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Sanity Check on Email Strategy :)

by FillyCheez
17 replies
Hey y'all,

Fillycheez checking in. Just joined this forum after a few months of lurking.

I want to start off by saying thanks to everyone for posting great content! Can't believe this stuff is available for free!

A few months ago, I decided to jump into affiliate marketing. I spent a few weeks researching "hit-and-run" style affiliate marketing (traffic arbitrage), before settling on email affiliate marketing (building that list!).

I ended up finding an email marketing mentor, who taught me a great deal about copywriting, FB ad buying, and all the technical nuances of affiliate marketing (building funnels, autoresponders, etc)

Based on his teachings, I've been using the following strategy:

1: Use FB ads to target a specific demographic/interest group, offering them an enticing freebie. They get the freebie in exchange for their email.

2. Autoresponder sends user e-book

3. Subscribers are sent daily emails offering insight into a particular problem related to their demographic/interest group. The emails contain affiliate offers that tie into this insight.

I've seen a few threads on the Warrior Forum that follow a similar approach. However, I've also seen a lot of threads suggesting less frequent emails, and sending more "non-selling"/value emails to build a relationship before sending an offer.

So, here is my question for y'all. Does this sounds like a viable strategy?

I've built my list to 1k members using this strategy, and have been emailing offers for about 2 weeks without a bite yet.I know my copywriting, offers, and presale pages can probably be improved (I'm still pretty new at this), but would love to hear some opinions before throwing more time and money to improving this strategy.

Thank you all for your time!

-FillyCheez
#check #email #sanity #strategy
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  • Profile picture of the author BradKasten
    Welcome to the Warrior Forum!

    It sounds like you're off to a great start. That is a solid listbuilding, affiliate email marketing strategy. Well done.

    But the devil is in the details as they say. You didn't mention a niche so it's difficult to give you specific advice. But I'll give you a couple of my initial thoughts.

    Is your target market narrow or broad? Dog lovers vs Poodle lovers. A broad list is harder to convert because you don't know which offers will get them excited.

    Are you targeting a hungry market that buys a lot of stuff?

    Do the affiliate products you're promoting correspond to the freebie they opted in for? Or are the affiliate offers to different?

    Here's my email philosophy, many people will disagree with it but this is what I do. And it works.

    I email my list 6-7 times a week, sometimes more. You have to write engaging emails that your readers will want to open and read. That could be providing tips and tricks, or telling an engaging story, or providing a valuable product review. You have to get them addicted to your emails. You also have to train your list what to expect from you. I pitch something in almost every email.

    Finally, you have to go in your autoresponder and look at whats working and what's not working. Which emails are getting opened the most and least. Use that info to adjust your strategy.

    I hope this helps and good luck with your business,
    Brad
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    • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
      Hi Brad,

      Thanks for the advice!

      I am currently working in the fitness niche. I target male users 35+ with interests in muscle building,weight loss, and health, sending them related affiliate offers.

      In your opinion, do you think this demographic is too broad?

      I'll be sure to work on the emails, making them more engaging.

      Thanks again!
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      • Profile picture of the author BradKasten
        I think your niche and target audience is good but fitness can be a little tricky just because your audience might have vastly different goals.

        For instance, some men are bodybuilders and want info on supplements and intense weightlifting programs.

        Some men want to lose weight but don't want to exercise that much.

        Some men are into the CrossFit, P90X type stuff and want info on a healthy diet and cardio/weightlifting training.

        Does that make sense? They are all men over 35 and into exercise but with very different objectives.

        I would think about trying to narrow your audience down even further.

        Here's an idea you can use to do some additional audience, email and marketing research. Find a mix of tightly grouped products that you would like to promote or ones you already promote and opt-in to all the lists of those products, (set up a separate email account just for this purpose). Read all the emails that they send you and ask some questions.
        Which ones engage you the most?
        What kind of language do they use, (this is important)?
        What offer do they promote in addition to the main offer?
        How are they promoting it? Hard sell, soft sell, scarcity, discounts, etc?

        Turn yourself into your target market and discover what resonates with you. What do you like and how do you want to market.
        Then use all that info in your emails and offers.

        Keep working at it, I think you're on the right path.
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        • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
          Thanks Brad.

          In addition to all this, I think I'll send out a survey to my audience as well, asking them what problems they want solved.
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      • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
        I like the engagement add FC; I'd say, keep those engagement levels high by sharing free, valuable content solving their fitness problems.

        Providing value through blog posts, videos and the emails themselves is an awesome converter. You help folks for free, and they eventually buy into your affiliate offerings, or any premium offering.

