Or keep it happy, thriving, and responsive.
If you’re a solopreneur or service professional with a website, you know you need to build an email subscriber list to grow a stable, long-term business.
We have clients who are just starting their lists, and others who have lists numbering in the thousands. It doesn’t matter where you’re at on the list-building continuum: I’m going to give you three steps to growing a strong, stable, and responsive list.
Faithful TransformNation readers know that the best emails are content-rich and build a relationship with readers.
Unfortunately, there are still plenty of people out there who haven’t discovered this.
I don’t want any of you to have to repeat what one of my heroes did recently: he destroyed his list in three short weeks.
The Three-Week Plan to Killing a List
I used to like Joe Vitale.
And in the space of three weeks, he single-handedly destroyed much of the good will he had built with me over the years – and he did this without ever even meeting me.
Let me explain.
If you don’t know Joe, he’s one of the good guys. I’ve always thought of him as an ethical super-marketer. Joe started me on the path to becoming a copywriter, I still have the very first book I ever ordered from him, a slim little volume from Joe’s copywriting course I ordered through the mail probably twenty years ago.
Since then, he’s become a direct marketing whirlwind. I’ve liked a few of his later books; The Attractor Factor wasn’t half bad.
I like to watch what good marketers are doing – and if they offer a solid product, I’ll buy it. It was in this spirit I joined one of those lists that offer stuff from ten different people in exchange for my email address – and Joe was one of those ten. He was pushing a “Law of Attraction” product.
I have mixed feelings about the Law of Attraction crowd, but thought it would be cool to see what kind of auto-responder emails Joe would write, and to see if I could pick up any tips. The guy’s one of the kings of direct marketing copywriting.
Week one on Joe’s list
Once I joined his list, I received an email every day from Joe, the first few trying to push an expensive “Law of Attraction” coaching program, and the others each pushing some program or product from some person I don’t know, most of them conveniently Wal-Mart priced at $19.97.
In each daily email, I had one of two choices from Joe: Drop a few grand on “law of attraction” coaching, or drop twenty bucks on an eBook.
Week two on Joe’s list
As the emails kept coming, there were zero attempts to build a relationship with me, to get to know my needs. None of the emails offered any new information, none offered to teach me anything new or helpful – each email was simply a hard-core sales pitch for a string of loosely related products.
This was getting old, fast. I’m trying to figure out what’s happened to one of my early marketing heroes, a copywriting legend.
Maybe he’s having a bad month?
Week three on Joe’s list
Now, Joe can safely assume I’m interested in “Law of Attraction,” because that’s what brought me to that list. For the first few weeks, the products he pitched were kind of related.
Then, I receive an email with this subject line:
1,800 Money-Making Ideas Secret Manual
He then launches into an embarrassing over-the-top pitch for a program that leads me to guess it’s a marketing product.
Joe can be safe in assuming I’m interested in his first topic, what makes him think I’m at all interested in the second topic?
Say it ain’t so, Joe! What’ll it be next? Kitchen gadgets?
Now, to be fair, Joe himself probably isn’t even writing these emails. He probably has dozens of lists, many of them managed by partners.
These emails could have been written by some guy on the staff at the coaching company who doesn’t have a clue about how email marketing should work. But this string of ugly emails has Joe’s name all over them.
Here’s my point: Sending emails like this isn’t necessarily “wrong.” Sending them to the wrong audience segment is.
Why do good, smart people try to sell this way?
Every time I see an otherwise professional marketer taking this shotgun, all-or-nothing, throw-stuff-against-the-wall approach, I have to ask why.
Here are a few of my guesses:
Arrogance: Someone joins their list and the gooroo automatically assumes this person is a sponge just waiting with baited breath for every email. There are a few people I love reading, and I look forward to their emails – and it took them a long time and a lot of great content to earn that kind of attention from me.
Desperation: They’ve got bills to pay. They’ve got someone’s attention, and they’ve found from past experience that people on their lists drift after a few weeks. So they’d better go in for the kill, as fast as possible.
Ignorance: Maybe they just don’t realize that they have an opportunity here to actually develop a long-term relationship with their reader, and sell a lot more product down the road.
They Forget We’re People: It can be too easy for a marketer to begin thinking of “the list” in terms of numbers: email opens, conversions, opt-ins. I encourage my clients to refer to their subscribers as readers, each with their own unique and very personal needs. A list owner’s primary job is to find out what his or her readers want to read. And then write it.
Three Ways to Grow a Happy, Thriving List
1. Decide what your email goal is, and be upfront and direct about it in every email
It appears Joe really wants to sell his pricey coaching program, and if I would have responded to any one of his $19 early offers, I would have most likely received sales calls from one of those “coaching boiler rooms” pitching a $5,000 coaching program.
