Smart Women and the Unsubscribe Link

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Guest

Recently, I was having lunch with a friend who was feeling like her email in-box was being attacked with messages – sound familiar? We’ve all had this happen before and there may be times when we are the guilty culprit-unconsciously I might add.

I continued to ask my friend a few questions about this situation and I quickly began to understand how this might have happened. She was at an event and dropped her business card in a fish bowl to win a free gift that piqued her interest. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the lucky winner, however within three days of the event, she received three emails from the person who was giving away the free gift. Each email contained information about three separate programs/products this person was marketing – none of which my friend had any interest.

Let me ask you a question: Before the discovery of email – when the phone or fax was your main source of communication, would you call someone three days in a row and each time have a different offer you were marketing to them? I already know the answer and you do too. No. Why would you allow that to happen in your business today?

I have a suspicion that the person sending the emails doesn’t have her automated email sequence set up properly. It’s essential that you understand what’s going on in your business-especially when it comes to early communication with your ideal client who’s excited and interested in potentially working with you. Your brand and your image are at stake here. My friend had a genuine interest in the free gift. She liked her initial conversation at the event with the individual but is now completely turned off and has clicked the unsubscribe link.

Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts that will help stop your unsubscribe rate and start creating online relationships that turn into profit:

1. Do become your own subscriber – One of the best action steps you can take in your business is to occasionally sign up for your own offers. You may be surprised at the information you begin to receive in your in-box. Take yourself through your own process and make sure it’s the message you want communicated to your reader.

2. Do keep your promise – Make sure you send people exactly what was promised and nothing else without getting their permission. If you promise to send them a free report, audio or CD, make sure it goes out in a timely manner. This goes a long way to create a positive connection and establish credibility. For example, when people sign up to receive my snail mail CD at an event, my team has another form at the table for them to check the box if they would like to receive my ezine as well. If they don’t check the box, they get the CD – nothing more. Within a few days after the event, I personally follow-up with attendees via email to invite them to subscribe to my ezine and future updates.

3. Do request a connection on Social Media – One of the best ways to start a relationship is to connect with people on the major social media channels – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you are using social media to share your expertise and insight on your industry, your ideal client will jump over to your blog or website and sign up on their own. They will want to keep up with your posts and perspective.

4. Do test to see what works – There is a fine line on how much email your subscribers will want to receive from you. Every community is different and there is no hard and fast rule on this. The only way to know what your list enjoys is to test. If you are offering good content and sprinkle in your offers to work with you or invest in your products or programs, then people will enjoy hearing from you. In addition, if you are doing a specific launch of a teleseminar, product or program with time-sensitive dates and bonuses, this is, of course, the exception and your followers will understand and be grateful for the reminders.

5. Don’t automatically add people to your list – If someone gives you their business card, it does not mean they want to receive your ezine. I ask before I add them and then make a note on the back of the card if they confirm that this is something they would enjoy. Adding people to your list without their permission can be reported as spam but more importantly, damage your reputation and slow the referral process.

Your subscribers, followers or as some like to call it, your “tribe” love you and the great content you provide. Make sure your initial contact is one that creates a favorable impression and moves the reader closer to you and the service or product you provide.

Anything is possible. Everything is waiting for you.

*****

[stextbox id=”custom”]Joy Chudacoff, ICF, PCC, is the founder of Smart Women Smart Solutions®, a Professional Certified Coach to 1000’s of women, Motivational Speaker, and Entrepreneur. She publishes a weekly buzz generating ezine, Reflections On Life and Business for Women Entrepreneurs. If you’re ready take your coaching business to the next level, get your FREE Tips, FREE Report, FREE MP3 and be the first to hear about my exciting new program for coaches and consultants at Smart Women Smart Solutions Coaching.[/stextbox]

Article Source: www.ladypens.com

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How To Get Others To Promote You NOW

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Guest

By Jimmy D. Brown of Traffic F.U.E.L.

See if you can spot the similarity.

What do the following three statements have in common?

1. I can’t do it right now, but maybe later.
2. I’ve already got my mailings scheduled.
3. Let me get back to you.

Got the similarity spotted?

These are all typical responses that most people get when asking partners and affiliates to promote their offers.

Chances are you’ve gotten answers much like these, right?

Don’t despair … there are ways around the barriers of reluctance and passiveness.

Let me share some simple ideas for getting affiliates to take action on your promotions quickly. I use the acronym “N.O.W.” to describe three ways to get others to promote you now…

N – News

In journalism, no one wants to be “scooped” when it comes to newsworthy items. Sharing some big story that another network or publication broke days ago is a big “no-no”. You always want to be first when it comes to getting the word out.

