List Profit Email Marketing Blog

If you’re on one of my mailing lists, I want you to do one of three things … buy, die, or bug off. Sound outrageous? Well, in a sense, I suppose it is, but after all, isn’t that what we all really want? Let’s face it, none of us publishes an email newsletter for purely altruistic reasons. The whole point of having a list is to be able to market products and services.

Email marketing is, after all, marketing via email. Even if you follow the “soft sell” approach, which I strongly advocate, eventually you want people to buy something, right? It might take five, ten, or fifty emails from you before they do, but the whole objective is to eventually convert a certain number of your subscribers to customers.

What about that second part … die? Well, what I really mean by that is that I want people to stay on my list and keep reading my emails. If they literally stay on my list until they die, then I must be doing something right. Long term subscribers, even if they never become customers, at least assure me that I’m delivering quality content that is of interest to my readership.

Finally, why would I want people to “bug off” ? Well, alot of email marketers, especially those who use co-registration leads, get all excited and upset when people “bug off” by using the unsubscribe link and deleting themselves from the database.

Personally, I think you should welcome those “unsubscribers”. Why? Because you’re getting rid of the “dead wood” on your list, and what remains after that is the folks who are eventually going to buy … or die. Those unsubscribes just tighten the focus of your list.

Think about it. If somebody unsubscribes, then they weren’t interested in what you’re promoting. Fine, no problem. What do you want them on your list for?

Really the only exception to what I’ve said is that you do want to keep an eye on whether certain of your emails suddenly balloon your unsubscribes. If that happens, you obviously need to rework that particular email.

I think I’ve also mentioned before that, in my own experience, the bulk of my unsubscribes come on the first three or four emails, no matter what the focus of that list. In my case, about 66% of all the unsubscribes I will ever get occur in those first three or four emails, and that has remained true for me across multiple newsletters, mini-courses, and general mailing lists.

Do you want a million subscribers who couldn’t care less about you, or an avid “fan club” of a thousand, many of whom will buy the products and services that you create, endorse, or promote? Personally, I’d much rather have the latter.

What matters is not how many people are on your list, but how responsive the people on the list are to your emails. Having eliminated the ones who are eventually going to die, and the ones who decided to bug off, you are left with the group who represent the “goldmine”.

You know, many people don’t entirely grasp the power you have when you have a high-quality mailing list. The folks on that list are a captive audience for you. I’ve even seen some people use the catch phrase “captive traffic” to refer to an email list.

Suppose the money you spent developing your list had instead been spent for some ‘guaranteed visitors’ to your website. Assuming the vendor were honest, you would have had a large number of people at least ‘eyeball’ your home page, but that’s probably the one and only chance you would ever have to sell or promote anything to 99.99% of them.

In contrast, your list has as many or as few names on it as you can buy or capture through your subscription forms, and you can email them again and again, until they tell you not to. Or you can entice them to one of your double opt-in autoresponders, and get a decent percentage of them as long-term subscribers that way.

So what are you going to do with your list? How are you going to approach them?

I would suggest you keep a few things in mind as you map out your email marketing campaigns.

First, you need to ‘train’ your list right from the start that if they want something from you, they have to give in return. Initially it might be a double opt-in subscription in exchange for a free ebook or a free report. Later, you will want their attention, and eventually their money, in exchange for what you are offering them.

In the beginning however, you have to be willing to GIVE to them BEFORE you can expect to get.

Give them a free report, or a free ebook, or a free e-course right up front — the sooner, the better. WHY?

Because that is what they signed up for in the first place … information … and they expect it to be free at this point.

Remember, most sales are not made until after a minimum of 5-7 contacts, and right now your list is ‘cold’ - these people don’t know who you are, or whether you can be trusted.

The other thing I would encourage you to keep in mind as you plan your campaign is the wants and needs of your audience. You have been, and perhaps still are, an ‘opportunity seeker’ yourself. Think about the kinds of things you most wanted and needed when you were starting out. Chances are, the people on your list want the same kinds of things.

Did you want some stranger demanding that you whip out your credit card and pay up for information? Or did you want someone to give you some free advice, and show you the ropes while you got your feet wet?

What problems can you solve or prevent for the people on your list? How can you educate and help them? What can you do to make their quest for online opportunities easier?

REMEMBER — It will be much easier to sell to people later, if you give to them in the beginning. Once you’ve got them looking forward to your emails, and considering you a trusted friend, they are a captive audience for whatever you have to say …