Typically two.

I send email on days 1, 3, 6, 10 and 15 and thereafter at 5-day intervals, with the first promotion typically in the third email, and then further promotions in about one email in three (sometimes one in two). The promotions are only part of the emails.

As you say, "it depends".

"Mine" have already seen a content-rich website before opting in, know that I'm an affiliate, and have received a "free report" (or whatever it's called) which gave them a lot more information and had in it one small product-promotion and many links back to my own site. They also know exactly how many emails they're going to get, and when, and why, and what the contents will be. This increases my open-rates and CTR's dramatically.

It's easy to fulfil their expectations when you're the person who sets their expectations.

Yes indeed ... well said: this is exactly the question you're asking.

And that's why "it depends".

The main thing it depends on is how much "trust" they already had to start with. And that, in turn depends on who they are, how you attracted them, what made them opt in, what you sent them for opting in, and especially on "what else they've seen of your sales funnel". So it really does "depend", big time!

1) On the first week I like to mail out one email every two days to keep my subscribers interested and "warm". I only send out "value" emails at the beginning to ensure I provide enough value to build trust and make my subscribers be happy that they are on my list.

After week 1 I slow down the rate, but still mail at least once a week, so that my subscribers don't forget who I am and why they joined my list.

2) There no one-fit-all rule, I guess, but if your subscribers already know you before they join the list, they you can say it's much easier to build trust with them. A few weeks of regular mailing out of valuable content should be a warm relationship between you and your list.

In my niche where I am an affiliate, hawaii travel, the ebooks that I give away with the sign up and my first message and just about every message thereafter mention and link to my offers. My offers are things that they want to know anyway, and there is no hard sell - just this is the airline I like to recommend, and these are the two products that will save you money and this is how they save you money.

In my niche where I am selling an ebook - a health topic - I mention my book in every email. but again, there is no hard sell and it's not all about my book.

My emails are nothing but valued content - here's what you need to know and why you need to know it and how it's going to help you - and then at the end I'll say "I talk more about this in my book".

p.s. how long does it take to build trust? zero time. I am so transparent and personal in everything I do that as far as I know, I am trusted right away. This will be MUCH harder in the make money online niche than in other niches.

and p.s. my emails go out once a day for the first few days until all the MUST HAVE info is out. then I switch to once every 4 days. This is stuff people want to know *now*.

Old thread, but a valuable thread. Was looking for information to help me get an idea of what a "typical" autoresponder sequence might be like...

Thanks :-)

Jumpstarting this thread (can't pm yet)...

Alexa, I've been following along with many of your posts and want to thank you times infinity for all of the help you've provided me.

I saw in a different thread that you mentioned telling your subscribers either prior to opting in or within the first email (or both?) that you are an affiliate. I was wondering if you could give a little more of an explanation regarding this (i.e. If your website were all about designer coffee mugs and other coffee drinking related products, would you explain to them that you, from time to time, will share with them certain products that you have found personally to be useful or of high quality and that you are an affiliate with the ones you recommend?)

I think I am just wondering how you go about mentioning this to consumers. One more question; have you found this to be a better alternative to being a bit more implicit with your motivations so that you can simply recommend them a product or service for their benefit - why does the fact that you are an affiliate need to be mentioned at all?

Thanks again for all that you contribute here, you've really helped me out more than you know, well, maybe you do know and either way I am extremely appreciative

I would send your emails every 2-3 days. See how that works out for you.

The secret to making the big money with your list in not only giving them great content but also you need to focus on getting lots of them on a daily basis. It is basically a numbers game.

Very Interesting discussion and I'm of the opinion that there is not a one size fits all answer - particularly on the frequency aspect. I'm giving away short videos to my list (5 minutes long or so) but it's good content.

I'm mailing every day for the first 11 days and during that time you get 12 videos (2 with the first mail). I present the videos myself so my list gets to know me. I invite my list to look at my product (not an affiliate product) on day 5.

I do believe that a prospect is more likely to buy in the first week or so but also if you add value people will stay on your list much longer.

I am genuinely looking for a win/win for my list and obviously for myself when I sell something. I only try to give good and useful content.