That same philosophy applies to what I’ve labeled “The Principle of First”. The idea is simple: being “first to market” aids in responses. Those who let their contacts know about your news promptly will generate the greatest results. If they wait, someone else will break the news.

So, to apply this principle, you simply need to create some newsworthy buzz that your affiliates and partners can’t pass up on sharing with their network of influence.

CASE STUDY

Several months ago I decided that I was going to remove the archives from one of my membership sites. This announcement served as a strong motivator to get my affiliates to promote my site promptly before someone else did. The result was almost 500 new members paying monthly fees!

If you make dramatic changes to your offer, or create some other kind of “story” or “news” that warrants discussion promptly, you’ll find you can get many fence-setters active in promoting you.

O – Occasions

Another great way to motivate affiliates to get active is to use “occasions” that have a real deadline involved.

Some examples include –

* Product launches
* Firesales
* Live events (teleseminars, workshops, etc.)
* Contests
* Special offers
* Limited quantities

This is what might be referred to as “The Principle Of Force”. That is, you MUST promote the offer now or miss out simply because the offer will no longer be valid. You “force” participation.

For example: If you have a 3-day “firesale” set for a specific date, then anyone interested in earning commissions for referring customers to the “firesale” would be “forced” to promote it during your pre-determined timeframe or they’d miss out because the event will end.

My recommendation is that you schedule some kind of “occasion” every quarter. That should give you four significant spikes in your revenue each year, which can be a tremendous boost to your bottom line.

W – Wants

What do your partners and affiliates want? Seriously, stop and think about that for a moment. In fact, go one step further than that and ASK them a simple question…“What would it take for you to promote this offer this week?”

Make it happen.

I want you to remember the intangibles here: the sales of your initial offer aren’t really all that important. (Don’t freak out, hear what I have to say 🙂 It’s building a lead list, an affiliate list and a customer list along with ADDITIONAL offers over time that makes the real money.

Consider this –

Option A:

Miss Ima Guru ignores your request to promote your offer as it currently stands.

Option B:

Miss Ima Guru accepts your modified offer which includes giving her 100% of the revenue she generates. You make nothing off her promotion…but in the process of her promotion she adds 500 new subscribers to your list, 75 new affiliates and 60 new customers.

Which would you rather have?

Whatever it takes to get people to promote your offer now, make it happen.

*** NOTE ***

Now, let me make a simple suggestion here: The deal you make should be directly proportional to the potential results the partner represents.

Some affiliates and partners bring more to the table and should be offered more in order to get them to participate.

That being said, you can get virtually any affiliate to promote you now if you make it worth their while. So, ask them, “what will it take?”

This is what I call “The Principle Of Fear”. That is, a feeling of “This is such a compelling offer, I can’t afford to miss out on this deal.”

All of this adds up to more involvement and participation among your affiliates and partners…

N – News +
O – Occasions +
W – Wants =
——————-
Other people promoting you NOW!

—————–
Jimmy D. Brown is the publisher of Traffic Jam newsletter and the owner of Traffic F.U.E.L. membership site. Drop by today to learn how to get completely free traffic to any website. Get your free traffic newsletter at http://lonewolfmuskoka.ca/recommends/JimmyDBrownFUEL

I’ve Discovered the Problem With Internet Marketing — It’s Me!

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Bill (LoneWolf) Nickerson

I’ve had an epiphany. A breakthrough realization. I now know what is the problem with internet marketing and list building. It’s me! That’s right, me.

“Well,” I hear you ask “how do you know this?”

Great question. I know this because an internet marketer told me so.

Let’s get into the story. I signed up for a free membership site which put me onto a mailing list. So far I’m sure that your familiar with how this works. The membership site had a collection of free downloads — eBooks, software, etc. It was basically a collection of PLR and MRR products. No problem, I checked a few out and didn’t see much that was of interest to me.

Then the emails came. Nothing out of the ordinary. Typical of the current crop of ad swap list builders. Nothing that I couldn’t handle. This list builder was no worse (or better) than most of the lists I’ve signed up for. Didn’t really stand out in terms of what he/she was offering.

After about 2 weeks I got an email that had 4 of my unsubscribe triggers in it. Since I hadn’t seen anything outstanding from this person I decided that it was time to unsubscribe. Then the little feedback dialog box came up. So I pointed out the reasons why I was unsubscribing. Usually this is the end of the story (although I’ve had a couple polite “Thank you for the feedback” type emails). This time was different.

