IMPORTANT ALERT…(please respond)

Re: ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT . . . <your email address>

Those are just two of the subject lines that have made it into my inbox the past few days.

Have you seen them too?

It begs the question:

Are your subject lines sending the right message?

As a marketer that uses email messages to send content and generate income it’s very possible that you may have fallen into the trap of your subject lines sending the absolute wrong message.

This is a disturbing trend that started a while ago and has progressively gotten worse.

You see, in today’s economic climate there are literally hundreds of people that are exploring ways to add some additional income to their bottom line each month. Maybe it’s just to pay a few bills or it’s to pay for a vacation or the kids college tuition. Whatever the reason is, they are searching for ways to make up for what inflation and the lack of pay raises at the day job are taking away.

And they come online to do it. Why? Because it’s the ‘thing’ to do.

They search…

and they find a ‘guru’ or someone who claims that they can teach them how to generate the extra income through some fancy-dancee, graphics hopped up sales page that claims they can make thousands each and every day.

Right.

Whatever.

Or…  they ‘discover’ (get told) that they need to be building a list and sending emails to create that income and they get sucked into someone’s promise to help them build that list by doing incessant & incestuous email swaps.

However it happens, they get on someone’s ‘list’ so that they can learn how to build their own online business a reap the benefits. The profits.

What they don’t get taught is the fact that they need to develop a relationship with the people that sign up for their own information.

Once that relationship is established through a very defined process, find out what those people need to advance their online business and create products to solve that problem. In a nutshell, that’s the ‘secret’ to building a profitable online business.

Part of what’s not understood is that in order to create that relationship they must have some basic copywriting skills which includes the ability to craft a subject line.

A subject line that, instead of deceiving the reader into opening the email with a promise it can’t deliver, creates curiosity and then gently leads the reader to click on a link to get to the information that they want.

Does that make sense?

So, here’s the question again: Are your subject lines sending the right message?

If you are you on the same lists I am you know what I mean.

Here’s a sampling of subject lines (and my commentary about the use of ‘it’) from the past couple of days that have slithered their way into my inbox:

Thanks <insert name here> – Here Is Your F’REE DOWNLOAD

duuuude, I’m already on your list and your freebie sucked. Why would I want to open up your email and get sent to ANOTHER squeeze page?

IMPORTANT ALERT…(please respond)

What??? What important alert? That you’re sending me to another ‘marketers’ list and I SHOULD be on HIGH alert? I’d like to respond to you personally, but you probably don’t monitor that email address!

{free video} If you “bought” this, I feel sorry for you…

yea, I’d feel sorry for myself if I bought that crap too, so why are YOU promoting it? OH, that’s right, you’re trying to put more subscribers on your list. How’s that working for you?

Re: ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT . . . <your email address>

Activate my account??? WTH? When did I request an ‘account’ with you?

Or how about:

Re: Bank Depost #4733

Say who?? So you’re sending me a message to tell me you’re depositing money in MY account? Saweeeeet!

That one goes to a over hyped sales page with pictures of a brand new sports car, a house that even I wouldn’t want to live in (nice, but no thanks) and some jimmied up clickbank images.

INCOMING BANK DEPOSIT For <your email address>…

I’m not even going to add anything there.

Now, I must admit that these subject lines, while all real and all have come from my inbox within the past few days, are also being used by ‘marketers’ who have just come online recently (within the past year or so) and are being ‘taught’ that email swaps are a good business model and can create income for yourself.

I beg to differ. I’ve been down that road. It don’t work. It might work IF you are swapping with the right people at the right time.

But the way ‘these’ people are doing it. NO!

So… What does work?

I’ll get to that in my next post…

In the mean time

Is it just me?

Or is this irritating to you too?

Leave a comment to explain…

(p.s. there’s a bonus in it for you)

Part of the reason people get into online businesses is the ability to “not be there” and still get the order complete.

• Sales letter up 24/7
• Order transaction up 24/7
• Order fulfillment up 24/7
• Automatic email confirmation up 24/7

Real contact with the customer

ZERO

(sounds like a MasterCard commercial, huh?)

Online digital businesses make people lazy.

No matter how you cut it, people want to do less and less and get more and more.

A common fallacy – mainly contributed by the successful – is that you have all this free time to sit on the beach and drink from a coconut. Lots of sales copy reads, “I send out a couple of emails a week and clear twenty-grand a month.”

It sounds so simple, but there’s much more to it.

Nobody tells you about the number of emails you get that start with:

“I can’t get the thing to download. You mentioned something about an acrobat. What does that have to do with anything?”