I approach it by asking myself "what would I be happy receiving?" Useful content or yet another buy this now get rich quick scheme.

I send my emails out every 4 days. And on average, it takes my list around 7 emails (28 days) for my customers to buy something else from me. Then i add more and more emails to my autoresponder just to improve my chances of getting a sale from an old customer... increases conversion rates, plus... i have nothing else to do in my life except workout, cook, watch TV, sleep, and oh yeah... make more money online.

Okay, thanks all for the replies.

@Alexa & John, thanks, so now I stand clearly divided between both sides I guess I can always test.

John, so you tell them that you might benefit from them buying? I just am not seeing how to word this in a smooth way that does not interrupt the flow of their experience (from reading the landing page to opting in to reading and responding to emails).

Alexa, I am not seeing how I can mention the fact that their purchasing my recommended products will help line my pockets too lol I think I see how humor and being clever about it would make all the difference, yet I'm only clever when it doesn't seem to serve me haha.

So I understand your reasons for not sharing actual disclosures yet any general examples or just a few ideas for inspiration would be really helpful.

I mean, in your last sentence, you stated that sometimes mentioning that you're not an affiliate goes over really well, which I think is partly why I am hesitant to mention that I am one (What are the reasons that it would go over really well? Maybe, increased trust and a sense that your recommendations are that much more unbiased - not that they were in the first place).

Basically, it seems generally incongruent to be telling subscribers, "Look I have your best interests at heart and will only recommend products that I think will be truly helpful to you" while telling them that "I will also make money while doing this." It just seems like the last part is likely to send a conflicting message, since the idea of someone making money from the sale of a product and not being biased at all in recommending it might be hard for people to believe and trust. So any ideas from anyone on how to actually go about this would be appreciated. Thanks

Thanks John and Alexa, both of your posts help to clarify all of this a lot more.

@ John, I see what you're saying about trust, yet I have seen some websites that are able to recommend or bring up products in discussions without it even seeming like they are going to benefit (and before I started reading here on WF, I don't think I thought that these site owners were using affiliates most of the time). Just wondering how trusting or skeptical most web surfers are as compared to the people in this forum.

@ Alexa, I think putting your post together with John's helped me see that there is actually an opportunity to connect more with our viewership here, in announcing disclaimers like the ones you mentioned (i.e. "I'm a person too with bills to pay and other expenses and this is something I put my time and effort into in order to bring you helpful info" etc). The idea of telling them where the money goes really seems to be a great way of building more trust.

I might have used that disclaimer word for word if it weren't for your heads up, and the fact that my money has never been - nor will it ever be - spent on manicures or "fripperies" lol. Very clever though, much appreciated and enjoyed

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Alexa, what I don't get is the big picture.

If you constantly syndicate articles in a large ezine for example, and people opt in to your list only to find out that they now receive emails which are pretty much the same as what they've read in the ezine they saw your first articles, don't they get frustrated?

Or maybe I'm the guy who sees the glass half empty, and they actually don't care that much.

And one other thing: when you say you sometimes re-write your articles for your autoresponders, how much re-writing is needed? (Excluding the obvious parts, such as tying together with the last email and talking about the next one.)

And yet another one other thing: I've read in an other thread that personal stories are good for building a relationship with the readers, and that you use them in your emails.

In general lines, how often should this be done and what does it actually mean? Is it tied together with some useful information, like a story with a moral or something similar? Or do you just brag about the shoes you have?

Later edit: And I guess the emails with the offers are created from scratch, so the product promotion blends smoothly in the whole email, right? Or is it possible to just send out an article and say at the end something like "Recommended resource"? I've seen that in Paul Uhl's list which he had in his sig.

I don't send any selling emails for 2 weeks... In that time I simply send good free stuff and even then my sales email is quite low key.

My plan is to build a slow base of trust and sell infrequently... So far I have had very few unsubscribers...

As you say though there's no exact science. Just trial and error!

Alexa, the problem I see with sending stuff that was already published elsewhere is that they might not open up subsequent emails, if they recognize 2-3 in a row (or even not in a row).

But when you think of it, a subscriber that really likes your stuff will open most of your emails and see if the article you've sent him is new, and if yes, read it.

