Tag: List Building

Sending an E-Mail Every Day is Scary, Right?

June 9, 2010 • 21 Comments

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?

Seven Things #3: Second Chance Offers

December 17, 2008 • 15 Comments

Stu McLaren (The Nicest Guy on the Internet) interviewed me live last night in between Jim Edwards and Joel Comm.  When he asked me what's the most signifcant change I made in 2008, the very first thing that came to mind, and therefore the thing I blurted out, was "automation."

If you can write a quick e-mail, or article, or blog post, chances are you can write 2 more really quick posts, even if they say nothing but, "Remember a few weeks ago when I said this?"   Then lead into the exact same call to action...

Answering Stu's question reminded me of when I was at the Warrior Event in Austin earlier this year, when I picked up a really great tip from Ron Capps -- the NicheProf!

We were talking about sending offers to your list and how we both sometimes send new offers to our list for old products.

Ron will send a mailing out to his list promoting a product,
then send the same offer out again in 90 days!

On average, he promotes the exact same offer 5 or 6 times (one time every ninety days) before it completely runs out of gas.

That is a freaking cool way of looking at mining gold from your list.

That's what our plan is with the Daily Seminar membership site... simply because of attrition.  I launched my first recurring membership site almost three years ago and it began with a big splash, but we didn't market it after that, and the membership slowly died off.

But you can do that with your one time products as well!

Two Products a Week?!

At one point many people on forums thought I was a machine -- that I pump out two products a week consistently. Not true. I just have so many products I created in the past year or so that it seems that way.

People forget. People don't read every single e-mail. People will look at your offer and save it for "later" ... which ends up being never.

In fact I promoted a product from 2001 (Software Secrets Exposed) ... all I did was I took an old product, slapped a dimesale onto it and told my list. $1200 in a day -- on a SUNDAY -- probably about an hour's worth of work total.

Nevermind the costs I put in, I'd already broke even on the resale rights from an earlier promo I did for that product.

The best thing was... because I had it on a timer... I didn't even do any work that day.

Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)

Here's what I want you to do: The next time you send a mailing out to your list, write the mailing a second time and save it as a timed mailing to get sent out 90 days from now.

If you do that now, then just before Valentine's Day 2009, you'll get a nice little surprise bump in income!

It doesn't have to stop there. You know that 2001 product? Someone bought it and saw the 2001 copyright and asked how could the info still be relevant.

I responded with an e-mail explaining how 100% of the stuff in the book still applies today and how all the predictions Ben Prater made in 2001 are now true today.

After responding to that message, I worded it into a quick follow-up and added it to my autoresponder to go out SIX months later. Hit on an extra benefit in the follow-up that people missed or forgot about!

p.s. How's this for automation?  I wrote this blog post on April 24, 2008, when I was in a blog writing frenzy, and scheduled it for December 2008... so I wouldn't overload my readers.  It's only now being published 5 months later.  Just before it went live, I took about 60 seconds to make it current.  Best of both worlds.

Here's what we learned today:

  1. Send the same offer to your list every 90 days.
  2. You can promote the offer 5 to 6 times. (Over the course of 18 months.)
  3. Have it on a timer so you don't have to worry about it.
  4. If you can take the answer to a common fear and turn it into a sales message, do it!

Have you resurrected any dead offers successfully?  What about when you failed, how was that different?  Please leave a quick comment below.

Your List is Your Baby

June 30, 2008 • 22 Comments

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.

Automation

April 13, 2008 • 14 Comments

I've been in Austin at a conference for the past couple of days.

You have NO idea how it's been because I don't have access to a computer... I haven't been on one since last week!

I don't own a laptop... I spend too much time in front of a computer as it is, why would I want to bring one with me? Plus, I travel light... just one bag to avoid baggage claim. And there is all that fuss with airport security where they have to inspect the laptop separately.

How the heck am I talking to you then? Automation. I wrote this blog entry before I even got on a plane. I scheduled it to post sometime during my trip.

I scheduled a timed mailing to my opt-in list. It said to check out this blog post, so it could get traffic, comments, and sales of some of my products.

When I get a product ready for launch, I'll write the sales copy before it's even finished so I can post a WSO and get it approved... then I'll pay when it's ready to launch.

I recently launched a video series called Head First PHP. I bought up rights to an existing product and made it my own by recording daily videos.

Instead of recording long 20 to 30 minute videos, I recorded them 5 minutes of video at a time. This allowed me to space these out into "daily" videos.

The secret is... I'm not actually recording just one of these a day. I recorded them all at once, uploaded them all at once, wrote some quick autoresponder follow-ups for each day saying, "Hey... check out today's video" ... with a link to the video.

I put in an afternoon of work... and the effect is that it APPEARS I'm diligently providing updates every single day. That's pretty cool, right?

This and last month, I've been documenting my work using Camtasia videos and have been able to split up all my work into 10 minute tasks.

I'm ALMOST at the point where I can do all the work I need to do ONE day of the week (after I get home from my day job) and the everything is automated for the rest of the week.

When I first started out, I did a lot of freelance consulting and product launches. I focused very little on list building and automation. The result was that I would make $2000 one month and $200 the next. My income was very unreliable.

Now that I am writing follow-ups and blog posts weeks in advance... now that I'm following up with prospects and customers every single day automatically... I've noticed that I measure my income on a daily basis, not a monthly one. It's reliable enough that I could quit my day job if I wanted to.

Comment below and tell me: Do you have automation in your business? Timed follow-ups? Scheduled mailings? Business systems?

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