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.

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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.

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.