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Always Ask For Permission…And Then Ask Again

May 7, 2014March 25, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Email marketing techniques

Email marketing techniques: A week ago we discussed the issue of spam emails and asked the question “What was spam?”

The key element was that it was an email sent out to those people who did give you their permission to send them emails in the first place.

An example I gave was receiving permission for sending blog updates to your subscribers but then bombarding them with marketing emails instead.

Here is what I would suggest in such a situation.

Firstly never bombard anyone with marketing emails. This overkill approach is nothing short of email bullying and should be avoided at all costs.
When someone signs up for any of your lists (remember you can have lots of different lists with RocketResponder) ensure that you are always upfront and honest with them about what they are signing up to.
The best way to avoid misunderstandings is to make clear exactly what sort of email communications they will receive in the “welcome email” you send to all new subscribers.
In this email really draw attention to the fact that people can unsubscribe from your list at any time – including right now. For example they might have signed up in error or after reading your welcome email decided that they do not want to hear from you after all.

It is also a good idea to contact your list – say every six months – to ask them if they are happy to continue receiving emails from you. This serves to remind them of who you are and what you do and serves as an opportunity for you to “take the temperature” of your list. By this I mean you get to see if the people on your list are still interested in hearing from you.

Don’t worry if people unsubscribe – if they don’t want to hear from you then there really is no point in sending them emails in the first place. And the people who do like you will like you even more for having taken the time to send them an email asking how they were.

Leave Subscribers Alone When They Unsubscribe

May 5, 2014March 25, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

When people unsubscribe

From time to time the question arises which goes something like:

“What should I do about people who unsubscribe from my list?”.

So let me throw the question back at you…what should you do when people unsubscribe from your list?

Here are some possible things you could do:

thank them for being on your list and say goodbye
thank them for being on your list and ask them if they are really sure they want to leave
point out that they have just unsubscribed and hint that they really must have made some terrible mistake and should come back right now
bribe them to come back with some free gift or other
plead with them to come back because, well just because
ignore them, they have left already.

Personally I would do the last one and that is the recommended response of the entire Rocket Responder team.

Put it like this. They dumped you. Let them go and move on.

Five Reasons Your Emails Are Not Working

May 2, 2014March 25, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Emails Are Not Working

If you are not getting the results from your emails that you think you deserve then, in all likelihood, you are probably doing something wrong. When your emails are not working there is usually something that you can do to put things right.

Remember that your subscribers signed up to your list to receive emails from you…they never promised that they would read them or even open them.

Getting over those two hurdles is your job so do it as best as you can.

Here are five reasons you might not be getting open rates as good as you could:

Your Subject Lines Are Boring – Get this wrong and people won’t open your email. You must capture people’s attention with the subject line and give them an immediate reason to open your email.
Your Content Is Boring – If you are doing ok with subject lines then make sure your content is up to par too.
Your Content is Not Relevant – You can send out the most interesting and useful content in the world but if it is not relevant to your audience then they will never act on it. Always target your emails to the needs of your audience.
Your Call To Action is Missing or Unclear – If you want someone to do something, such as click on a link, then make this obvious; really, really obvious. Preferably just give your recipients one thing to do so they don’t get confused by a whole range or possible options.
You send far too many emails – Let’s just say you get everything right with your emails. They have fantastic subject lines, interesting and relevant content and contain a clear call to action…but still your open rates are declining. It could be because you are sending too many emails. People can get too much of a good thing and that includes your emails. How many is just right will vary from niche to niche and from individual to individual. However if you think you are sending too many emails then cut down things a bit and see what happens.

Affiliate Marketing (ii) How Many Affiliate Products Should I Promote?

April 30, 2014March 25, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Promoting affiliate products

Promoting affiliate products: This is the second of two RocketResponder blog posts addressing the subject of affiliate marketing.

Last time we looked at one way of choosing affiliate products to promote while today we will discuss numbers.

This post actually comes from the following question which was recently asked to me: “How many affiliate products should I promote?”

This is another very sensible question and one that almost every new affiliate marketer must wrestle with when they first start online.

There is no easy answer like 7, 12 or 42 and even the best answer will have rather a large element of “well it depends” when discussing the issue.

The factors on which it could depend might include:

the time you have to devote for affiliate marketing
your budget (promoting multiple products may being in more money but will have higher costs such as marketing for example) and
the availability of suitable products in your chosen niche

However the golden rule should be that you should never, ever, spread yourself too thinly by promoting too many products.

This will dilute your overall effort which could result in you getting average or bad results across multiple products rather than getting good to great results in a small number of products.

Also if you promote “x” on Monday, “y” on Tuesday, “z” on Wednesday and jump back to ‘a” on Thursday then your subscribers will think you are just chasing the money and could not care less about what you promote as long as you get paid.

I cannot emphasize enough how off putting this really is.

Therefore it would be far better to start by promoting only ONE product, preferably something you actually use yourself (an obvious example would be an autoresponder like RocketResponder) and become an expert in it.

Share your expert knowledge of the product with your list, hold online advice classes, encourage your potential customers to come to YOU with their questions rather than the product owner and the commissions will follow.

Only then should you move on and promote a second product – use some of the money you have built up from promoting the first product to begin to promote the second and then move onto a third when the time is right.

It can very often be far better to become a master of a very limited number of products than try to juggle the promotion of several at once – especially if the products are spread over multiple niches or specialist areas.

Become an expert in one small niche and dominate…this is one area where it can really pay to be the big fish in the small pond.

Affiliate Marketing (i) Choose Your Affiliate Products With Care

April 28, 2014March 25, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Affiliate Marketing

I had a couple of questions about affiliate marketing recently so I have chosen to address them in two RocketResponder blog posts.

The first question I got was: “How do I know what affiliate products to promote?”

This is a great question because there must be hundreds of thousands of potential products out there from which you could potentially earn good affiliate commissions.

It is really tempting to think along the following terms – well if I choose products which have relatively high price tags and large affiliate payouts then this is the quickest way for me to make a lot of money.

I think there are many people who think exactly like this but I am not sure it is producing particularly good results.

The problem is that this approach looks at things from the wrong perspective…you are looking at the problem from your own perspective and not thinking at all about the point of view of your customer.

Instead focus on the product or service you are thinking of promoting and fully investigate what it has to offer a buyer.

Here are some questions I would ask myself when looking for affiliate products to promote:

what does the product actually do?
does it deliver what it says it will deliver?
would I use it myself?
would I be happy recommending this product to a close family member or friend?
is it good value for money?
do I feel good about myself promoting it?
can I get excited about this product?
does the company or person behind it have any proven track record?
what do existing customers say about the person or company behind this product?
is this product likely to be here for the long term?

These are just some of the questions that I came up with off the top of my head but they are all important questions which need to be addressed.

Notice that the entire focus is on the product or service…ie what benefits it could have to the end user, because this is what you are selling.

Satisfy yourself that the product is good, then learn how to use it and you will be best placed to sell it to your customers.

The commission structure…well that should be the last thing on your mind.