First, we’ll start with my feedback:

Comments:
Your subject line in the last email triggered 2 things that I hate — using Re: and mentioning payments.
Also, you don’t mention anything about the product except that it is “normally $47”.
Finally, you’ve used blank lines to push your unsubscribe info further down the page — annoying and in violation of AWeber terms of use.

Not a lot of fluff in there, just the facts. Here’s what I got back.

Waaaa Waaaaa

You’re like one of these people that look to find stuff to complain about…
You’re also probably one of these guys that purchase something and then find a reason to demand a refund.
I mean, it’s not like you were paying for membership anyways…

Scram off and don’t come back around… I for sure don’t need you or your complaints and attitude… In other words,
GET LOST !!!

Oops. I guess I came across too harsh somehow. This poor fellow must be having a bad day and has decided to take it out on me.

Hi XXXXXXXXXX

I’m sorry that my constructive criticisms offended you. I figured that rather than just unsubscribe I’d let you know why I did. Sorry that you really didn’t want to hear it. You might want to turn that feature off in the autoresponder. It will save both you and your unsubscribers the time.

And I was paying with my time which you obviously don’t care about. And I could have become a paying customer at some point, but now I never will.

I have never purchased anything and looked for a reason to refund it. I also don’t look for stuff to complain about, but I do find lots of it as there are lots of people out there like you. I always hope for the best when I subscribe to a list. And I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Best of luck in the future. I hope you don’t tell too many people to GET LOST!! though. It’s pretty hard to sell things when you do that.

Ciao
Bill

Finally, the epiphany email:

You wasn’t going to order anything through us anyways…

Remember, you unsubscribed…

I don’t even want customers like yourself…

You aren’t interested in our services and products…
You are only interested in nosing around different marketers to find out what they are doing, marketing etc..
I have ways to know what others are up to, but don’t pay that much attention until someone like you finds stuff to bitch at.
I really need to eliminate more just like you, but I’m laid back – cool until someone like yourself comes along.
I can take constructive criticism, but yours wasn’t in that nature… It was more like you wanted to take a piss on something…

It’s people like you that are part of the problem in this niche

NOT part of the answer….

So, now we know. I’m the problem. If only I didn’t expect marketers to be honest and have respect for my time when they email something. If only I didn’t expect people to provide me with something of value rather than endless ads. If only I didn’t expect to build a relationship of trust and respect with someone before I buy their products.

So, to all you struggling internet marketers out there, I’m sorry that I’m part of the problem.

NOTE: This post is a Ramblings Classics. It was originally published at Ramblings on October 14, 2010.

5 Reasons To Use Giveaway Events To Build Your List And 3 Not To

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Bill (LoneWolf) Nickerson

Growing Your List is Tough

I’ve been trying out the world of Giveaway events lately to build some of my lists. I’ve had some mixed success and I think it’s time to share a bit of what I’ve learned. I’ll assume that you have a general idea of what a giveaway event is all about (if you don’t, contact me).

Five Reasons To Use Giveaway Events

1 – They’re Free!

You can join a giveaway event as a contributor for free at most events. There are some events that require you get a minimum number of points before you can contribute — you will either need to buy points or get contributors to sign up with your referral. But most allow you to have a gift to contribute just for signing up. You can upgrade your membership if you like. This will give you the option to add more gifts to the event and even add OTO’s on the various landing pages. It also puts your gift higher up in the list when the members start pouring in.

But when your budget is tight, you can simply join at the free level and add your single gift. You will need to promote the event, both to potential JV partners and to general members once the event opens. If you don’t do this you’ll run the risk of having your gift removed from the list and you’ll get no sign ups.

2 – They’re Easy … ish

Once you get the hang of them, it is really easy to set your profile up. There are 2 main scripts that are used to run these and you’ll begin to recognize which one is being used just by the sign up page. The less common of the two will require you get points (from having referrals sign up) before you can add a gift. So until you’ve got a list of others who are using giveaways you’ll learn to avoid those ones.

Profile: You sign up with your email address and create a user name. NOTE: This will put you on the email list of the event organizer(s). Then you can update your profile with a few pieces of info. I always put in a decent profile pic to help build my brand but you might want to use a logo or just leave the image blank. Not all of the events use the image.

Promote for Contributors: Get your referral link and start promoting. You need to make sure that you are promoting to marketers at this point since your goal is to get other JV’s to sign up under you.