But Joe pretends he really just wants me to sell me a $19 eBook.
I know he could care less about that $19 sale.
Today’s sophisticated web consumer can sniff this stuff out a mile away.
Your Email Strategy #1
Know what your readers what to read, and then focus 80% of your emails on content that’s valuable, relevant, and useful to your audience. Occasionally, send highly relevant content emails that also offer a highly relevant and useful product. This should be your ratio: 80/20. On some of our sites, we favor a 90/10 ratio.
We’ve found that the higher our content to sales email ratio is, the higher our open rates and sales conversion rates are.
2. Sell at a price point at which your list is ready to buy
Joe’s expensive program requires some relationship building, first. Few people spend thousands of dollars after a few emails.
He can bet that at least 80% or more of any new list isn’t ready to buy until they at least get to know and trust him.
In the meantime, why burn out and kill off 80% of your list? Why not nurture a relationship with those people by sending them great, relevant content, first?
I consider Perry Marshall to be a role model and master marketer at the top of his game for this very reason.
I joined his list and he had a conversation with me in each email for years. He’d occasionally offer me the first product in his product funnel.
Only if I responded to that first product would he add me to the next level of his email series.
In one of his events I attended, he asked the room how many of them had been on his email list for years before purchasing a single product from him. I raised my hand, along with half the room. Perry had the patience to nurture a relationship with all of us – wholly by consistently sending us relevant and valuable content – and several years in, my first purchase was worth several thousand dollars to him.
And I was happy to pay it.
Your Email Strategy #2
Design a tiered “product ladder.” If you really want to sell your list an expensive tofu-diet weekend retreat with the stars in Hollywood, you’ve got to first offer your list lower-priced products and allow them to build a buying relationship of trust with you, over time.
We build a tiered product plan into every new site we build. You don’t have to have all the products ready, just the first product in your funnel. And of course, your products will change as you develop them. You just have to know where you’re going.
Remember this: Around 2-5% of your list is your hyper-responsive “true fans.” These folks will buy anything and everything you offer. A lot of the big lists I’ve worked with are only selling to their top 2-5%, and think they’re doing well! In every case, the sad statistics reveal the truth: these online marketers are annoying, driving away, and burning out 80% of their list on a regular basis. And they have to work harder than they should to constantly replace those subscribers.
That is not the way leverage is supposed to work.
Finally, the sad truth about big lists like Joe’s is the marketers behind these emails are aware of this hyper-responsive rule, and they just don’t care if they kill off the rest of the list. Their plan is classic “mass marketing:” sell to the 2%, churn and burn through the rest. Move on to another list, rinse, repeat.
Fortunately, this marketing model is dying, faster than Joe’s list.
Long live readers and relationships!
3. Segment early, Segment often
I’ve had a lot of clients over the past few years that had big, messy email lists with high turnover and low sales. They hired me to fix their email list.
In nearly every case, I can quickly point to their core problem: They never segmented their lists. They have very little idea who their list is, or what those people want.
The gooroo in question attempts to sell whatever shiny object catches their eye in the moment to anyone and everyone who joins their list.
And this approach just does not work. For anyone. It’s the surest path to killing a promising email list, fast.
Your Email Strategy #3
Anyone, with any sized list, can and should segment their list. Here’s an easy way to approach segmenting:
Make sure you’re using an email provider that enables you to easily segment your lists as you build them. This is one of the reasons we use AWeber. Most competent providers feature some sort of segmenting, although some providers will label this feature differently.
Segment your list when a subscriber takes a specific action that identifies a clear next step on your “product ladder.” A lot of Internet Marketers who’ve brought their messy email lists to me have created a new list segment every time they roll out a new product, or even every time they sell someone else’s product.
They’ll have a hundred segments, most of them completely worthless: that purchase doesn’t really tell them what the buyer is interested in, what that buyer will need next, or what they need at all.
This is why the second strategy – your tiered product ladder – is so important to implementing the third strategy. Know what your readers need, and plan in advance the many ways you can help them get what they need, one step at a time.
Happy emailing! Let us know how it’s going for you in the comments.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, “I have mixed feelings about the Law of Attraction crowd.” Perhaps Joe has experienced this audience as especially susceptible to hype. Tell them that Source invariably responds in like sums when they demonstrate their belief in the Law and in themselves by buying expensive packages, and some people whip out their credit card.
Great post! I love how you tracked the emails you received.
Hi Diana, and welcome!
