re going to subscribe to your newsletter.

Every Monday, the team posts an article to the GQ Playbook that is rich in three things:

“We provide researched facts, as well as link to research and other articles from media that our target audience frequents, such as McKinsey & Company and Harvard Business Review,” she said.

They write topics with these questions in mind:

• What does our target persona care about?
• What are their problems right now?
• What are their gaps?

They then come in at the back end and say, “If you’ve got this gap, here are all the facts around the gap, and here's what to do about it.” And there's a solution at the end that’s tied in — not as a blatant advertisement, but just to say, “Hey, this writer has a solution for your problem.”

The articles are structured for all 12 Inner Genius Archetypes, which were developed by Mattiske to help people understand their communication and learning styles.  

“Each member of your audience learns differently; for example, some want to connect to the big picture, while others want the facts, figures, and data. Once your audience is given ‘their’ piece of information in their style, their attention is hooked. However, the average writer/presenter unconsciously writes/presents in the way they themselves learn best,” she said.

In the first 24 hours after launching the GQ Playbook, the team had about 700 subscribers. The next week, that went up to about 1,200. Now a couple of months in, and they recently went past 2,000 subscribers. This is entirely organic with $0 advertising spend.

“It's not just another piece of puffery or a ‘look what I've done…me, me, me’ type of article like you’ll commonly see on LinkedIn; instead, it’s a valuable piece of writing that has:
a) facts and research,
b) topics that cater to our targeted audience, and
c) balanced communication to hook the attention of every one of our readers,” Mattiske concluded.