Email Marketing - It's Time to Have a Talk

I often read forum posts from people complaining about getting slammed by email offer after email offer for the latest shiny object product. One particular post stated how he was flat broke from all of the how to money products that he was buying. Does anybody else see the irony there?

We are all adults here, so it's time we start acting like it. This goes for the list owners and subscribers. I have some advice for both.

My advice to list owners:

For every action there is always a reaction. As a marketer, you want that reaction to be a positive one, so you need to think about what would cause a negative reaction and do the opposite when mailing.

Some people think that less is more, but that is not always the case. Some marketers provide great value in daily emails, even if those daily emails are offers. Ya, that's right, I said that it is ok to mail an offer everyday.... but you need to make sure that your offer has value.

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make with their offers is to seek out affiliate deals that pay the highest commissions. This will shrink your list faster than a cold pool shrinks your wee-wee. Instead of looking for high commissions, look for products or services that you know will help your list subscribers. Provide reasons why you think that this offer will help them and let them know exactly who will benefit from the offer (and who will not).

If you stick to this method, then commission rates won't be your first concern anymore. Your sales (and income) will increase because you have taken the time to find products that really will make a difference to your subscribers.

My advice to subscribers:

Remove yourself from lists where the marketer claims that you absolutely "need" this product to succeed. There is no single product that could fall into that category.

Remove yourself from lists that promote big product launches (CB usually). Those marketers don't give a rats arse about whether or not the product is good for you. They just want to win an affiliate contest.

If you find yourself buying every product that is recommended to you, then you have a problem. Only buy products that will help you accomplish the things that you are trying to accomplish. If you are building a review blog, don't get sidetracked by an offer for a whiz bang offline marketing method. Remind yourself that you are not the only person on this marketer's list and not every product is meant for you.

I could go on and on with advice for both sides of the fence, but it's late and I have three weeks of True Blood episodes to catch up on. I'll leave it to the peanut gallery to either flame the hell out of me for this post or add their own suggestions. Either way, I don't care. Sookie is supposed to be naked in the last episode and that is much more important to me.

Have a great night. Don't let the vampires bite.