Click PLAY to listen to this post

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Are you sabotaging your list building efforts without even knowing it?

Or, a better way to ask the question is; in your effort to build your list AND pad your profits, are you self sabotaging your efforts?

Let me explain what I am referring to and also in the same vein, let off a little steam about what I see going on in the IM business.

I am going to guess that you, and probably 99.9% of the people who have ventured into the Internet Marketing realm within the past five years (including myself), have heard over and over again until you are ready to barf is: you need to build a list, you need to build a list…

And that’s true. THE ‘secret’ to creating an income that is going to replace your full time income so that you don’t have to go to work everyday, is building that list.

But…not just ANY list. A RESPONSIVE list. A list of buyers.

You can build a list of 100,000 subscribers and if the overwhelming majority of them don’t even open your emails, how are you going to get your copy read?

Wouldn’t you much rather have a small list of readers who respond to the emails that you send out and purchase from you on a regular basis than a ginormous list of readers who are indifferent?

If you didn’t answer that question in your head with an EMPHATIC yes, then my friend, you might as well just cancel your autoresponder, webhosting and domain registration accounts and go back to your 9-5 ‘workin for the man’ dead end job!

Because you don’t ‘get’ it!

I’ve mentioned in the past that I subscribe to numerous ‘marketers’ lists and I get, on average, a few hundred emails a day. I use these emails as a learning experience.

I typically will skim subject lines and unless one catches my attention, I will bypass it. But if it’s from a marketer that I know provides good content, I WILL open it and read, regardless of the subject line.

Why do I skim subject lines?

I want to see what the others are doing…

what can I learn from them?

What are they doing?

Why are they doing it that way?

Should I be doing the same?

If I see the same subject line from several marketers, it probably means that there is a launch going on for the next new shiny object… I may open one of those and read the copy and click through to the sales page just to check it out… If it catches my interest, I’ll make some notes on it and copy and paste some of the sales copy for future reference.

Do I buy? Maybe… if it will help my business out…

but in most cases, No.

More often than not, here’s what I, and probably you also, see for subject lines…

“Confirmation Required – please save this email”

“Your Confirmed Download Link”

“Re: Your Download”

“URGENT: open immediately (critical)”

“Thanks (YOURNAME), Here is Your Download Link ($XX Value)”

the same subject lines over and over and over again…

Now, I don’t know about you, but unless I have just signed up for someone’s gift or another resource from someone, I know for a fact that these subject lines are attempting to get you to open the email…

and if you want to be really straight forward about it

under false pretenses

I WILL say that almost all of the subject lines above are from email/adswaps. Meaning that two marketers get together and decide that they are going to mail out for each other so that they can ‘share’ and ‘build’ their lists respectively.

In theory that is a pretty decent way to build your list fast. Here’s how it works

Let’s say you have a list of 1,500 subscribers and you are working with a person who has a list of 2,500 subscribers.

Both of you send an email to your respective lists, and depending on the responsiveness, you can theoritically increase your list by a bunch.

Let’s look at that.

You both exchange subject line and copy to send out. You know that your’s is optimized because you have tested it and it converts…

you have tested it, haven’t you?

You get subject line and copy from your fellow marketer and you can only trust that he has done the same… at this point you should, as a practice, go through their sign up process. How are they doing it? Do they have a One Time Offer in place or are they just using default autoresponder pages… maybe they have something set up different than you do and you can implement into your process at some point… the point is, you want to see how they handle the sign up process. Plus, if it’s a decent ebook, you might learn something.

Anyway…

Just taking some basic numbers… you have a list of 1,500 and typically when you send an email out 20% open it. That’s 300 readers who open your email and read it.

Now, let’s presume that out of those 300 people, half of them are interested in the content of the email and click on the link, that’s 150 clicks… and if the other person’s squeeze page is set up correctly and converts at 80 percent, that’s 120 new subscribers for the other guy! Not bad.

So let’s flip it around… he sends and email to his list for your offer. He’s sending to 2,500…20% is 500…half is 250…you already know that your squeeze page converts because you have done everything in Squeeze Pages On Crack! and your page is optimized… guess what? You’ve just got 200 new subscribers! Again, not bad.

These numbers are purely theoretical and are not typical. Your results may vary significantly.
But I think you see the potential with adswaps. You can build your list very quickly if you are exchanging with people who have responsive lists and they are interested in what you have to offer.

BUT, there IS a downside and you may just be self – sabotaging your own efforts:

Most people are NOT copywriters and haven’t got a clue on how to write a subject line much less the content that makes up an email that readers are going to click through. So they are resorting to ‘deceptive’ tactics to get you to open the email and read the copy.

So, you’re going to end up sending out emails to your readers with the subject lines that I have listed above… and your readers are going to become very wary of those subject lines and they are going to stop opening your emails.

What happens when they stop opening your emails?

Your messages aren’t getting read… and what happens when your messages aren’t getting read?

Your click through rates plummet.

And when that happens… guess what happens when you send out a legitimate email with an offer for an affiliate product? Or, GASP! a plr product that you have flipped and have for sale…

You get very few opens…

Sales are non existent or very few…

And if sales are ‘slow’… that means you aren’t making any money… and if you aren’t making any money…

Well, we don’t want to go there, do we?

How do you combat this dilemma?

Come back tomorrow and find out…

See you then

I’ll bet you didn’t know that there is a Magic Formula for increasing the number of subscribers you get from your squeeze page.

Specifically, I’m going to take a look at a small, seemingly insignificant change that can TRIPLE your rate of opt-in subscribers.

