Robert Plank

Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

If I ask someone why an email I sent didn't get a lot of clicks or why an offer I'm promoting didn't get as many sales as I would like or even when a blog post doesn't get as many comments as I'm used to, the usual cop-out I hear from other marketers is "your list must be burned out."

We've all wondered about this at one point or another. In fact, at one time, Lance and I thought we had burned out our list when we're mailing for a $200 training course.

Then, flash forward 6 months later when we're launching a $997 training course 1 week, a $497 training course a couple weeks later, and a $27 per month membership site at the same time and everyone is buying in, and in fact, the people who buy now tell us the price should be higher.

What's the difference? The difference between that $200 era and the $1000 era is that we trained our list not just to receive these offers but also to purchase and be happy at a certain price point.

Burnout Myth #1: Non-Responsive List

If you think your list is non-responsive, the problem is either from your traffic source or from your marketing.

I have seen way too many marketers come out of the gate one day and say, "here you go, here is my $1000 training course."

They have no teaching, no build-up and no pre-launch and they just expect people to purchase their $1000 course at a moment's notice. When people tell me that they do not purchase a certain product because of price, the problem could be that they can't afford it and would never buy under any circumstances or it could be they just did not have enough advanced notice to clear their credit card or save up that money.

That's why you need a pre-launch sequence and you need to mail more often.

This leads me to many marketers recommending that you only mail your list once a month or once a week. But the problem with that is we need to push a lot of people into buying an offer quickly, you really do need to mail them once a day during your launch sequence, and I see marketers try to get by with mailing just once a week or just once a month, and then when they have to mail once a day, the subscribers aren't used to it.

The solution is to mail everyday, whether you're selling, teaching, or doing a little bit of both.

Mail everyday, mail more often, and mail on topic. If somebody is telling you to buy their AdWords product over and over again and then one day turned around and tried to buy a product about forum marketing and there was no transition whatsoever, there is no consistent marketing message.

Have a real launch, email every day, and email at least 5 times when you're promoting something new.

Burnout Myth #2: It's Too Expensive

If no one is buying the things you have to offer at any price, consider where your traffic is coming from. I built my traffic up from a free forum but what I did differently is most of my subscribers had to buy something from me before they could get on my list.

They were all people who have been proven to have a credit card, have room in their credit card, and trust me enough to pay me. If you're building a list from ad swaps, safe lists, or JV Giveaways, you're getting the worst subscribers possible.

You're getting people who have not been proven to buy anything but who you do know get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails everyday for other free offers. You need to build a better list. Build a list that gets traffic from a better neighborhood. Get joint ventures. And above all, make a better offer.

It's one thing to offer a 100-page eBook or 5 hours of videos but what will those videos allow me to do? If you just tell me you are selling a real estate course, that's not very exciting, but if you told me that this course could get me to find the perfect property to flip in one day and I could flip it in one week and make a certain amount of money, that would be more exciting for me.

You need to position your offer to be more benefit-based and to be more exciting and fast and explain the answer to the question "what's in it for me?"

You might have to weed out freebie stickers. If there are some subscribers who yell at you or ask you repeatedly to drop the price, there's nothing wrong with removing them from your list if they are never going to buy from you. It seems harsh but you are doing them a favor because they don't like your emails.

Burnout Myth #3: The Wrong Niche

If I subscribe to your email list about copywriting and one day, you started emailing me about stock market trading, why should I even care? I didn't come to you as the authority for stock trading. I came to you as the authority to copywriting. You need to give your subscribers what they want.

If somebody joined your list because you offered them a free report on copywriting, give them more stuff about copywriting, give them a course they can join on that same subject.

Don't hop around in different niches. Give them the same stuff that they want and need. And build your list from the correct source. If you have a copywriting product, build your list from a copywriting forum, not from a stock trading forum and vice-versa.

You might not have to give up and change your niche overnight... just start offering your list what they want.  What they'll buy.

Did this post help you overcome any of the 3 myths of subscriber burnout? They were a non-responsive list, a list that thinks your stuff is too expensive, and a list that's in the wrong niche. Which one applies the best to you, 1, 2, or 3? And what are you going to do now?

Comment below telling me, please!

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

The last time that you sent an email to your list, did you get less responses than you wanted?  Did you get less sales than you wanted?  I hope your answer to both of questions was yes.  You should always be moving forward and growing. In order to take that next step, let's figure out what you are doing wrong in your email marketing.

You Don't Email Enough

When I explain list building and email marketing to most people their problem is that they don't contact their list enough.  I know that this was my problem for years when I first built a list.  I had no idea what to say to my list.  I didn't know if people would even care what I had to say.

