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If you have a reasonable sized list, I could use some advice

by FriendlyRob
17 replies
I define reasonable as anything 1k and up. My list is in the 2K range, and I'm not really earning any money from it.

As I was trying to think of ways of making my list more responsive, I started to realize that I'm not really sending out enough sales emails. Most of my autoresponder sequence is, what I believe to be high quality information. I guess you bust your a*s to build a list, then as your list grows, you are afraid to mail sales letters because you are afraid of unsubscribes.

Here is what I'm going to do:

- Ensure that all of my sales emails are for quality, in demand products.
- Continue to send my high quality information mailings
- Continue to post in the forum, both asking and answering questions.
- Continue to believe that I will be successful if I can help others to be successful.

Maybe I didn't really need you after all, but since you are reading this, if you have a reasonable list, how many emails do you send per month. Or, what is your ratio of information to sales letters?
#advice #list #reasonable #sized
  • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
    Hi Rob,

    Is this for the site you refer to in your sig?

    Becky
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    • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
      Originally Posted by R Hagel View Post

      Hi Rob,

      Is this for the site you refer to in your sig?

      Becky

      No, that's the new one that I just built. My other squeeze page is at Learn to Write Articles ~ Article Writing Help~ Write Articles for profit ~ online article tips
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      • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
        Hi Rob,

        I see one potential problem on both of those squeeze pages: You don't tell the prospect that they're signing up for a newsletter. Or perhaps worse, you don't get them excited about receiving your newsletter.

        Sure, most folks realize that when they sign up to get a free ebook, they're also joining a list. But you want to set the right expectation up front. That means you need to use part of your squeeze page to "sell" the prospect on joining your list and reading your emails. You want them to WANT your newsletter.

        One way to do that is to make your newsletter the main offer, and then offer the free report as a bonus. Think of your newsletter as a paid product (and sell it like that) and offer your report as the bonus freebie.

        Do that, and you'll get prospects who join your list for the purpose of getting your newsletter. They'll look forward to your emails. They'll read 'em. And if you're building relationships with your readers (by giving 'em what they want), you should close more sales.

        (I'd need to actually join your list and go through your emails to give you further advice about getting a more responsive list, but selling folks on joining and reading your newsletter is a good start to getting more rabidly responsive subscribers.)

        Hope that helps.

        Cheers,
        Becky
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        • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
          I will surely begin tweaking both squeezepages, thank you.
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  • Profile picture of the author sgboston23
    As someone who receives mailings but doesn't have a list, I'll give you my .02.

    What's most important to me is that you provide me with some value.
    What's also very important in general is that you have some personality and are not just a mysterious affiliate e-mail sender.

    You should encourage some type of feedback. Run a friendly contest, for example, get people interested in something.

    When you want to push a product, list the negatives followed by positives. Be transparent. If they trust in you, they won't unsubscribe.

    And for me personally, I don't want more than 2 e-mails from a list per week.
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    • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
      Originally Posted by sgboston23 View Post

      As someone who receives mailings but doesn't have a list, I'll give you my .02.


      And for me personally, I don't want more than 2 e-mails from a list per week.
      My autoresponder sequence sends out every four days, unless it is a two part email, then it goes out on consecutive days. My sales letters go out as broadcasts, about once every two weeks.
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  • Profile picture of the author KristiDaniels
    Hi Rob,

    Change to daily. Everyone here will say that they would unsubscribe from a list that sends daily, but if you test it... you will see that daily is the most profitable.

    Every four days is also almost doubling your false spam complaint rate as compared to daily. People have short attention spans. Only contacting them every four days makes another 0.1% hit the "this is spam" button because they don't remember you.

    Remember that the money isn't in the list. It is in the relationship with the list. You don't build a relationship by talking to the other person less often. You build it by talking to them MORE often.
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    • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
      Originally Posted by KristiDaniels View Post

      Hi Rob,

      Change to daily. Everyone here will say that they would unsubscribe from a list that sends daily, but if you test it... you will see that daily is the most profitable.

      Every four days is also almost doubling your false spam complaint rate as compared to daily. People have short attention spans. Only contacting them every four days makes another 0.1% hit the "this is spam" button because they don't remember you.