I like your style, and I like your site. Your philosophy of direct action demonstrates perfectly my little axiom: “the antidote to attempted attraction is action!”
I think a lot of folks want to avoid the risks/costs of taking action: it’s so easy to talk ourselves into believing that whipping out that credit card for another course “is” enough action in itself.
You keep doing what you’re doing!
Keith
There is a lot of food for thought here! Two questions come to mind:
1. What if you have segmented your lists, but have taken (ahem) a while to create the next step on your tiered product funnel? How late is too late to go back to some of those ancient lists and say “hey look at my fabulous new stuff”?
2. What is a decent open rate? I’ve seen wildly different answers to this question. Interestingly, even when I’ve sent information to non-targeted lists, I get the same open rate as when I send lovely helpful fabulous not-selling-anything content to targeted lists. This could mean a) nobody is really reading anything and the open rate is just fly-bys in the preview window or b) the same people aka my “true fans” are reading everything I send, no matter what it is. c) something else.
These are the questions that plague my mind…
– Susan
Susan,
Let’s take a quick, top-of-mind attempt at un-plaguing your list (and mind) ☺
1. First, it’s never too late to go back to a list and tell them about your fabulous new stuff. But a list segment is created by response, not by the stuff.
Like most lists, your current segments sound like they’ve been created as you’ve launched products? If so, it sounds like these segments are attached to your action (creating a product), not attached to your reader’s actions (raising their hand to buy the product.)
A successful list segment is created “organically,” as a direct result of a reader taking their next, natural step by raising their hand to tell you, “Yes, I’m ready.”
With our lists, I keep my segments focused by using an internal “curriculum” framework; each product, no matter how small, needs to represent a “semester,” and each builds on the last. In order for readers to “be ready” for product C, they need to have raised their hands and purchased product A and B. Each purchase adds that reader to the next segmented ladder, but not until they raise their hand and either opt-in or purchase. Now of course my hyper-responsive readers love jumping ahead and buying product D first, because they can! Which is fine. But for the vast percentage of most lists, readers need stair stepping through your process/ladder.
Sometimes you’ll want to offer your list something completely different, something from a different “school” entirely. Offer once, ask them to raise their hand by opting-in to be added to the new segment, and then drop it.
2. Open rate. Short answer: doesn’t matter. Really. Feel free to ignore. (OK, I look, I’ll admit. And I’m unhappy if I get less than 75% open rate . . .) however, until Google invents lasers that scan eyeballs as they read, “opening” an email doesn’t mean it’s been read. It doesn’t mean much.
I measure click-thrus from an email, and I use them rarely. For most segments, I’ll add ONE action-based link every third or fourth email, and measure, to make sure readers are utilizing that next step. If they aren’t, I create a better next step until click-thrus (considering the next step) and conversions, (taking that step) are a good percentage.
Track meaningful actions that show forward motion.
Hope that helps, and thanks for asking!
Keith
Hmm…here’s where I get confused.
My lists in AWeber are opt-ins to free stuff, not paid stuff. So, Joe opts in to attend a teleseminar, receive a newsletter, or get 10 tips to help him do something. He has only raised his hand to get the freebie.
Here on this site, someone might opt in for the free Blink Test, for example. They haven’t purchased, but they have raised their hand. How does the segment get beyond, “I want the free stuff” to “I’m willing to stair-step up the product ladder”?
– Susan
Hi Susan,
So if our first two “rules” of segmenting are:
1. Base each list segment on a topic and a reader action, and
2. Create opportunities for readers to “raise their hand” by offering next steps up the curriculum ladder, then…
The third “rule” of Segmenting is all about “strings.”
In my email eBook I call it the “String Theory of Segmenting,” just for fun.
It doesn’t matter if Joe opts in for a freebie, or for a paid product. What matters is that:
a. You are offering Joe a new topic that isn’t already covered in your current mix of topics, and Joe is telling you he’s ready for something new/additional.
b. You’re sending Joe a string of emails laser-focused on that topic only.
c. It doesn’t matter if the string lasts for the next two years, what matters is that ALL conversation in that string remains attached to the reader’s original, expressed desire. If not, the string is broken, the interest lost, the reader gone.
Here’s where classic marketing (briefly) enters the picture: What we’re really talking about is “lead nurturance.” It’s about nurturing readers, based on their expressed desires. And some readers just take years to gain trust (like me with Perry Marshall – two years!)
Back to the string: One reason the auto-responder series of emails is so great is it allows a continuous “string” of emails about a focused topic. The purpose of this string is that it keeps the reader engaged in your topic, and each email in the string is another opportunity for your reader to say “yes!”
