SO.... How Dangerous is SINGLE OPT IN??

The ones I've seen offer a free report, a free course, a free trial, etc. in exchange for my eMail address. They're not just asking for my eMail for the "privilege" of seeing their order page.

Admittedly, I've not seen all their sales pages, but I don't give out my eMail address just to see an order page. I'll leave and buy someone else's product.

I don't recall anyone asking why I didn't buy. I've seen them say stuff like "If you haven't purchased... here's a deal...", etc. But, if someone sent me something as you've described: "...Aweber emails them and ask why they left the order page," I'd view that as desperate.

I suppose it's all in how you do it, but my response was based on your description, which I took to mean that I'm surrendering my eMail address for no other "benefit" than to view your order page.

All IM'ers do this for good reason. It puts your buyers on one list and your optin-to-get-a-free-whatever people on another list. I have been stupid and lazy for not implementing this a long time ago and find myself dreading having to create a "customer list" from my list of buyers from Clickbank now. I would DO THIS. There was a time that Clickbank was uncool with this so most people would set this up after Clickbank approved their product. Its the only sane approach I know of for creating a list of prospects and a list of buyers.

Steve

Maybe some warriors realize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing and what works for multi-million dollar corporations won't necessarily work for a small company and might, in fact, turn out badly.

It's actually been pretty constraining to spend any length of time at the Warrior Forum because of the MYOPIA. I've actually posted a couple of rants about the topic.

But I also find that I am learning more being here -- not about internet marketing... hell I was one of the early players building lists and creating metrics in a time before search engines.

No, I am learning about how technical awareness and information translates into entrepreneurial marketing motivations in a subset of fairly advanced users (I say users because there are more "user" types on WF than hardcore technical developers and pro horizontal technology marketers).

The thing that technology has enabled is the condensation of product lifecycles. The internet has shortened it to weeks and months, so we get to observe business waves that a couple of decades ago, used to take years.

That's why I kept coming back to Ted Levitt's original rant about marketing myopia from the late 1960s... wherein he felt like the traditional corporate marketing management was insular and myopic in its approach. His words are as true today in this market as they were back then in discussing railroad transportation.

Yes, it's been interesting to observe over the last year, and out of all the true marketing gurus in the entire landscape, Seth Godin sits on top for good reason. He genuinely understands the transitional dynamic between technology adoption and business innovation - as evidenced in his own evolution in thinking.

It's also so humorously ironic that he publishes books... with paper and ink... rofl

The Warrior Forum reminds me the story of a mother and daughter making Christmas dinner for the rest of the family. The mother says to the daughter, "Slice off both ends before putting the ham into the pan."

Curious to know why, she asks Mom, "Why do you want me to do that?"

Mom says, "Well that's how your grandmother always taught me to do it, go ask her."

So the daughter asks Grandma, "Why did you teach Mom to slice the ends off the ham before putting it into the pan?"

Grandma replies, "Because that's how your great-grandmother taught me, go ask her."

When the daughter asks Great Grandma, "Why did you teach Grandma to slice the ends off the ham before putting it into the pan?", Great Grandma replies...

"Because when we were young, we were too poor to buy a pan large enough, so we had to cut the ends off to fit it into the one we had."

The moral of the story is that people get taught things as a gospel without understanding why - it gets passed on from one person to the next, but the original purpose and intent no longer applies. The situation has changed many times over, but the approach grows more dogmatic. People continue preaching it as if it were some rule chiseled into Ol' Moses' tablets when he came off the mountain in Israel.