So I left you in the last post pondering what happens when your open & click through rates in your emails begin (or continue) to plummet and your sales have become non existent.

I see this concern being posed in some of the skype groups that I frequent. People are asking if others are experiencing the same thing. Open rates are down. Click through rates are equally down.

Yesterday I received an email from a fellow marketer that I follow and the theme of the message echoed what I am writing here. He threw out some numbers relating to the size of his list and his open rate and relatively speaking, it was pretty bad. His open rate in the past few months?

Less than 2%

What’s the reason?

I have a pretty good idea what it is, but it’s not the reason that is being bantered about in the chat rooms.

The reason I am hearing in the rooms is that the recession is still hanging on and people are just not spending money right now.

or

It’s the beginning of summer (at least here in the U.S.) and people just don’t spend money in the warmer months.

Everything is being blamed for the lack of opens/clicks/sales except for what the real reason is.

You see, there are a lot of people who have come online looking to supplement or displace their offline income and do it with very minimal effort.

They ‘buy’ into the dream, or at least they sign up for the dream. Whether that be a coaching program or an affiliate program or creating their own products.

One of the first things they are introduced to is list building. The ‘guru’ is telling them the same thing that you are hearing; ‘build a list, build a list’, you’ve got to build a list… and they are introduced to email swaps as a way to accelerate the list building effort.

As I mentioned in the last post, that is a great way to build a list and build it fast but here are three mistakes you may be making and the reasons that your open and click through rates are plummeting and you’re not making any money:

1. Not providing them with access – to You

How many times have you clicked on a link in an email that you have received and it’s dead? It goes no where. 404 error. What do you do?

Well first instinct is to ‘reply’ to the email and let the marketer know. Have you tried that?

Good luck with getting a response!

What you REALLY need to do when setting up your auto responder account is to use an an email address that you monitor on a daily basis your ‘return’ address. That way if a subscriber has a question about ANYTHING in any of your emails (especially your follow ups) all they need to do is reply to the email and it comes into your inbox.

So, provide them with easy access to yourself

2. Not thinking like your customers

Think about when you first signed up to get your first free report… what happened?

Did you get a ‘thank you’ email with a brief introduction to themselves and another link to the download page or did you get nothing?

Go back to that simpler time… what would you want… a nice little introduction to who you’re getting emails from or to get blasted the next day with an email from them ‘promoting’ ANOTHER ‘free’ product that you have to sign up for again?

Think like your customer… take the time to build a relationship with them. Segment your lists a bit and ONLY send out swap/promo emails after providing your new subscribers with some very valuable content or more related free downloads that they don’t have to opt in for.

There are too few marketers out there that do this and if you can do it, you will stand out as someone they will begin to trust and want to buy from in the future.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for once.

3. Being erratic and inconsistent.

How many messages do you have loaded into your autoresponder for new subscribers that will be sent out on autopilot when the subscribe?

2… 3… 10… 20… none?

One of the worst things you can do is to have someone sign up and then NOT send them quality, relevant content… I’m not talking about blasting with broadcasts for your next email swap or offer, but actually taking some time to load up with great content.

Be regular and consistent.

Are you making any of these three mistakes?

Leave me a comment or suggestion below and stay tuned for the next post where I will start going over how easy it is to eliminate these mistakes and having a plan to do it.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tagged with: • •

Filed under: List Building

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!