      Remember that the money isn't in the list. It is in the relationship with the list. You don't build a relationship by talking to the other person less often. You build it by talking to them MORE often.
      Thanks Kristi, I will shorten the length of time between messages. Maybe not daily though, I'm just not that bold.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    I go 3-5 days for the normal A/R series emails (non-commercial). I'll send about one sales pitch per week, on average. It works well at those numbers.

    But the hardcore marketer in me sees some ruthless money-making truth in sending every day. But I would not do that - even if I was of that mindset - unless I had both a large list (maybe 10,000 or more) and a system in place that was adding at least as many subscribers to the list as I lost as a consequence of slamming it. When I sit around day dreaming, though, I can imagine people like Ewen Chia making mountains of cash with his humongous list and daily emails. What's he got, like 500,000 people? Criminy!
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  • Profile picture of the author KristiDaniels
    Do you talk to your wife daily? How about your best friend? How about your parents or your children?

    How about when you were dating and leading up to engagement? Did you talk daily?

    How about your boss or those who work for you at your job if you still have one?

    How about your closest vendors if you don't have a job anymore?

    These are the most important relationships in your life. You talk to them daily. You don't consider it "slamming" them when you talk to them daily. You don't pretend that it is somehow unethical to talk to them daily.

    You talk to them daily because you value them and they value you. You both want to talk daily.

    Work on the relationship with your list and provide some real value and you won't feel guilty at all about contacting them daily.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    "Slamming" a list is sending them sales pitches every day. Sorry, thought that was understood here. It would annoy me to get a daily email from anyone trying to sell me something. I'm pretty sure that would be the case for the majority of people.
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  • Profile picture of the author marksinclair
    It would definitely be interesting to see a split test done between e-mail sending frequency.

    The only way the daily thing would work is if you had really good information to share. If that were true, then I could definitely see your list looking forward to receiving the e-mail each day. However, it would be REALLY easy to start annoying people if what you sent out wasn't top notch.
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    • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
      I'm on the list of at least two marketers who "slam" me with with offers. I remain on those lists because most of the offers are something of real value.

      I guess, I should try to keep track of how many I loose, with every sales letter I send.
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  • Profile picture of the author SeanyG
    Go sign up for Eben Pagan's double your dating email newsletter. He sends out awesome content AND pushes in every email.

    I learned a lot from saving his newsletters and going back and browsing them all.

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    • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
      Just so everyone is aware, when I reread my initial post I realized that I said I wasn't making any money. Of course I'm making money, I transfer from my paypal account to my bank account every week.

      Its just that IM lore would have you believe that you earn $1 in income per month for every person on your list, I'm about $ 0.30. I would pay money for a good ebook that focuses on how to make your list more responsive.
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  • Profile picture of the author KristiDaniels
    That's the right track.

    If you make 4 cents per email sent (and that is what your current numbers say) and you send every 4 days, then guess what happens when you send the same quality daily?

    Yes. It drops to about 3 cents per email because you are beginning to saturate your own marketplace that consists of your email readers.

    But do the math. At 3 cents per email and now 30 emails going out per month, guess what?

    You are now in the neighborhood of that IM lore of $1 per subscriber. You are at $0.90 per subscriber.

    Then to get to $2 per subscriber, send your emails at the right time of day.

    Then to get to $3 per subscriber, don't send your emails on the two days of the week that get you the most unsubscribes and the least clicks.

    Then to get to $3.50 per subscriber, block the 6-8 domains that cause deliverability problems for emails off those domains.

    It is the little things that add up. 30% here, 200% there, 55% with this thing and 20% with that thing and it starts to add up.
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  • Profile picture of the author KristiDaniels
    And I didn't sell you an ebook. All of the specifics are given including the exact numbers for free on my blog.

    The days of week are Monday and Thursday. The hours per day are 6-8 EST. The domains to block vary from week to week so you will have to go to my blog for that. But there is no subscribe necessary to get that info and I certainly don't charge for it.

    It's free to me. Straight out of my stats. I don't know why more marketers won't share their stats. They are free and you don't have to do any work to get them.
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