Could This Be an Effective Strategy?

[Dan C. Rinnert]

I am on the eMail list of a big direct mail marketer. I purchased things from them long before I even had an eMail address--long before most people had eMail addresses. These guys are experts in direct mail.

So, their eMail marketing has me wondering.

They use the tactic of giving away free information. Nothing wrong with this. After all, you think, well, if the free stuff is this good, how much better is the info in their products I buy?

Mind you, they still sell books. Not eBooks. Books. So, you have to wait for the book to arrive. No biggie, though.

The thing is that, while they vary the info a bit and give different free information, the big free tip they give is the same in almost every message.

I can see repeating it periodically. After all, you might forget. And, new subscribers obviously might not know about it.

But, still, wouldn't you draw the line somewhere? Maybe repeat every x number of eMails instead of using it in nearly every message?

Besides that, they sell multiple products, so it's not as though they are pushing their big upsell and don't care if you stick around on the list after that. No, this is a list you'll stay on and occasionally buy different products. So, it would seem to me, that you'd want to keep the free tips varied to keep your subscribers interested.

Yet, I'm left wondering if maybe this is a strategy that works? I can't imagine it. For me, as a regular subscriber, you think you might be getting a new tip but, nope, same old thing.

How often do you repeat free tips?

[AffiliateTraining]

I don't know about "how often do you repeat free tips" but the
business model is solid.

Here's an interesting story for you...

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In 2001 Bill Bonner, owned a multi-million pound newsletter and
magazine business called Agora.

Decades earlier, he started this business from his kitchen table.

How he did it was simple. He'd write a sales letter that advertised an
information "newsletter" service. The letter would be so powerful,
complete strangers would happily send him money for them.

One such publication was called International Living. It told restless
and bored Americans how to move overseas for a better life without
needing lots of capital. It revealed how and where to invest in
property and real estate businesses abroad. This included info on the
best tax havens and the little known property bargains you wouldn't
get in your regular newspaper.

Of course, Bill's letter didn't sell the "newsletter" like a magazine or
book. He didn't go on about how many pages it was, or whether it
was in colour or not. The style and content wasn't the issue.

Instead Bill's sales letters sold the dream. .. a passport to a luxurious
new life.

The subscription model - in a nutshell

This business followed the direct mail subscription model, which is as
follows:

You write a sales letter that taps into people's desires. They pay £37
(usually a discounted first year offer) or more in their first year for an
information service that promises to fulfil these desires, or assuage
their fears - usually a newsletter, magazine or part work.

Inside each issue, Bill's company inserted sales letters for related
products.... memory improvement courses, blackjack weekends in
vegas, motivational books and money-making strategies. So on top of
the newsletter subscription, these products would generate extra
sales.

Unsurprisingly, by the end of the '90s, Bill Bonner's business was
massive. It had expanded into the UK, South Africa, Ireland and had
offices in Panama, Nicaragua and other spots around the globe.

This subscription model still works today. Mainly for publishing
companies.

But if YOU want to set something like this up from home, it's tricky.
You need big chunks of money for printing costs, copywriter and
editorial costs and you have to buy lists.

And if it fails, you lose everything.

So it's not something I'd recommend for a newbie. However, at the
end of the 90s, a new model emerged. And as you'll see, this is one
that ANYONE can use to make money.

How the free content model was born

Back in 2000, Bill knew that the internet was the future of
information marketing. He just didn't know how or why yet.

Even though the dot.com boom was happening all around him,
nobody was really making money yet. Most companies at that stage
were setting up trendy online shops that got stupidly large valuations
on the stock market, but didn't have any solid fundamentals or
customer bases.

Most people in Bill's position would have jumped on the "new
paradigm" bandwagon and set up an online version of one of his
newsletters or magazine.

Perhaps a subscription website with loads of flash images and sound
effects, just like the stuff coming out of silicon valley.

But being a canny guy, Bill didn't want to spend lots of time and
money second guessing the trends. Instead he thought about his own
experience.

He knew that the more newsletters someone subscribed to, the more
responsive they were to other sales offers. In an ideal world, where
cost and printing practicalities weren't an issue, you'd send them
newsletters every week, not every month.

It all boiled down to one tried and tested principle:

The more often you are in contact with your subscribers, and the
closer and more intimate your relationship with them, the more
products you can sell, and the more money you make.

So here's what Bill did. He started writing regular email letters to all
the subscribers who'd supplied their email address on the various
order forms. At the time this wasn't many, and the idea of supplying
email addresses when you bought something was in its infancy.

He wrote an email almost every single day. After all, he loved to
write, he watched the stock markets all the time, and sending an
email out was quick and free. No design, no production, just words
typed on a page and sent en masse to thousands of people within
minutes.

Sometimes his emails would be about what he and his family were up
to at their French chateau.

...Other days he'd look through the newspapers and send his
thoughts on the various financial scandals and stories he'd seen.

....Other days he'd simply send an overview of what was happening
on the financial markets.

....And sometimes he'd just talk about his theories on the second
world war, capitalism and Warren Buffett.

By keeping in touch with these deeply personal letters, he grew
closer to his readers. He never asked for any money. He never tried
to sell them anything. And as he went on, his letters became more
and more opinionated and focused.