Gift: Before the event opens to the general members, you’ll need to add your gift. An image, a short description and the links to your squeeze page are needed here. Make your copy compelling and you might try to customize your squeeze page for the event.

Some events require a direct download page so that some upgraded members can get your gift without joining your list. It seems unfair, but if your free gift is done properly you should have links back to your squeeze page or sales page. And there usually aren’t that many members who take that option.

Promote for Members: Once the doors are open you’ll need to promote again. This time, it is a general promotion for anyone who might be interested in the niche. Once again you’ll get points for referred members and that will bring your gift higher in the list.

3 – You Can Make a Bit of Dough

There is money to be made in a giveaway event. When someone that you refer joins and purchases an upgraded membership or one of the one time offers, you will receive an affiliate commission. Some events increase the percentage for upgraded members.

This isn’t a big consideration since the primary focus (at least for me) is to build my lists, but it’s nice to know that you could make a few bucks at the same time.

4 – You’ll Meet Your Competition (and Potential Partners)

At a giveaway event, once the doors open you can go in to see what others have to offer in the event. You’ll pick up valuable free information that you can use to build your business (although you’ll also end up on lots of email lists — you’ll have to prune them as time goes on).

But there are two things you can get in addition to the free gifts. First, you can see what types of products are on the market (i.e. your competition). Secondly, you can make contacts with other marketers who have complementary products. JV partnerships and affiliate opportunities can be found if you watch for them.

5 – You’ll Build Your List

This is the ultimate benefit. Provided you’ve got a reasonably compelling free gift and decent copy in your promotional blurb and squeeze page you will add subscribers to your list. If you’ve managed to get the credits to keep your gift near the top of the list you’ll see more traffic than the end.

But either way, you’ll get some traffic. And at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about.

Three Reasons Not To Use Giveaway Events

Like all marketing tactics, giveaways are not perfect. They have some drawbacks that you need to watch out for.

1 – They’re Hard for Beginners

When you don’t have a list to begin with, it is pretty tough to promote an event. Who do you tell?

I struggled with this and actually got downgraded at one event since I didn’t get anyone to join as a contributor. Most of the other events let it slide but some are more strict than others. I promoted the events to my small lists and also hit my Twitter followers (you can imagine how well that worked 8=).

I did manage to grow my lists though. For this next round I’m planning to focus on building a list in the IM market so that I have a higher possibility of contributors when it’s time to promote. My other lists are not really interested in getting traffic or building mailing lists.

I’m also looking at other ways to promote such as traffic exchanges and list exchanges. These are interesting topics that I’ve been leery of up til now, but I’m learning how they work and giving them a try.

2 – They’re Not For All Niches

The most common events are in the fabled Make Money Online niche. They’re full of SEO, Twitter/Facebook secrets, list building, PLR/MRR, etc. These are great events if you are building your list in that niche.

But I struggled with building my personal development lists. In the MMO niche there is some cross over but a large percentage of the crowd just doesn’t care about goal setting or simplifying your life. It is tougher to find giveaway events in other niches, but it is worth it if you can find a good one.

3 – They Add a Lot of Freebie Seekers

You’ll get a lot of people who just sign up for the free gift. They may hang on your list or they may unsubscribe right away. Don’t get discouraged when that happens — it will happen. But that is the nature of the internet. Many people are only out to get what they can for free. Every marketer has to face that.

But this does mean that your list may not be as responsive as you would like. You may have heard that a list is worth $1/month/member or something along those lines. Well, a list full of freebie seekers will be worth a lot less than a list of buyers. So keep that in mind if you decide to use giveaway events.

The Bottom Line

As Hamlet might have asked, “To JV, or not to JV? That is the question.”

The answer is not cut and dried. If you don’t have a way to get other marketers to the event and promote it then you run the risk of putting a bit of effort out and having your gift cut from the event. If your niche isn’t a good match for the event then you’ll get very little return for your effort.

But when you get the right event you’ll see an influx to your list. I haven’t seen the kind of numbers that they promotional materials promise at any of the events, but I do see enough new subscribers to make it worth while for me.

My plan is to join 1 or 2 events at a time and experiment with different types of offers, copy and promotional techniques.

If you would like to try this as well, you can see what events I’m joining and promoting on the Giveaway Events page. If one of them interests you then join up and I’ll see you there!

You can also subscribe to the newsletter. In addition to keeping you up to date with Giveaway Events and other opportunities, it’ll have tips, news and free stuff periodically.

NOTE: This post is the first of the Ramblings Classics. It was originally published at Ramblings on April 15, 2011.