I'm killing most of my email capture. Here's why.

Your last point hits the nail on the head. Whether you're a writer, a promoter or even if you're just collecting emails for the sake of collecting emails,building a relationship is essential.

I have to write in word doc before I post my first comment, because when I hit the enter button, instead of an extra line, I get my comment posted. It happens only when I post my first comment, not with replies.

Now, about the article itself.

�"According to the Internet marketing world (and, yes, I recognize my involvement in creating this noise), you have to be building an email list if you want people to read your work.

The logic says that in a world where everyone’s attention is getting progressively worse, you need to be hyper aggressive and get people to sign up, otherwise they’ll never read your stuff.

But as Drift points out in their article about removing their own lead magnets, people are getting sick of this pushiness. It’s weird to go to a site now and have them not hit you with a pop-up or two.
There is not a single newsletter I was coerced into joining that I enjoy or have stayed subscribed to. For the few newsletters that I do allow in my inbox, I went to the site and sought out their signup form because I liked their work.”

This last line �"I went to the site and sought out their signup form because I liked their work.” You want to be free to choose. No one wants to live in the world of pushiness. This is what happens in an ideal IM, business and especially sales world. Without this notorious �"aggressiveness” what’s going to happen? Who will read my work? Of course, I ignore a pop-up by default. Yet, some of these aggressiveness gets my attention for a reason or two. When it’s not working then it’s aggressive, when it’s working the​n is useful.

How about a compromise? You can’t just sit and wait for someone to like you. Yet, you can’t keep pushing. Can it be a compromise between aggressiveness and passiveness?

On some, not all, articles the use of article add on's or upgrades can come in handy for capturing email. You can not use this on all articles but strategically placed they can be very effective.

An example would be you write an article on Fly Fishing a certain river or pond. You tell what fly you use and how to fish it. The content add on would be the instructions on how to tie that fly. they click the link and are take to a squeeze page for their email address where the directions can be emailed.

Like everything else, do not over do this

al

I read the articles. Simple answer? No.

Google dropped your traffic by 80%???!! Doesn't that underscore the point of capturing those emails - to not entirely depend on Google for your traffic, right?

The article also didn't specify if the squeeze was immediate (which will increase bounce rate, thus lowering quality), or delayed. Its been awhile since I've seen test results on this, so I don't know if you'd see the same drop in search, but as agmcall mentioned, strategic use and placement of the pop-up may very likely preserve those rankings. The author asks us to assume a lot for the sake of discussion, but that leaves much that could account for the poor performance.

I realize we all want people to open our emails and see how brilliant we are, er, I mean see how much we just want to help them; and of course we pay for those deliveries whether they click or not so pruning can be necessary. But if I had that high of inactives, I wouldn't blame the gate - I'd blame my offer or my follow up!

And I think there are a lot of niches where list activity is always going to be a low sum game. Which means you really have to know your audience. What do they want from you? How do they prefer to consume your content?

Lastly the article mentioned people are getting tired of squeeze type pages, implying we are getting to a saturation point, and that may be true. But who has ever liked these gates? They've always been annoying. But...with a proper incentive, you had me at free

Then if you impress me with your freebie, you've got my attention for awhile. Strike while the iron is hot, since as the author says, "...everyone's attention [span] is getting progressively worse"

Cheers

I've been a long time advocate of building the right list, not the biggest list. Your opt-in process should be as much about helping the wrong people not subscribe as getting the right people to subscribe.

Using Al's example...

One of the paid products is a course on fly tying. Not everyone who reads an article on fly fishing wants to tie their own flies. Some do. Those people self-select when they opt in for the instructions on how to tie a particular fly.

Now, when I want to promote the fly tying course, I have a segmented list of people who have indicated an interest in tying their own flies. I can present them with content and offers that cater to that interest without annoying the people with no interest in the topic.

That's where so many list builders go wrong. They focus on creating one list, and dumping everybody who responds to a lead magnet or content upgrade onto the same general list. If you have ten different possible segments dumped on the same list, you have the potential to annoy or bore 90% of your list.

I also believe in list cleaning. Every email I send has a prominent unsubscribe link along with an invitation to unsubscribe if the content no longer provides value. Better to part ways with no hard feelings than to continue an unproductive relationship.

As I see it, the problem isn't with the lead capture concept, it's in overaggressive and untargeted execution in the service of flawed goals that creates the resentment.

Has anyone here segmented their email list captures based off attribution to which article they submitted on, then looked into optimising article types that generate the highest quality leads? I imagine sample size might be a bit of an issue with needing to get enough leads from individual articles to look at statistically significant differences. Would be very interesting to see if there's significant differences in the quality of leads though based on article types. I imagine it'd be of most use in the scenario where you have one core product you're generating leads for.

Thanks for this thread, I really enjoyed reading Nat Eliason's article, it spoke volumes to me.

I particularly wanted to hone in on the point that 'you build up a huge audience by building something successful', I couldn't agree more with this.

There are so many mediums to communicate with existing and potential clients these days that people think that using them all will create their success. That's in no way a criticism; I've recently started a business and top of the list was setting up a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter page; and the list goes on...Believing that getting my name onto as many screens as possible would make me successful is a trap that I fell into.

In essence, spending so much time on these areas without a good product to back up your words is just creating noise and I think that's completely true for an email list too. If you have a good product, your following will grow naturally and you won't need to be pushy.

Is it the end of needing a list? No, probably not.
Is it the end where you must push, prod and be forceful to get names on that list? With a good product, yes it definitely could be.

Thanks for sharing, it's an interesting topic!

Email lists have always been successful, still are successful, and will be successful for quite awhile. Although now days, new emails are less responsive. Some even are bunch of robots bu that can be eliminated through email verification. That's just my opinion.