Tag: kitten

Your List is Your Baby

I want to introduce you to my new kitty.

His name is Peaches (short for "Peaches and Cream") and he is a 3 month old tabby. I got him over the weekend and today (Monday) we are leaving him alone at home for the first time.

He is the most mellow (and clumsy) kitten I have ever met. But here's the thing... he's basically my baby and I wouldn't give him away to anyone.

Heck... look at him... a kitten that cute... if I didn't take care of him, someone else would!

In the same way, your mailing list is your baby. Giving those subscribers away would be a stupid, stupid thing.

Every once in a while someone asks why the heck don't I promote affiliate programs up the wazoo like so many other internet marketers with decent-sized mailing lists.

Why don't I participate in product giveaways... why don't I do lots of joint ventures...

When you promote someone else's product as an affiliate, you are building your list for them. Say you get a sale and get your $47 or $97 commission... your ride ends there.

Meanwhile that guy who runs the affiliate program captures the customer's e-mail address after a sale and gets to market to that person over and over and over.

So, when you have a list and you promote an affiliate program, you are copying some of your paying subscribers to someone else's list... that person can probably outsell the heck out of you too.

When you promote other peoples' stuff, you sacrifice future sales. What you want to do is setup an affiliate program and get others to promote it to THEIR lists.

Of course you can network with other people in your niche... but please, think twice about giving your list away.

Let me tell you something else about Peaches. He is spoiled, even after these first few days. He has a really bad cold... so I got him a humidifier.

He has fancy kitten food. Yesterday we fed him "California Roll" kitten food and tomorrow's flavor will be "Turducken" -- that's turkey inside a duck, inside a chicken.

I was reading some of the ingredients on his "Surf & Turf" kitten food... it contains lobster, and different kinds of apples!

Kitten food!

My question to you today is: do you spoil your list in the same way?

Obviously I have things to do so I'm going to draw the line somewhere. The same is true with my list. I don't treat my list like crap. I follow up with them. I unsubscribe troublemakers from my list.

When you have a mailing list, making money is the bottom line... but if you don't treat it like your baby, someone else could mine the gold out of that list before you can.

My list gets hungry and my best subscribers are more than happy to pay me for my information. There's nothing wrong with that.

Build your list using as many paid buyers as possible. Weed out the freebie seekers. Be very careful about where you send your subscribers and be wary of promoting the latest hyped-up product just because everyone else is doing it.

Honestly, if you train your list to only want free information, or low-cost information, you're going to fall flat when it comes time to pitch the big-ticket items.

Establish a sales funnel. Send automated follow-ups to your list to keep it from going stale. Promote one-time-offers to your other products.

Here is a way to improve your customer relations in one minute or less...

Just say "hi." If you haven't sent a mailing to your list in a while, take a second right now to say "hi" to them. It doesn't matter what you say. Tell them what sites you worked on today. Ask them a question.

You dont have to have some fancy, thought out message, you don't need to write a 70-part follow-up autoresponder series, just say "hi." Do it right now and come back to this blog post... it won't take very long.

My kitty is perfectly happy when I just say "hi" to him... I don't always need to bring a treat. I don't always need to get something out of it.

Comment below and share your favorite tactic to warm up your list... remember, I need 10 comments if you want me to continue posting blog entries.