“Triple my opt-ins?” you may be thinking.

That’s right.

Triple.

With the exact same amount of traffic you are currently receiving to your site, using this simple strategy can actually increase the number of visitors who join your list by up to 300%!

Same amount of traffic.

Three times as many subscribers.

And, best of all, it won’t cost you a penny.

You love it already, right?

Before I get into the actual strategy itself, it’s important that I remind you of the science of getting folks to opt-in (join by request) to your list.

You see, many people forget (or for newbies, never really know) the “magic formula” for producing an opt-in subscriber.

Let’s take a look together…

The “Magic Formula” for…

Producing Opt-in Subscribers

Did you know that there is a very specific formula for getting people to become subscribers.

Do you know what the magic formula is?

I am going to be covering that in my Squeeze Page webinar on Monday

Did you sign up? Well gallop over there after you finish reading and do it!

There are actually three elements…

List + Enticement + View = Opt-In

And each is critically important to the equation.

If you are missing even one of them, then you are missing subscribers.

1. A List – This one is a no-brainer. You can’t produce an opt-in subscriber until you have a list. Nothing shocking there.

2. An Enticement (remember – ‘bait’) – There was a time when just having a list was enough. That time is gone. In order to get people to join your list, you must give them some compelling reason to do so.

3. View -  Having a list and having an enticement alone won’t get it done either. Folks need to KNOW that you have a list and they need to KNOW that there is some really good reason for them to care that you have a list. They gotta SEE your list and offer.

That probably sounds a bit confusing but I will explain that more in detail on the Squeeze Page webinar I am hosting on Monday.

Very basically, that’s how you get an opt-in. That’s how you get a subscriber.

You need a list.

You need ‘bait’.

And you need your visitors to see both.

Now that we’ve got the basics covered, sign up for the webinar and I will go over more tips, tricks and secrets to get YOUR squeeze page to suck in more subscribers!

Monday…

5pm Eastern

4pm Central

2pm Pacific

What time is that in YOUR neck of the woods?

http://www.worldtimezone.com

As always, I invite you to leave a comment.

Til Next Time…

Click PLAY to listen to this post

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you are here for the first time, WELCOME! If you’ve been here before, welcome back.

If you got here from the emails I have been sending the past couple of days, THANK YOU! And if you found me by accident through surfing, here’s a perfect opportunity to listen/read to the rest of the post and then go to the upper left hand corner and sign up for my Relationship Marketing ecourse because that ecourse goes hand in hand with the topic of this post:

Squeeze Pages – Your Bait Just Isn’t Working

Now you’re saying, “What?”

Let me explain.

There are a LOT of people coming online each and every day with the aspirations of tapping in to the ginormous amount of money that is being spent on the internet. I mean there are people in search of information and these newcomers need to learn the process of gathering names and emails addresses and providing that information the correct way.

Now, this isn’t going to be a lesson on ‘how to sell’. Well, yea it is sort of, but one of the first things that they, and maybe you, need to learn is how to build a list so that they can have some people to send their messages to and make some money.

But before you can start building a list, you need a basic website online with an optin form to capture the names and email addresses of the people who are visiting your site.

A squeeze page.

And that’s where I say, your squeeze page bait isn’t working.

Now, if you have been reading my emails recently, I have been talking about ‘what’ a lot of the marketers are doing wrong.

Here’s what I mean.

I am on a LOT of mailing lists! Wayyyy too many if you ask the average person and I wouldn’t recommend being on as many… well, yes I would, but that’s for another post, but I digress…

I am on a lot of lists and here’s what I see; these ‘marketers’ are using squeeze pages to collect your name and email address and now you have given them the permission to send you emails. But what they are sending out with each email has nothing to do with the report or ebook or software or whatever they were giving away to get me on their list in the first place!

They are sending out promotion after promotion either trying to get you to sign up to someone elses list or they are trying to get you to buy an affiliate product that they will get a commission on. I really DON’T have a problem with that, I mean, I do it from time to time also. That’s just what we do, but most of these people don’t even have their own product and I would venture to guess that a lot of them don’t realize how easy it is to flip a plr product and make sales on their own.

Of course, that’s assuming that the product that they are going to sell has something to do with the product they are giving away on their squeeze page.

I mean, if I sign up to get a report or ebook about dating and how to read body language, why in the world would I want to be sent to another squeeze page that is dealing with forex trading?

Now let me ask you – you work hard driving traffic to a squeeze page and offering something of value in order to get people to sign up for your ‘newsletter/ezine’ right?

Say ‘right’

Why would you not provide them with excellent content dealing with the report/ebook/whatever that they signed up to receive?

I don’t have the answer to that question, do you?

Instead, most of the lists that I sign up for start right away blasting me (and hundreds if not thousands of others) with other offers, other sales pitches and other things that I can go buy that have nothing to do with their original product.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are several lists that I am on that I get fabulous content from and when they send an offer out for one of THEIR products, or an affiliate offer for a RELATED product, I will typically click over to take a look at it because you just never know when another product is going to come along that is going to help your business out.

And that’s where you come in; leave me a comment on why you think people market this way, or am I completely off base.

After you leave your comment, go up to the upper left and sign up for my Relationship Marketing Ecourse and find out why it’s important to build a relationship with your readers.

Once you are signed up, you will start receiving the ecourse and you will also receive the remaining messages in my squeeze page series which will include an announcement for the live webinar I will be holding on April 19th where I will show you EXACTLY how to fix this problem.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks in advance for your comments.