It became known as The Daily Reckoning. And its aim became clear:
he was going to explode the myths of the "new paradigm" internet
bubble and protect his readers from losing their money when it
finally burst.

He offered people specific ways they could invest in "old economy
stocks", gold and other investment vehicles he'd looked into.

His readers were hooked. And they wrote to him in droves, giving
him feedback and allowing him to be "in conversation" with his
subscribers.

This was unlike anything that had been done before.

Here was one of the first FREE CONTENT email services. People were
desperate to sign up. Membership grew and grew. Readers felt that
they knew Bill personally. They were amazed to be getting something
that used to cost £37-£79 a year for free.

And because it was personal and direct from Bill with up-to the
minute market news, it was actually superior to the staid old
newsletters that took weeks to write, print and deliver and were
often boring to read.

Yet the people who worked for Agora were baffled. What was he
doing? This wasn't making any money. How could this be the future
of their business?

Had Bill gone mad?

Then it happened. The clincher...

One day Bill emailed the subscribers of The Daily Reckoning with a
very short and direct sales message for one of Agora's newsletters.

To everyone's astonishment, orders came flooding in thick and fast. It
was an overwhelming response. And the really exciting thing was
this: they'd sold as many subscriptions as they would through a direct
mail campaign - except in this case their costs were virtually nil.

They didn't need to design and print a sales letter. They didn't need
to pay for postage. They didn't need to sort the order slips. It took 20
minutes to write the message, upload it and press SEND.

Everything happened online. The money poured into the bank
account, and the products flew out the warehouse.

The flood gates opened. Bill carried on with his free emails. But in
among every 3 or 4 issues would be an endorsement for a book,
seminar, newsletter or magazine.

Sometimes he placed adverts into the body of the email itself. These
also worked. And occasionally, he would build up to the launch of a
new product over the weeks, warming his readers up, getting them
excited, then making the big announcement.

Hey presto, an electronic business was born

Soon the online side of Agora was skyrocketing. Michael Masterson
launched Early To Rise, an email newsletter in a similar vein to The
Daily Reckoning, but about Real Estate instead of the stock market.

For every financial niche - including penny shares, options, and
spread betting - an email newsletter would emerge. Each one was
chatty, personal, full of free advice, tips and ideas.

Importantly, this was information that was FREELY available for those
who had time and patience to look. It's just that it would take a
normal person many days of reading all the financial news, journals
and reports to gather this kind of information.

So here was a quick way any Ordinary Joe could play the financial
markets without needing any expertise or giving up the day job.

More importantly, the emails offered something that papers didn't -
intimacy and personality. The emails were like friendly missives from
trusted contacts, written honestly and simply, without jargon,
difficult English or boring detail.

They could be absorbed over a cup of coffee during a break, glanced
at quickly while the reader was at work.

By offering something specifically useful for free, and by being so
convenient, these email newsletters grew to large numbers quickly.
They offered easy ways to save money, make money, protect your
legacy, save money on tax, lose weight, and generally improve your
life.

This meant that people opened them hungrily whenever they pinged
into their inboxes. There were so many benefits to reading these
little missives, how could they ignore them? They might miss
something important!

So instead of deleting them, people were reading these emails and
responding to them. And when a sales link was included in these
emails, subscribers were clicking on them and buying the products in
droves.

The easiest, fastest way to get into direct mail

This free content model has been proven time and time again. It's
without a doubt the easiest, fastest, and lowest cost way that anyone
can set up a direct marketing home business. It's like the punk
movement of the publishing world.

It's a genuine "do it yourself" operation. You don't need to be a
trained writer.

You don't need to have contacts in the business or any previous
experience. You don't need investment or financial backers. There's
virtually no risk. And you don't need to be able to build fancy
websites.

The potential is huge. And this is still only the beginning. This is a
marketing tool that's still largely unknown outside the direct mail
world. Most companies should have free content email newsletters
as a marketing tool but they don't.

They instead bombard their email list with advertising messages, and
are surprised when only 1% of the people bother to open the emails.

That's because they don't understand the key principle, which I will
repeat again:

The more often you are in contact with your niche audience, and the
closer and more intimate your relationship with them, the more
products you can sell, and the more money you make.

In other words, keep in regular contact with a group of people, and
give them interesting information for free, and they're more likely to
respond when you offer them related products that might interest
them.

-------------

Watching what Agora do, even now, wouldn't be a bad idea ;-)

~ Paul

[Sean Ski]

I'd just have a free members area with different sections for newbies all the way up to advanced so that all new people coming in could get the new stuff without continually showing the same old tips to people who've been on the list for a while.

Then again you said a big direct marketer so I'm assuming they know what they're doing... But for some reason I just don't feel like they've tested any other ways; that's just my gut feeling though. They're probably very profitable so they're not gonna fix it if it isn't broke.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by Sean Ski

But for some reason I just don't feel like they've tested any other ways; that's just my gut feeling though.

That was my gut feeling as well. They've been around for over 30 years and appear to follow a keep it simple attitude, so, if it works, maybe they're just not going to mess with it.

[AffiliateTraining]

Man, like I say... watch what Agora do.

I don't think there's a better example of how to run newsletters, online or off, than what they do. Repetitive maybe, but it's as effective as hell.