But guess what, they joined your list and the only way to find out if they like what you have to say, if they hate what you have to say, or even if they will unsubscribe is to email that list.  You just won't know until you talk to them.

Please email at least once a week, if not more than once a week. Send them to your latest blog post.  Cut, copy and paste your latest article in there.  Buy a pack of private label-right articles and use those for follow up content.  Pitch your latest offer and copy and paste chunks of the sales letter into your message.

You Email Too Much

The problem I see with those marketers who have built their list from a bad traffic source is that they email too much.  People who have built their list from ad-swaps, JV giveaway, and even safe lists are dealing with such an unresponsive list.  They have to email those people three or four times a day with different offers just to make any money at all.

The problem with this model is that it gets the gullible people to keep clicking and keep buying.  But gets your real long-term buyers to leave your list.  It is possible to hit your list too much, and too much is more than once per day.

The only exception to this is if I am launching a product and its launch day.  For example, I am running a webinar, I will email three times a day.  But on a regular basis, I will only email my list a maximum of one time per day.

You Email Crap

It is not enough to just email regularly or email just the right amount per week.  You need to send people good emails. Do your emails blend your teaching and your pitching?  If it is too much teaching or too much pitching, you are doing your subscribers a disservice.

Think about it, if all you are doing is pitching, then all you are saying is buy, buy, buy, buy.  If all you are doing is teaching, you are giving them ideas, but you are not telling them how to take everything to the next level.

Your emails should be short and to the point. You should give people at least one thing to think about today, and then transition into some URL you want them to click on.  That way, no one can complain.

Even if they don't like the offer you are giving them... they can at least read the email and not click the link at the end, so they will walk away with some free piece of advice.

It's Just Not A Good Fit

When people sign up for one of my free courses, or purchase one of my products.  I let them know that they are getting on a list where they will receive updates from me about all my future products, not just the one they bought.

Some subscribers don't think that should be the case.  That's okay, that's their opinion.  What I know is that if there is someone online who I really like, whose products I like to buy, who I want to be like and emulate, I want to get regular emails from them.  Because otherwise I will start thinking about and wondering what they are doing today and what their latest project is.

Your true fans want to know what you are up to, what you are launching, and how they can buy it so they can get more value out of it than the price they paid.  Just like everything in life, it is not for everyone.  That is why if someone wants to get off your list, it should be easy and permanent for them to leave.

Do you know now why some of your email subscribers hate you? Which of the four reasons above is the reason?  What are you going to do differently in your email marketing now that you have this information?

Leave a comment below explaining yourself.

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

You send traffic to a squeeze page and people opt-in to a list. Then you send them more free info over time to build trust, and eventually start hitting them with offers related to that niche.

How the heck do you get traffic to that list?

Method 1: Join forums in that niche and post real content. Don't mention your site, don't try to sell people on anything, just participate in conversations and get people to recognize you. After you get 25 posts, edit your profile and place a link to that squeeze page in your forum signature.

Method 2: Create a blog. When news hits in your niche, write a blog entry about it, and add your link at the end. For example if a local news story about a cat massager business hits the news, talk about it and link to your squeeze page at the end. Locally hosted blogs like WordPress will "blog and ping" ... so your posts will hit the search engines in seconds. You can also get free accounts on services like Blogger.

Method 3: Article marketing. Write some articles and post them to those same article directories with a linkback to your squeeze page. If these get you lots of opt-ins, consider hiring freelance article writers to write these articles in bulk for you. Then guess what? You can post some of those articles to forums and post them to your own sites as blogs.

Method 4: Social networking. Join MySpace groups and post MySpace blog posts to your profiles with your articles. Get Camtasia Recorder, create PowerPoint presentations of your articles and record those videos. Then post them to video sites like YouTube and Revver, with your squeeze page URL watermarked right in and your URL in the video description.

Method 5: Create a free, lead-in product. Write your own articles and package them as a product, or hire someone to write articles and assemble those into a PDF yourself. Make sure the URL to that squeeze page is prominently displayed on every page. Then sell resale rights to a select number of people, or offer your product on giveaway sites.

Method 6: AdWords. That's probably the hardest method of them all, but what you can do is look at the ads that appear on the right hand side of Google searches that stay listed over time, and try to model those ads. Worried about paying too much per click? Look at the top 10 search results, choose to only show your ads in the content network, and say you only want your ads to appear on those top 10 pages.

If you don't know where to begin, I recommend you dedicate an entire week to doing nothing but method #1. Then dedicate the next week to method #2. All the way to method 5 (only try method 6 if you know what you're doing) and build up that mailing list.