Problem is, a lot of people drop the ball (errrr, string…) and if/when they pick it up again, they’ve lost the relationship, or the reader has lost interest, or has moved on to another topic, or teacher.
It doesn’t matter if the string consists of one email a month spanning two years, or one email a week – what matters is that when your reader receives that email, he recognizes the consistency in your “learning track.” He or she says, “Wow, that Susan really knows exactly what I need to know about this topic. I’ve got to white list her, I really love reading Susan!”
Finally, to your question: How do you get someone to move past the free offer and opt in for the next step? That’s where marketing comes in. The offer has to be a good, targeted offer.
If your occasional offers are good ones, and they don’t step forward, then they just aren’t ready.
But yes or no, your string of content stays constant. Here’s a good model we’ve used:
— Free opt-in.
— Series of auto-responder emails
— Offer to take next step
— If yes, add to next list segment (if another topic), or increase frequency of current segment topic string.
— If not yet, loosen the string: begin sending emails less frequently; make another offer in a few months, etc.
Remember the Perry example. He is a master of this: He has “strings” that run for years, and you join another topic stream only after you say yes to a new offer.
But if I don’t join another string, I enjoy every darned email the man writes.
Thanks Susan, you’ve inspired me to pull all of this out of the eBook, and write a new post –(ummm, I think I just did…)
Hope this helped.
Keith
Oh my gosh, I think the light is dawning. Joe opts in for another offer (another topic string). Apparently, I needed the visual of string for it to make sense 😉
Interestingly, because I have had lists for such a long time, I think I’ve done this accidently to some degree. And I finally understand what Perry is doing with the offers he sends. (I’m on his lists too.)
I’m glad I could help you with your next blog post. Thanks for taking the time to help me work this out in my head!
– Susan
The emarketing you experienced from Joe Vitale scares me because it cheapens the internet distribution system. As a coach I am embarrassed to be associated with it. But, because they are so vocal, they become the image that consumers have of internet services and products. That being said, I recognize I am to the far other end, which I know is not as effective as it could be.
I will say that during the past year I have picked up several key clients that have been on my list for a couple of years. They have all credited my blog as the reason. They new from the content what my area of expertise was and already felt connected to me.
It is a slower pipeline, but feels right.
Thanks for the excellent tips.
Hi Sue,
Your great comments bring up three thoughts.
First, there’s not enough written out there about solo professionals finding a business model that “feels right.” Since we’re committed to our businesses for the long term, I think you’d agree this is the *only* viable option.
Second, those of us growing our businesses through Content and Relationship Marketing may indeed be on the “far other end” of the internet marketing spectrum, and that pendulum is clearly swinging in our direction — some of the biggest names in the biz are scrambling to adopt a content model. But old habits can be hard to break, for some.
Finally, as you know, “effective” in the near term and effective over the long term are two very different animals. Long after the “churn and burn” crowd have killed several lists, leaving scorched earth (and reputations) in their wake; those who have quietly built meaningful relationships through thoughtful conversations have created leveraged businesses that are genuinely exponential. One of the most thrilling things for me to witness this past year was to watch as some of the worst email offenders crashed and burned, while the genuinely value-based sites rose to take their places, and are flourishing (Copyblogger, etc.).
You’re on the right path.
Keith
Dear Keith,
While you are not addressing my chosen business I have learned a great deal about it in your writing here, growing my business through content and relationships is the only way to earn respect and gain the confidence of those I deal with.
You say it like it is, just like you and I were talking face to face, you are a master of communication !
Hi Keith,
I have been doing everything you recommend except need to segment the people who actually contact me after receiving my autoresponder series, newsletter etc.
But, my question is regarding the product funnel. My nutritional programs start at 2 months because I see patients with complex conditions like type 2 diabetes. I have offered a few less expensive options in the past such as online group coaching program and inexpensive Webinars but didn’t get the response I wanted. Do you have any other ideas for the product funnel?
Christine
Hello Christine,
Ahh, excellent question, and I think you may have your own answer embedded in your question: Segmenting may go a long ways toward improving your conversion.
I can’t make specific suggestions re: your product funnel as I just don’t know enough about it, but stepping back a bit, conversion is impacted by so many factors, clearly: a few basics, however, would be making sure you’re funneling highly targeted and qualified (and thus receptive) folks via segmentation. Next is the quality of your offer: Always be testing, I split test *everything* with my clients, every offer, component of an offer is split tested with many variables, until a clear winner emerges — and the success of those tests come right back to whom we’re sending to the tests in the first place — are they qualified, are they interested and targeted — have they raised their hands to show interest in this solution?
Hope that helps.
Thanks for reading.
Keith