Even after you have built a list of subscribers, you must realize that a good majority of them are not going to be ‘buyers’. Most lists are built by giving something away for free as an incentive for signing up. Most of the list will prove to be ‘freebie seekers’ or ‘tire kickers’ who are unlikely to ever buy anything online.

Now is the perfect time to work on developing your relationship with the people on your mailing list. You are a marketer, so it’s your job to persuade these people to be more responsive to your messages and increase the number of sales you make through your emails to them.

In this post I am going to give you 3 tips on how to turn those people who have become numb to your messages into responsive, hungry buyers.

Tip #1

Be Consistent

One of the ways to create responsiveness from your readers is your consistency in sending content to them. You are working on developing a reputation with your list so regular, useful, messages need to become expected by your readers. Sporadic and infrequent mailings tend to leave a lot of your subscribers not remembering who you are, where they first signed up with you, or why you are finally mailing them now. Finding the right interval is very important. Every day can be too much while only once or twice a month is usually too little.

Tip #2

Don’t Bombard Them With Sales Pitches

You do not want to bombard them with sales pitches. Although I know marketers who do this (and I am subscribed to a LOT of these lists), it’s not recommended that you send two of these messages in a row. By sending several emails that provide content relevant to what they signed up to receive in between each promotional message sends the subliminal message that you value them as more than just a potential customer.

As I mentioned, everything you send to your subscribers should have something to do with what they signed up to your list for. All these mailings, free products, information, and recommended products need to be tailored to their interests. By providing targeted information you are branding yourself as not only an expert in the field but a helpful person to know as well.

Tip #3

Ask Them Questions – Ask For A Response

A good way to build responsiveness in your mailing list is to occasionally ask them what THEY are interested in knowing about. This can be done either as a poll or a straight question. Offer an extra special free product for the best suggestions and then send it to everyone who responded with a suggestion or comment. The more you know your list the better you can serve them while increasing the chances of making sales along the way.

Provide your email subscribers with an easy to use way of contacting you. The easiest way to do this is by setting up your autoresponder email address to be an email address that you monitor every day, that way your readers can just ‘reply’ to any one of your emails to contact. Make sure they know just how valuable they are to you and be ready to give personal service when needed or requested. By becoming a ‘real’ person for them, they are much more likely to take you up on your offers when you do send them a sales message.

I hope this series has helped you out in your list building efforts. If you want more in depth information about list building, check out my List Building From Scratch ebook.

As I mentioned previously, my next set of posts are going to be dealing with squeeze pages and how to avoid making ‘the’ fatal mistake.

Stay tuned.

Well, finally….I have gotten the new theme somewhat where I want it. Please leave me any comments on what you think of the new theme or content of the post. Thanks.

Before I get to the meat of today’s post, I wanted to let you know that today is the last day you can get in on ‘The Free PLR Giveaway’. Doug and Xavier are closing the doors on this bad boy later today. The products in this particular giveaway, are not only ‘never before seen’, but they are also from some of the big hitters in the biz:

Doug himself
Willie Crawford
Joel Osborne
Mike Paetzold

you can read the rest in my previous post….get over there really quickly to grab the products…and don’t forget to grab the 50 MRR products right after your register…if you are using MRR in any way shape or form, you can’t pass these up…

Speaking of Giveaway Events, you can check out the latest ones that are going on and the upcoming ones (they are still accepting contributors, sign up through the links provided)…they are a great way to build your list. There’s a great segue into todays topic:

Optimizing your Optin

Have you done that? Do you know what it means to do that?

Let me explain: probably 85-90% of marketers out there who are building their list(s), whether through giveaway events, or through forms on squeeze pages, blogs, sales pages, whatever, are not optimizing their optin. In other words, they have an optin form on a page, people sign up for whatever they are offering, it redirects to a standard ‘thanks for subscribing’ page…they get an email saying they have requested information from so and so and to click on a link to confirm. They click on the link and are taken to a page that says thank you for subscribing.

That’s it. Period.

If you are supposed to get a gift, you either have to wait for an additional email from them or if they are really scummy, they have your email address and there is no gift. I don’t know of anyone that does that, but I am sure that it has happened in the past.

They don’t have their opt in process optimized.

If you are doing it right…or optimizing (another name is monetizing) your opt in process, once your customer (and they are all customers, whether it’s a freebie or they are buying something, NEVER forget that!) has filled out the form and clicked submit, they are brought to a page that should thank them for signing up and what is going to happen next.

