How does email marketing work? Here’s a small excerpt that I think nails it.
…a better example would be comparing your list with a Special Interest TV Channel dedicated to your target market….
Now with this perspective in mind – put yourself in the “shoes” of your subscribers and consider the following:
- How long would you watch a TV Channel where the only thing it ever broadcasted were ads or infomercials?
- What would stop you from “changing the channel” if the channel you were watching seemed to get almost all of its story ideas and featured programs from other channels or networks?
- How much would you respect a TV Personality (or a public speaker) if absolutely every word out of their mouth was hyped up and pressuring you do to something?
Obviously, you’d quickly tune them out and plan on never revisiting that channel – or seeing that speaker – again, so help you God.
And yet this is how the majority of people run their “lists”.
Like a traffic strategy. And as a result, they torch their reputation and become an unwelcome, annoying intruder in their subscribers’ inboxes – ironically, without ever realizing it. And all the “proven” email tricks, headlines, best-converting solo promotions or otherwise marketing tricks will have trivial results at best.
Because they’ve clearly identified themselves as a one-trick-pony pitch artist. They’ve trained their list to expect nothing more than a shallow-coated AD each time they send out a broadcast, regardless of the headline (or promise).
And that is why their results are, or become, dismal. They no longer have “subscribers”. They merely have a list of emails, whose owners are either too lazy to unsubscribe or simply “tolerate” the emails and read something occasionally if they’re bored.
(Ironically, this leads many publishers to actually “hard sell” their list even more frequently, trying to milk a dying cow for all it’s worth…)
Now I’m not saying that you can’t sell stuff to your list.
On the contrary – you can sell, and sell a lot.
But it’s how you communicate with your audience that makes all the difference.
Just like a successful TV Channel, you can make a fortune by lining up a continuous mix of great content, paid content and ads.
Now, here’s how to do it the right way…
Part 1: Relentless Ad-Pounding VS a Compelling “Channel”
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Pretty simple when you think about it that way, huh? I definitely recommend checking out the entire report if you do any email marketing yourself (or know you should). It’s a great read that deals with the fundamentals we all seem to forget as time goes by (or never learned in the first place).
If you’re looking for ideas, just pair up people’s hobbies with your email list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hobbies. People pay attention to things (your future emails) when it’s about their hobby. And here’s another hint – Facebook Ads is amazing for these types of campaigns.
