Paradigm Shift: How You Sell With Email Is Changing
Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to recordings of Perry Marshall’s Live Workshop on email autoresponders held in Chicago. It’s some really great content, direct from one of the online marketers I trust the most.
Perry really hammered home a point that on some levels, I haven’t fully taken to heart in the past.
That point is, for long term success, you can’t expect to survive the changing online business environment, without fully cementing your place as a leader by constantly delivering trust-building quality content.
This isn’t anything new of course, but realizing how to truly embed this ethos into how you run your business, and in particular for us online entrepreneurs and how we market through email, is more difficult than you might think.
Why? Because it’s so easy to fall for the lure of the quick buck.
It’s too easy to be lazy, and most people aren’t prepared to wait and put in the effort to establish themselves. They want a return on their work in a matter of weeks or a few short months, not the years it’s going to take to build your following, set up systems and ultimately, establish a quality business.
Perry sums up this idea using a great example in how to operate an email marketing campaign using autoresponders.
Most online marketers in recent years have built email lists that they essentially use to constantly promote affiliate products and launches. Finding a marketer who sends content out to their list, even as often as 50% of the emails they send, is rare.
As Perry explains, once customers get sick of the spam, it’s those marketers who built an autoresponder system that uses quality content to foster trust, and not hit their customers with excessive pitches, who succeed.
When the water rises, only those who have built a strong fortification survive. The rest drown.
The water is definitely rising right now in the Internet marketing industry.
It’s pretty clear, in the make money niche, the majority of marketers, even the best ones, have at times abused their lists by sending out too much pitch and not enough content, and I’m including myself in this claim. This could have worked in the past, but we’re reaching a saturation point. It’s safe to say that long term, you won’t survive by sending only emails that ask people to buy something.
I know this is true, because I’ve felt the change in my business. Email response rates are down. I choose to say no to promoting new launches now more than ever before because I know each promotion I do damages relationships with my list. People are sick of the same pitches, from the same people using the same trigger points. Our customers are getting wiser to fluff and consequently gravitating towards substance.
Perry really emphasized this point throughout his workshop, and he’s not alone, I’ve taken the idea to heart in the last few months so much that it has shifted my entire focus in 2010.
I plan to continue to be about substance even more so than in the past, which considering most of my current marketing is about content, says a lot about how important I think this change is.
The Emotional Bank Account
How To Avoid Hype When You Sell
There’s an interesting challenge I’ve come up against many times, which I think most professional bloggers know well.
The challenge is how to sell something without using all that horrible “hype” that Internet marketers use.
But wait a second. Hype actually works, or at least good “sales copy” works if you call convincing people to buy what you sell your desired outcome.
The challenge is figuring out what level of “sales talk” to use when trying to sell. You don’t want to be accused of over-hyping something, nor do you want to put in such a weak effort that no one buys.
The problem unfortunately cannot be solved 100% because what is hype to one person is not to another. We all have our own internal “bullshit meter” as it might be labeled, based on all kinds of things like our personality, experience with marketing, emotional state at the time of reference, etc etc.
You can’t account for everything, but you can work with what you should hopefully know quite well – you and your potential customers- and attempt to meet the needs of both.
Membership Site Mastermind Reopens Tuesday November 3rd For 24 Hours Only
Did you read that sub-heading? I hope you did.
It might seem a little out of place, but I put it there because one of the messages I want you to take away from reading this blog post is that I’m reopening Membership Site Mastermind for one last day for all the stragglers and latecomers who didn’t join during the opening last week.
I know there are stragglers because they keep emailing me asking if they can squeeze in, so I’m giving you one last chance to take the program with me during this final run for 2009.
This will definitely be the last time it’s open this year. No more one day openings, no exceptions, if you email and ask no matter how good your excuse, you won’t be allowed in. That wouldn’t be fair to the hundreds of people who took initiative and joined when the doors were open.
You can sign up here from 11 AM EST US time on Tuesday for 24 hours only -
So, back to my original thought train…
Advanced Affiliate Marketing Strategies For Bloggers
Affiliate marketing is, and will likely always remain, my favorite method for making money online. At the risk of repeating myself, here’s why every blogger should get into the affiliate marketing game -
- You make a margin per product sale that is often as good or better than the person or company that produces the product
- You don’t have to do any product fulfillment, handle cancellations or any customer service whatsoever
- You have a huge range of products to choose from in most mainstream product categories
- You can enter new niches any time you like with zero switching cost, simply by finding a new product to promote as an affiliate (this is for those of you who like variety)
- If you have a product of your own, one of the best ways to get affiliates to promote your product is to make sales of their product as an affiliate first (this is a big one!)
