The customers you already have on your list are in the perfect place for you to generate some passive income from them. While we discussed a few ways to earn additional revenue in the earlier module on sales funnels, in this module you’ll learn some more simple ways to cash in on your existing customer base.

Automated Coupons

Everyone loves a good coupon, especially when it comes as a surprise. You can try sending an automated coupon in a follow-up email to customers for a discount on one of your other products or services. This coupon could go out a week after purchase, or periodically based on what they purchase or what they’ve spent so far.

This process can be automated with your autoresponder (MailChimp, Aweber, etc.). They will have templates for discount codes which you can customize to fit your brand.

Additionally, you can segment your list so your autoresponder is set to send follow-up emails to people who haven’t used the coupon.

How this works:

• Somebody signs up for your email list
• One week after they sign up, they receive an email with a discount code for one of your products or services
• One week after that, anyone who didn’t use the coupon from the first email, or didn’t open the first email, receives a reminder email with the coupon

You could also set up an automated email series or campaign that triggers when a customer hasn’t made a purchase in a set amount of time (e.g. 90 days, 120 days, etc.). You send the customer a discount code as an incentive to make another purchase. Not only is your marketing automated, but winning back your customer with a discount is easier and less expensive than acquiring a new customer. It’s common knowledge among the business-savvy that it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.

There’s even a Happy Birthday Email app that makes it possible to send customers an automated email with a discount code on their birthday (if you collect this data).  

Make Recommendations in Follow-up Emails

As we covered in Module 2, you can include links to recommended products of yours in your automated follow-up emails.

Here are a few ways to recommend products to customers in follow-ups:

• Based on what they’ve purchased in the past (specific products or categories of products)
• Based on links they’ve clicked on in the past
• Based on pages they’ve visited

A lot of this depends on the email platform you use and how much flexibility it has. For example, the more robust platforms allow you to tag and segment your customers based on factors like products, categories, actions, geography, revenue, and more.

Make Recommendations Inside Products

Recommend useful and relevant products within products your customers are buying from you, such as in reports, free eBooks, purchased eBooks, online courses, webinars, video tutorials, and membership sites. These can be affiliate links or links to your own related products or services.

Make sure you can easily access links to change or remove them at a later date if necessary – for example, if it becomes a dead link, if it links to someone/a product/a service you no longer want to recommend, and so on. If you use a link shortener, you can easily replace a link with something different and avoid having to go into the product to remove it.

Recommend Affiliate Products or Services in Social Media Groups

If you have an established Facebook or other social media group for people who have bought your products, you can recommend affiliate products to them using that platform. You have to add the link and description, as well as why you’re recommending the product, so this tactic isn’t automated or completely ‘passive.’ Nevertheless, you can still earn affiliate revenue from your current customers when they purchase products or services that someone else has put the work into.

Don’t forget to check out the affiliate marketing tips we covered in Module 3 when implementing this passive income method.

Email Your Customer List with Affiliate Recommendations

If someone you respect in your business network releases a new product or service that you are happy to recommend to your current customers, you can send them a dedicated email to endorse that product, along with your affiliate link. While this isn’t totally passive, you’re only doing the work of creating a few emails and possibly a bit of other promotional content. You haven’t gone through all the time-consuming work and expense of creating the product.

In your email, describe the product or service, and explain why you recommend both it and the person selling it. Often, the person selling the product will provide suggested text for the product description, and you can then add your own personalized touches.

Module 3 covered finding affiliate partners in your business network, so refer back to that for a reminder if you need one.

Use your judgement and knowledge of your business and customers to select at least one method that you could use with your current customers.

• Do you have an active and engaged Facebook group for customers who have bought your products? Customers who would respond positively to recommendations?
• Who do you know in your business network who has an affiliate program with related products or services your clients would love?
• How about recommendations inside products? This could be quite time consuming to set up, and some aspects would definitely be for future plans (e.g. putting recommendations in eBooks).
• Some methods will take a little strategic planning. For example, recommendations in emails and automated discount coupons take time to plan out. So you may decide to work on those later, once you’ve explored all the automated options in your email marketing platform.