You should have a page constructed that explains the entire process. That they have entered their email address and if they are using a free service, they may have to check their spam filters for the email that they will be getting asking to confirm their email address.

On this page, you should have at least one unannounced bonus for them. Possibly and ebook or two that is related to whatever you are giving away. You can also put an inexpensive paid product, again, if it’s related to what you are giving away.

Having something that requires them to buy something gives you an indication of what type of reader this person may become– A Responsive Reader — that’s what you are looking for.

You may also have something to the effect that if they entered a bogus email address looking for the freebie right away, they can go back and enter a valid email address again, or you could have another optin form on the page so they don’t have to go back. Explain that there are unscrupulous people out there who do just that and you are attempting to get a valid email address.

At this point, they should realize that they will be getting another email from you which is going to confirm their email address. This is called the verified opt in. Once that second email has arrived and they have clicked the link to confirm it was indeed them that requested the information, you have a second chance to provide them with more added bonuses, or a page with another paid offer. This is commonly called an OTO (One Time Offer) page.

You can do whatever you want to do on this page. My preference is to have a product that you can sell and keep all the profits for yourself, but some sort of affiliate link will work just as well. The preferred way is one of your own products…if you don’t have a product of your own that you can sell, check out Doug’s PLR sale and pick something up.

At this point, you have the subscriber on your list, and hopefully that person has purchased at least one of the paid products you have offered and from here you begin to send out quality content on a regular basis with the occasional relevant offer.

You have now optimized your opt in process.

You can get more detailed if you want further down the line and that is something that I will cover in my K.A.R. newsletter, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

Until next time,

Here’s to YOUR Successes

When you pass on helpful information to your readers because you feel like that information will help them without necessarily promoting a product it accomplishes two things.

Passing on resources to your subscribers without always worrying about your commissions builds trust because they start to think that you want to help them and not just get money from them. This makes them more willing to give you money when you ask for it. That’s just the way it works.

Prompting your subscribers to send you feedback on the resource(s) you tell them about is what helps to make your list responsive to your future offers. Get your readers used to interacting with you. Get them used to doing what you ask. In order to do that, you have to keep asking them to do stuff.

When you find anything you think is useful and think your subscribers will find useful as well, pass it on to them even if you don’t get a commission from a product they buy.

You don’t have to do that every single time you write something but do it and ask them for their opinions on what you wrote. Writing to your readers without caring about getting commissions for every single product you mention is a small price to pay in the long run for the level of trust you inspire.

That trust (built on the fact that you have shown your readers they are more than just a dollar sign) is what will set you apart from 99.9% of the other publishers out there.

Let’s be real. I publish to profit. Period.

If my subscribers don’t buy from me I stop publishing because at that point it becomes a burden on my time. I am in business to make money and so are you. My readers understand that and so do yours.

What does this mean to your bottom line?

The more you give to your readers without asking for a lot in return the more they’ll feel like the NEED to give back to you. That’s the law of reciprocation at work. Most of us were taught to give back what we get from people. That being the case, be careful about what you give because what you give is what you can expect to get back. That’s a scary thought huh?

Like I said just a minute ago your subscribers understand that you are in business to make money. If you don’t make money, you go out of business. The issue a lot of the time with publishers is that if you haven’t been giving your readers information they actually value, they won’t care if you stay in business or not which means they won’t bother buying the products you recommend.

I buy products from publishers who do their best to give me value because I want them to stick around. The only way I know how to keep them around is to buy from them.

Give your readers some credit. They know that to keep you in business they have to buy what you recommend. The only real question is do you give them enough value in the form of quality information for them to care if you stay in business or not?

On the line of valuable resources, I would like to pass this along – as you know, creating and selling (or giving away) your very own product, is the easiest way to make money on the internet. Well, my friend Joel Osborne just released his ‘Product Creation Success Package’.

If you have ever wanted to create your own product but was unsure of how to do it, the “Product Creation Success Package” has the information that you are looking for! He covers such topics as “What is an Information Product” all the way to “Delivering The Info Product” and everything in between. The Product Creation Success Package contains 3 ebooks, each with Master Resell Rights and each targeting different topics about product creation. You also get the sales page to go along with the main product.

I wouldn’t be promoting it if I hadn’t picked it up myself and gone through it. There are some points in the book that I hadn’t thought of and that will help me with my next products.

I highly recommend it…again, get it here

Stay tuned for the fourth and final segment of Relationship Marketing.

Til then,

Here’s to YOUR Successes