And since we've established that it's good practice to send articles already published, do you give the subject of the emails the title of the article? Or do you create new ones?
Just curious.

My wild guess is that a new title will be better suited in this situation, because if you use the same ones as the articles have, they might recognize them and consequently not open them at all. Of course, even if you use different title wording for the same article and they catch on after they read a paragraph or two, they still might not read further, but who knows, maybe some of them forget (due to the targeted demographics ), and you still get some clicks back to your website.

Big thanks to Alexa and to the OP for this informative thread! I'm staring my own list today, so lots fo learn

Chris

I think we can take 2 different routes, first for purely affiliate marketing with no future aspirations of creating your own products/services in that space we can keep sending emails every second day and keep selling { These are things i learnt from charles kirkland}

For your authority niche, it makes sense to spend a lot of initial time and get the Ar's in place more for relationship , with the life time value of the customer in mind and only then start selling / offering...

You need to think of email marketing like a Scooby Sandwich that has tons of different layers of bread, different meats, salad items and sauce, let me explain...

THE MEAT - you need to deliver on what you promised them when they opted in
THE SALAD - the stuff they probably don't want (i.e. your promos), carefully interspersed
THE SAUCE - keep things spiced up by giving freebies and change up the content and delivery style (text, video, audio, report etc.)

Scooby Doo marketing - you heard it here first folks... :-)

Very good post and lots of great ideas.... Thanks for your efforts.

Yes the info in here is all GOLD thanks so much. Alexa has gained a follower in me as I start building a list myself.

there really is too many variables involved

i often send my subscribers to my blog for content, this works well for me and builds a lot more trust and my subscribers become more engaged

rather than actually sell something in someones face, including a single link at the bottom of your emails under your name is a much softer way of selling and you will be surprised how many people actually click the link and buy

you just have to test to see what works best for your traffic and list

paul

Quick question...

1. Do you put the full text articles in your emails, or do you give teasers in the email and send them to the full article on your site?

2. How many emails do you have loaded up in your autoresponder currently?

I'm tired of playing the SEO game, and thanks to Alexa, I'm really thinking of strictly moving to a list building model with a squeeze or mini-site.

I use to be a PPC guy, but with Google, I got shut-down for ridiculous reasons. But now that I think about it, using PPC with Yahoo/Bing, even FB may cost me a bit up front to get some people into my list initially...but long term, if setup well, hopefully it will pay dividends.

So, for example, if I used PPC to target my niche, it may cost me (on average) $1-2 per optin lead (just a guess). But if the average lifetime payout per lead is around $4 let's say (just a guess again), then I've doubled my money. Now just take that times 100 or 1000...and that is a nice chunk of change.

I have tried the 7 day presell with an email every day but it didnt convert well for me.

Now what I do is

1. 1 email 5 days before the launch
2. 1 email the day before the launch
3. 1 email the day of the launch
4. 1 email 2 days after the launch

For higher ticket items I would presell for a month in advance but not too many emails.. Just allows people to save up and prepare for the high price

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When a new subscriber enters my list they join 2 autoresponders.

1 - Pure Content & Trust Building (This is where I share my story, I share amazing content and I share the best of the best that of content I have to share

2 - 'Targeted autoresponder' that sells a product they are interested in. If they opted in to get a ebook about traffic, I share great traffic strategies and sell a traffic related product.

Emails in my autoresponder are about 1-2 days apart

Your free report or a video by means of which people are subscribed to your list must do a job of initial trust building.

If it provides that much value then every new subscriber feels like he or she took a good decision to subscribe to your list.

There is a silent filtering that is continuously running on people's mind about whose mails they should check and read everyday as they know who are the good ones amongst the many marketers they are subscribed to.

If you are confident that almost half of trust building job has been done by your free gift then ideally it takes only 2 mails before you send any mail that sells something. Those two mails are for focusing the subscriber onto something that would add more value or help in addition to what the free gift has given to them. The promotional mail that follows then does the next job.

For a scenario other than the above, at least 5 mails are required to build a pre-selling rapport if not trust before you send any promotional mail.