How you serve your customers determines if they will ever buy from you again.

And it determines if they will tell their friends.

Excuse me!

What they tell their friends?

They will tell them something, but what that something is, is up to you.

It’s how you follow up…

How you treat your customer…

Your Follow Up Cash Plan will guide you along that successful path

You want your customers to tell their friends that you are a great marketer, right?

Three Reminders…

It’s About Support, Not Just Selling

Today an eleven-year-old with a website can sell something online. Selling is not the issue. But how will that kid react with an angry, frustrated, or confused buyer? What happens when the tyke who drinks bytes for breakfast meets grandma who decides this will be the day she logs on to the internet for the first time?

The unsuccessful look at a sale as the completion of THE goal.

Get the sale.

Get the sale.

They sell one person then move to the next. Those making the most money realize the first sell is a stepping stone to a relationship through which more sales will come.

Any kid can make a sale; it takes a pro to supply support.

It’s About Friendship, Not Just Salesmanship

There’s enough arrogant copywriting high-fiving happening in business it’s a wonder that some people can type with their blistered hands. Few people write real sales copy, most of it is just hype.

Why?

To get the money.

Big deal.

How many friends have you made through your products and services?

How many of your customers can you call and they’re thrilled to hear from you?

Whose house could you stop by for a cookie and a glass of milk?

Crooks don’t stop by for a cookie – friends do.

Uh-oh, I hear some excuses…

”But I run an internet business…but I never see a customer…but I’m trying to remain anonymous and make $4,000 a day from my kitchen table in my underwear…”

Some of my best friendships (and most profitable ones) have come as a result my digital business. No, you don’t have to be everyone’s pal, and there will be some customers you’ll need to get rid of – especially the dreaded freebie seeker.

But a handful of solid clients that you laugh with, dream with, go to for advice, and go the extra mile for will only boost your business.

What kind of friend are you to your customers?

Your Follow Up Cash Plan will provide you with the ‘insider’ knowledge of how to create that relationship with your best customers. It will give you enough material that you can’t be lazy.

See you on the inside

Ask any experienced online marketer, and they will tell you that the most important thing you can ever do when you are building an online business is to create lists that you are able to send out content to. It doesn’t matter what niche you are targeting, you need to have a list of people that content to.

Build a list, build a list…the money is in the list…you need to have a list of hungry buyers.

But WHY?

Today I am starting a series of posts on list building. In the coming posts I will be covering topics such as WHY you need to build a list, a few of the different methods HOW you can go about this and then into some of the various techniques you can use to be successful in your list building efforts.

So, let’s dig in:

In the beginning, every name on any list you build will be a potential customer. Once you know how to ‘work’ that mailing list properly, you will quickly start to turn some of those potentials into customers.

No matter what kind of online business you are running, it is important to understand that there is a huge difference between making money online and building your business.

For example, there are thousands of people who decide that they want to make some money online. They begin their ‘Internet Marketing’ journey without a product, without software, or without some sort of service of their own to offer to potential customers.

Consequently, they start their business doing something like promoting products as an affiliate marketer or by featuring paid advertising on a webpage.

In both of these situations, this person might be making some money but they are not building their business. At the very heart of the business building concept is the ability to coerce information from the people who visit your website.

In this case, the specific action that you need to ask them to take is to provide their email address and their name. You in turn need to provide something of value to them in exchange for this, whether it be an ebook or a piece of software or a collection of graphics. Whatever that ‘ethical bribe’ is, having them take this action and confirming their email address will add them to that particular mailing list.

Doing this gives you permission to send them additional information in the future.

When people chose to subscribe to your list, they make a small commitment to your business. However, at this point, they have not made the most important commitment, spending money with you.

By using the tactics and strategies that you’ll read in ‘List Building From Scratch’ and by coming back here and reading the content that I provide in these posts, you will be able to convince some of your prospects to spend money with you, and when they do so, they become your customer.

Isn’t that what we all really want?

The commitment that they have now shown to your business is far greater and more important, for several reasons.

Firstly, they have demonstrated that they trust you and are happy to do business with you. This is important because every business person (whether operating online or offline) wants to build a list of loyal customers to whom they can sell products and services on a regular basis.

By becoming a customer, that person has indicated that they are willing to pay you for more valuable content. That content is either offered through your messages that are loaded into your autoresponder and trickled to them at specific intervals or through blog posts like this.

Alright, so we have some basics of ‘why’ you need to not only have a list of people that you can mail out to, next time  I will ‘how’ you are going to start getting these people on to your list.

Til then, check out ‘List Building From Scratch’, you’ll have a better handle on what I will be covering…