Posts Tagged ‘email lists’

Good god people, this is starting to develop into a series of blog posts…

(if you don’t believe me, use the search box on the right, and type in “email marketers”, then read the older posts with those words in the title)

One of my income streams is promoting other people’s products as an affiliate. There’s no doubt, that I receive emails from the operators of affiliate programs and individual marketers as a result.

But when I give my email address, with the specific intent of joining those programs…I expect that the “news” I receive will be affiliate related.

NOT OFFER RELATED!

I do not subscribe to an affiliate list to get pegged with offers people!

Now, the primary culprits are those in the “make money online” niche, and every time I receive an offer through an affiliate list subscription…

CLICK!  I click on the unsubscribe link.

If someone isn’t going to have high enough integrity to email me the news I signed up for (which goes beyond affiliate lists by the way)…then I guess that isn’t someone I want to be associating with is it?

NOTE:  If you’re one of these individuals who sends offers to the folks on your affiliate (or JV) lists…you might want to click here and get the 3 part report…then read that cover to cover and watch the videos.

‘Nuff said.

I just checked out the email account I use to get autoresponder account messages from other marketers.  I use this to “spy” on how people are using email to market their promotions.

NOTE:  At least 50% of what I see these days is absolute garbage, but that’s for another series of posts.

One email in particular inspired this post.

I read the email, clicked over to to the offer, and wasn’t interested.  So I went back to the email to read it, and it was actually really poorly written.

So I went to unsubscribe, and that’s where I noticed something that once I thought about it, I see a number of “marketers” doing…

They put the unsubscribe link…

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Way down here in the email.

I can guess why they are doing it (out of site, out of mind to try and keep unsubscribes down)…but why do it at all?

Are you really that self-conscious about your content that you need to try and hide (read: deceive) the link from your reader, so they can keep getting crap emails from you?

Really?  Do you need to do that?

Wow.

Instead, learn how to write effective promo emails (or even better, content emails or “friend-style” emails a la Frank Kern)…then you won’t have to resort to deceit and trickery to keep your unsubscribes down.

Also, here’s another thought…do you actually think people are stupid enough to continue paying attention to your emails (for the most part) when you do stuff like this?  To me, that would create a pretty useless email list…reducing the chances of landing any lucrative JV deals or other opportunities.

So, if you do this in your email marketing, don’t get me wrong, correct the behavior ok?  Or don’t…and eventually you’ll join the giant filter coming.

The choice is yours, but I know what I would do.

Until the next time we look in the mirror together,

–Joseph Ratliff

Hello there Mr./Mrs. List Owner.

I just wanted to let you know that I, like 90% of all people, will NOT tell you that I’m not paying attention to your emails.

I also won’t tell you if I’m not satisfied with your product or service…

So, Mr. / Mrs. List Owner…what are YOU doing to build a solid relationship with me?

Ahhh…got you thinking didn’t I?

First of all, you don’t have to light up your email program and fire off all the reasons why I’m wrong…

Because I’m going to cover the 2 primary reasons why the “money isn’t in the list” right here.

1)  The money isn’t in the list, it’s in the “lists“. You don’t only build a list and make money from it…you have to segregate your lists into more targeted lists.

And before I hear a “Duh, Joe!”…

Most marketers aren’t doing this at all.

I know this as a fact as the majority of my clients and even associates don’t do this.

The most basic list segregation technique is to put those people that have purchased something from you (or followed your recommendation as an affiliate) onto a customer or “buyers” list.

If you aren’t doing that already…stop reading this post and do it right now.

I’ll wait…

You haven’t done it yet, come on, this is a BIG business builder for you…

Whatever, you’ll never do it then.

Moving on…

By separating your buyers into another list…you have a list of the people who obviously trust you enough to pull out their wallet and buy something from you or on your recommendation…and I think that is a BIG trust that we as marketers take for granted all the time.

Come on, you do take that trust for granted…don’t you? You assume that because you have the greatest product on earth, that everyone wants what you’re selling…and nope, that’s not how it works.

Which brings us to the next reason the money isn’t in the list…

2)  The money isn’t in the list, it’s in the relationship you form with the people on that list. So before you go thinking that by putting #1 above to work will solve all of your making money problems…

You first have to think really hard about each individual person on your list.

Really hard.

It sounds so simple, yet it’s another area we take for granted as business people…that real people, with real problems and emotions, are on our marketing list.

You don’t “own” them…

You had better not be “renting” them out…

They aren’t “your” list of subscribers/buyers/people over the age of 50…

And the DEFINITELY are not “one of your list of 5,000″…or a number.

Change your thinking to how you can serve that list of people (for real), and your income will increase in reflection of how well you do that.  If your income doesn’t increase, you’re focus hasn’t changed.

No, I didn’t give you the “full” blueprint here…I expect you to think about this and apply it to your business (heaven forbid…do work?).

The sad reality is…90% of you will still go about your busy days and never take any time to sit and ponder the impact this rather “simple” advice can have on your business…

Of the 10% that do something with this advice, only the top third or so of that 10% will actually use this advice and make changes.

So about 3 out of every 100 readers of this article will actually do something that will have a HUGE impact on their business right now, today.

Will you be one of them?

How many relationships have you built since you read this?