        Ryan
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        Ryan Biddulph helps you to be a successful blogger with his courses, manuals and blog at Blogging From Paradise
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        • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
          Good advice. Thanks Ryan!

          BTW, what does FC stand for?
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  • Profile picture of the author Bizopboost
    Welcome to The community ...
    Subscribers Like to receive Free Valuable content, I send a Great Well Presented Trick, Method or Strategy ... every Week
    I Still Email my list more than 4 Times a week , So far so Good.
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  • Profile picture of the author helisell
    Clearly there is something missing from the strategy.

    Does your style of engagement endear your subscribers to you?

    Can they see a picture of you? Have you engaged them with a talking head type video?

    If you are not giving the subscribers an opportunity to engage and find reasons to like you
    then they are just seeing 'offers'....and very likely 'offers' that they have seen elsewhere.

    You need to imagine that you are sitting on a sofa with them having a one to one friendly chat.
    Once they know and trust you....you'll start to see some results I'm sure.
    Signature

    Making Calls To Sell Something? What are you actually saying?
    Is there any room for improvement? Want to find out?

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    • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
      Hi helisell,

      I thought I replied to your post already, but it looks like it didn't go through.

      I think the emotional connection/ trust element is definitely lacking in my emails. This is something that I will definitely need to work on.

      Thanks for the advice!
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  • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
    Hi Helisell,

    I think this advice makes sense. As far as all the moving pieces go, I think my weakest link might be engagement with subscribers. I will definitely need to re-examine this part of the strategy.

    Thank you!
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  • Profile picture of the author Bosslife007
    The money is in the list and email marketing is the best way to get conversions you just need to master it.
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    GET THE #1 TRAFFIC THAT'S CONVERTING FAST INTO LEADS AND SALES
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  • Profile picture of the author Eden A
    First of all welcome to the forum,
    It seems like a great strategy, to begin with.

    Two weeks is a short time to measure (depends on how much did you
    invest in ads and how many see it, click it, bought it)

    Did you do a split test or just one ad?
    if you did just one ad I think that
    to do a split test will give you more results
    on what works and what not.

    Don't know if you do this but if not try it out.
    do a video ad it attracts more prospects because
    an in the video clip they can see a real person and
    it creates more trust between you and your prospects.

    Hope that helps,
    Eden.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rhadoo7
    I also agree with the people that said "less frequent emails, and sending more "non-selling"/value emails to build a relationship before sending an offer"
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  • Profile picture of the author fotakou
    Fitness can be really tricky. I'm also in fitness (targeting Greeks) and there's a wide gap between what everyone in my list wants.

    My biggest "aha" moment came from Ben Settle, who suggested to ask your list what they've already bought. If say they've bought weight loss programs, that means they'll buy these types of products again. So, you can sell programs, supplements or anything else that can help them lose weight.

    With the above advice, you make sure you're offering them stuff they've already bought and will probably buy in the future.
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  • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
    Hey fotakou,

    This sounds like great advice!

    I'm in the process of creating a survey to ask my audience what they want, but asking them what they already bought makes even more sense.

    Thank you!
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  • Profile picture of the author DIABL0
    Something to consider is there is a big world outside of trying to sell products / services.

    I've been promoting affiliate / CPA offers for over 17 years.

    I mainly promote PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers because there is no credit card / purchase required to complete an offer. All a user has to do is fill out a form, so conversion rates are typically much higher compared to offers that require a sale to be made.

    I favor offers that have a make, get or save money benefit to them, as they have overall worked the best. They also tend to have the greatest mass appeal (will be of interest to a large general audience), so the potential exists to produce high volume and they are fairly easy to cross promote on the back-end.

    Some of the niches that I have done extremely well with are education, insurance, mortgage, credit, loans, debt, assistance, discount offers, homeowner offers, etc...

    Bottom line: it's much easier to get someone fill out a short form than to get them to pull out their credit card and make a purchase. So why struggle with trying to sell this or that, when you can provide free information that users want/need and get paid well doing it.

    Something to think about.
    Signature
    How to Build LARGE EMAIL LISTS on a Budget and MONETIZE Like a PRO
    20+ Years Exp . . . . . . . . . . . . Email - CPA - PPL
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    • Profile picture of the author FillyCheez
      Hi DIABL0,

      Thanks for your reply!

      If PPL offers are generally high converting, is the competition to promote these also very high?

      If these offers are in fact competitive to promote, how do you differentiate yourself from competitors?

      I think I saw in other posts on the forum that you personally don't build a relationship with your list, so I'm curious how you compete.

      Thanks!
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