I could go on, but let’s state the obvious and most important aspect: Affiliate marketing is great because you can make very good money for very little effort.
Don’t get me wrong, it requires effort to get to a situation where you can make money as an affiliate, but once you are there the actual process for making money is very, very simple. It’s as easy as writing a blog post or sending an email.
It’s Like Printing Money
I remember about four years ago reading all those hyped-up sales pages from Internet marketers, and I come across the phrase “it’s like printing money”.
I’ve never been a hater of sales copy, although obvious hype agitates me just like anyone else. I certainly believed that some people were enjoying a situation where they could just send emails and make big money, but I was personally very far away from that. Jealousy mixed with depression about my own results, were the dominant emotions I felt at the time when I read what other people were achieving apparently so easily.
My first attempt at “printing money” as an affiliate was with my blog when it was about six months old. I put in a couple of hours to write a blog post about Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide To Google AdWords and managed to print about $20 in commissions – one sale.
I was disappointed given it had taken me six months of consistent work on my blog to make that $20, however I was also encouraged. I could see given enough time and energy, that $20 could be $200 and then $2,000 and even $20,000. Today I have the audacity to believe it could be $200,000 one day too.
Fast forward to the year 2009 and the first six month’s of affiliate promotions have gone like this…
Podcast: How To Profit From Niche Websites By Adam Short – Part 2
Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.
Download the MP3 [ 42 Minutes - 19 MB]
If you missed part one of this series, make sure you listen to it first here -
How To Profit From Niche Websites By Adam Short – Part 1
Complete The System
This audio is the conclusion to my two-part interview with Adam Short, who is an expert at building profitable niche websites.
During this portion of the interview Adam explains the second half of his system, including how Adam builds traffic to his niche sites, how he then makes money from that traffic, how he uses email autoresponders to increase his profits (which can be templated to fit almost any niche) and how he increases his income by adding back-end products.
I love Adam’s system because it’s simple and I also find Adam, as a teacher, easy to learn from. If you appreciate my style of blogging I think you will also find Adam a helpful resource and someone you can learn from too.
This is definitely one of the best interviews I’ve featured on this blog, so make sure you listen to both parts one and two carefully. There are TONS of great ideas to be taken away from what Adam talked about, including several things you can begin applying immediately (like outsourcing to the Philippines and using Amazon.com to find profitable niches).
Do You Want More From Adam?
You can get more information from Adam Short at his Niche Profit Classroom website here – http://www.nicheprofitclassroom.com/
Show Notes
- Adam explains how his article marketing system works and why it can be so effective at bringing in free traffic from google
- Next we look at how Adam has made money from his niche sites once the traffic is in place
- Adam talks about one of his live sites on the topic of a favorite pet fish, and how the site continues to make over $1000 a month on autopilot
- Adam discusses his follow-up email marketing system which is used to convert more visitors into buyers
- We talk about adding back-end offers to increase the profit coming from niche sites
- Adam explains what his coaching program contains and offers a link to more free content
Part 2 Mp3 Download
Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 42 Minutes - 19 MB]
How Email Segmentation Made My List Stronger AND $31,940 More Profitable
This is a somewhat advanced email marketing tactic, although most serious email marketers having been doing it for years. For me though, this is something I’ve only recently been able to test because I haven’t had the technological resources to do so.
I recently upgraded my AWeber account to the “new” version. In case you missed the news about the new AWeber upgrades, the CEO Tom Kulzer and his team recently rolled out some nice advanced email marketing features.
The features let you create segmentations in your lists based on various elements, such as who opened your email and who clicked your links within the emails. There are other options as well, but for the purpose of this article let’s just focus on these two basic segmentations.
Before upgrading my account I was on the legacy version of AWeber, which is basically the same service, except I didn’t have as much power to segment my lists and consequently, beyond deciding which list I would broadcast too, I didn’t do much else. As a result, I generally hit all my newsletter with each message – a shotgun approach to email marketing.
Unfortunately (or really, fortunately) for me, my list is probably a bit larger than the average at AWeber, and with their new services came a new pricing structure, which meant I would pay more than five times per month than what I was previously, if I decided to upgrade. I eventually decided to bite the bullet because I know how good a service it is, how important my newsletter is to my business, and of course the primary reason – so I could test the new features.
Luckily for most of you reading this, if you are just starting out your email newsletter, the AWeber fee hasn’t really changed even for the new features. You’re still going to pay the very justified price of around the sub-$20 a month mark for a business-critical service. In my case, with some 40,000+ members of my newsletter, the fee is a little bit more.
In case you haven’t started your newsletter, here’s my review to help you decide whether AWeber is right for you – AWeber Email Autoresponder Review.
Now let me explain how I made use of the new features and how you can implement these advanced email marketing techniques…