Reading time: 8 - 12 minutes

Although writing reports and making products, submitting articles, and writing blog posts are all great ways to get traffic, you need to follow up with people who are already on your email subscriber list.

Most people, probably including you, do not have enough emails in their autoresponder, and that means when someone joins your list, they don't know what to do or where to go.

I want to help you and give you 10 free email templates to fill up any autoresponder follow-up sequence that needs filling in no time flat. Here are 10 different types of emails you can send to your list either for the same offer or different offers.

Email #1: The Hard Pitch

The easiest way to get somebody to buy something from you is to be direct – ask them for that sale. Even if you're not a writer, you probably already have a sales letter or some kind of pitch page or pitch video that you can swipe from in your email copy. Copy and paste chunks of your sales letter and make each chunk an individual follow-up.

If there's a really good testimonial on your sales letter, that can be a follow-up. If within your sales letter, you give away some kind of free lesson or free tip when you set up your pitch, use that as an autoresponder follow-up. Chances are you already wrote most of your email sequence and don't even realize it.

Email #2: Reminder For That Hard Pitch

Because email is getting more and more competitive and the internet is becoming more and more crowded, many people might not have even seen your email coming to their inbox. If they have seen it, they might have read the email but forgot to click the link. They also might have opened your email, read it and clicked the link but have not yet bought.

That's why you should send them reminder emails about your previous emails just to make sure they have received your information. You'd be surprised at how adding this one email will improve your traffic and click-through rates.

Email #3: The Quick Tip

You want to be recognized as an authority in your niche, right? You want people to want more from you, right? That's why if you can give people a quick tip, one small piece of advice they can read in a minute or less about your niche, schedule that as an email.

If you are teaching people about copywriting, a simple tip to share could be to write 10 or more headlines to settle on the perfect headline.

This way, you're not divulging your entire formula but getting them on the right track and getting them to think in the same way you do. It's also a simple piece of advice they can pluck out and apply to their business right away. You're delivering value and now it's up to them to decide if they want to purchase more value from you.

Email #4: Free Blog Post Reminder

Sometimes, I write quick tips that end up being very long. Instead of sending very long emails, I will post that longer tip to a blog and then send traffic to it. This way, this is free training out in the open, so they still get some free advice, but there's also the possibility for search engine traffic for people to link to it and above all, provide feedback in the form of comments that I can then respond to in public.

Email #5: Post-Sale Content Consumption Reminder

Just because you've given somebody something doesn't mean they have necessarily used it. Just because somebody joined your list in exchange for a free report doesn't mean they've downloaded or even read that report. It's up to you to make sure they do and it's easier than ever before to do that because autoresponders are automatic.

Whether somebody got a free report or paid for a training course from you, figure out where they should be after 3 days and schedule a quick email saying something like: "Have you opened up the report yet, have you read the first page. If you have, you should be writing your first headline," for example.

What about after 7 days? Maybe by then, they should be on page 10, at which point they know how to format a sales letter. What about after 14 days? Maybe by then, they should be creating their very first sales letter and it can't hurt to remind them to open up the report, free or paid, flip to page 10 or 20 or wherever they should be and complete the assignment in that report or at least supply the knowledge to their business.

Trust me, you are not being a bother. Most people who sell products don't follow up and don't make sure that people get the most out of their money.

Email #6: Part 1 And Part 2 (Dangling Carrot)

You definitely want to train your subscribers to be look out for the next email from you. The most common sensible way to do this is to add the phrase "Part 1" to your subject line or to the body of your message.

Let's pretend that in your free copywriting course, you were helping people decide if they should offer a 30-day guarantee or a 60-day guarantee. On one day, you could tell people "here is why you're going to want to have a 30-day guarantee" and at the end of that message, instead of going into the 60-day guarantee, you could tell them that there is a very important time when the 60-day guarantee makes more sense than a 30-day guarantee and to look out for the next email from you tomorrow explaining that.

This gives subscribers a good reason to check in tomorrow and at the same time provides them with a quick training course that doesn't last for too long.

Email #7: Broadcasted Personal Response

Let's use the example of the copywriting course again. What if one of your subscribers who has not bought emails you and asks how long someone can expect to take to write a sales letter or how quickly they can have a sales letter out in the open? You might be tempted to send them a quick response.

But what if you spend a couple of extra seconds on that response and made it about half a page long? Well guess what, now you have an additional email you can send out to your subscribers. If one person asks that question, chances are 10 others have the same question but didn't bother to email you.

