How this happiness consultant uses email to make sales without selling
Workplace happiness consultant Alexander Kjerulf hates outbound selling. But his firm, Woohoo inc., sells services to large organizations; the kind of business that typically runs on outreach and cold calls.
I’m not a salesman in any shape or form. I would hate it if I had to get up in the morning and make cold calls.
Yet for 23 years, he's landed clients like Lego, Hilton, Hermès, and IBM without ever picking up the phone, thanks to three things:
A unique service that solves a problem people care about
Content that draws the right audience to him
An email newsletter that prioritizes long-term relationships over quick wins
Alexander sat down with us to share how he does it.
The thesis: The more you give, the more you get back
Since Alexander founded Woohoo inc., sharing content around workplace happiness has been central to his client acquisition strategy.
We realized that the more content we put out, the more business we get back. Many consultants are protective of their intellectual property, but we’re kinda the opposite.
Since people come to him, he can attract clients without any outbound selling.
I’m very proud that we do no external sales work. Every single customer has come to us because they are interested in what we are doing.
His blog, social channels and free webinars play a role in attracting attention. But email marketing builds a direct connection that makes the relationship stick.
Alexander uses MailerLite because it has everything he needs to run effective email campaigns without needing deep email expertise or hours of work each week.
MailerLite has everything I need; it’s effective and easy to use. Things just work.
Alexander sends out a regular newsletter filled with actionable tips.
By segmenting subscribers, he can send promotional content to the most interested people.
He uses automation to keep people engaged in his happiness course.
Alexander adds email sign-up forms to his website so people can join his list.
Encouraging action with a value-packed newsletter
For his strategy to work, Alexander needs to keep people opening his emails: This means he must offer value each time he hits send.
His measure of success isn’t sales or webinar signups, it’s getting subscribers to take action on the tips he shares.
The newsletter helps people act on the things we’ve taught them. It reflects positively on us when they take action. They then come back and book us again, or they recommend us to other people.
Around 75% of each newsletter is practical, actionable content and tips that people can use the same day they read them. He uses the rest of the newsletter to promote his services, webinars and programs.
I try to make the newsletter very specific and share things people can do to make work happier. We sneak in mentions of our products, like new books or trainings. The newsletter is marketing, but it’s also helping people do something about it.
Alexander says that while salary and perks need to be fair, the most important factors in workplace happiness are results and relationships.
With that in mind, he suggests telling a coworker you like working with them and then explaining why.
“People cry out for positive feedback and workplaces are incredibly bad at delivering it. If you want to create a happy work environment today, go out and say something positive about a coworker. “
You can find out more about Alexander and get more tips on workplace happiness by checking out his blog and, of course, signing up for the newsletter.
Balancing content creation with delivering his work
Creating content can be time-consuming. Like many consultants working on their own or with a small team, Alexander has to balance creating and marketing content with actually delivering his work.
Two things keep this manageable. First, he reuses content ideas across different channels.
You don’t have to write totally new things. You can do one thing and reuse it across many channels. I can write a blog post, which then becomes a LinkedIn post, which becomes a webinar, which becomes a video on YouTube.
Second, putting the newsletter together is fast thanks to MailerLite’s tools. He simply copies his last newsletter to drafts, drags and drops block templates where necessary, and then goes straight to send.
I appreciate that once you have the text, setting the newsletter up so it looks good is very, very fast. This lowers the bar for getting the newsletter out.
Boosting conversions with segments for specific offers
Not every offer is relevant to every subscriber. When Alexander has something to promote, he uses subscriber groups and segments to send the message to the people most likely to care.
For example, his Chief Happiness Officer academy has its own subscriber group. Whenever he has something to share with this group, he can send it right to them.
We can then send more specific promotions to the people who we know are interested in the topic.
The result is higher relevance for the reader, better conversion for Alexander, and no unnecessary noise for everyone else.
Increasing course engagement with automated emails
Alexander’s email marketing is mostly focused on his newsletter. But he also uses MailerLite’s email automation feature to run a 4-week automated email sequence that encourages people to interact with his Happiness at Work course.
Each email surfaces a lesson or insight to keep people who join the course engaged.
The automated sequence sharing lessons and tips keeps people engaged in the course.
The more engaged someone stays, the stronger their connection to the business, and the more likely they are to buy from him later down the line.
Growing a business he actually enjoys
Alexander's approach to marketing doesn't just bring in clients; it helps him enjoy his workday more.
Rather than grinding through tasks he finds draining, he grows his business by doing what he's good at: creating content and helping people improve their happiness at work.
Including valuable content and helping people also makes me feel good about the stuff that I do. If I put out stuff that was super salesy and pushy, I wouldn’t feel good about sharing it. But by being generous and sharing useful research, it makes me feel good at work.
Build your business without a sales team
Don’t like outbound selling either? Then follow Alexander’s strategy to bring clients to you. Create campaigns, automate emails, segment subscribers, manage bookings and more, with MailerLite.