That means that your entire list can benefit from one person's answer, plus at the same time you've devoted extra effort into answering that person's question, so everybody wins.

Email #8: Why Didn't You Buy?

If I don't know what to put in my autoresponder sequence next, I'll ask people why didn't they buy. I'll explain to them that I've already gotten around all their objections, I've already given them all the free training they need, the only thing that's left for them to do is buy and take the next step.

It seems like a silly or a pointless email to send but this kind of email gets me the most responses more than any other email I have ever sent to my list and it works over and over again in any niche for any product.

Email #9: The Relationship Builder

When I'm going through the product launch process, I like to ask subscribers what's holding them back or what have been their experiences in this niche. People might say for copywriting that they hate writing and then I will know in my launch emails or in my sales letter or maybe even in the exact product to explain how to write sales copy by dictating it.

If someone has a really good case study – for example, they found that their short sales letters converted better than the long sales letters, I can use their case study to prove my point. It all comes back to using real results and real people in your marketing than making new things up.

Email #10: Commitment and Consistency

I want to save you a lot of missed opportunities when marketing to your list by telling you right now that people love to respond to things. Look at how many letters to the editors are on the newspaper or how many text in votes come on American Idol or how many people call in to radio stations.

If your subscribers can change the direction of your emails or of your marketing, they feel involved. If you're launching a new product but it's not out yet, what would happen if you emailed your list and asked them if they are planning on buying this product?

Justify this by saying you want to know how many people will be in the membership so you know how much time to devote to it or how many people will be attending your webinar so that you know how long to run it or my personal favorite, will you comment on my blog so I know how many comments to leave open before closing up that blog post.

By getting people to agree to something before they buy, even if it's just with a simple email message, they will feel like they have to do what they promised. If somebody promises to attend your webinar but later on they missed it, they'll feel bad because they promised something to you and did not deliver. This is definitely a fun tactic you should try to not only get more response from your list, but make them feel more involved as well.

I hope now that you've discovered these 10 types of emails to send to your list that you no longer have writer's block when it comes to sending out today's email, tomorrow's email or even filling up an entire autoresponder sequence.

Which one of these was your favorite? Please leave me a comment below letting me know and how you are personally going to use this in….

Reading time: 2 - 3 minutes

Quick question: how the heck are you going to send an e-mail every day to your list, if you don't already?

Inside "Time Management on Crack" I show you the five different types of e-mails I regularly send to my list... and six more types of blog posts I write.  Guess what, every time you send a blog post is a chance to e-mail your list three more times per blog post.

Oh yeah, plus I have a formula to launch a product in five-step e-mail sequence.

Guess what all that gives you?

• Five follow-ups (per thing you are offering)...
• Six times three blog post notification e-mails (that's 18 more)...
• Plus five e-mails to launch the product... even if you're only promoting as an affiliate.

Five plus eighteen plus five is 28 e-mails. So yes, you can promote one thing for a month, or even one week at a time for four months.

You Just Gotta Follow a Formula!

That and remember e-mails should be short and only have one call to action.

Never broadcast an autoresponder email with signature links.  Or with 3 SEPARATE URLs.  It's ok to mention the same URL multiple times.

But you might say, Robert, I've got 10 different URLs.  People need to see them all.

Fine.  Just space them out over 10 weeks.  Week 1, all you're doing is giving different reasons, and on some days just reminding them, to visit URL #1... every day of the week.

During week 2 you transition into URL #2 and keep promoting that all week.

And so on.  So now you don't have to give people a 10-step process (because they WILL get confused)... just commitment and consistency them.

Just one call to action, simple steps, and follow a formula... please.

If you think daily emails will "annoy, overload or confuse" your subscribers... the internet marketer known for unsubscribing from lists that mail too often, is still on my list after years and years.  And I mail every single day!  Here's what he had to say when I asked him:

"You're right. I don't usually stay on lists that email me every day. Your stuff is short, useful and interesting enough to keep me reading. Doesn't hurt that your products rock, either."

-- Paul Myers

There you have it.  How often you mail is irrelevant. What does matter is: short length, interesting messages, and good offers.

Do you disagree, or do you think I'm awesome?

Reading time: < 1 minute

Price training your list and your customers IS real. If people are used to getting everything from you for $10, there's going to be a price shock if you jump to $500.

So you're stuck working way too hard trying to land 10-dollar cheapskate customers.

You need to work your way up to at least 100 bucks per sale.  Consider if you want to raise 700 bucks... you can either make 7 sales at $100, or 100 sales at $7. Which do you think is easier?  Getting just seven sales. Read More »

Reading time: 2 - 2 minutes