Self Employed Success

Today I’m sending an email to my entire mailing list, asking them if they’re receiving two emails from me — and suggesting that they unsubscribe from one (or both!) in order to help them deal with email and information overload.

Here’s how it happens: someone signs up for your mailing list by registering for a free class. Next month, you offer a free ebook, or a paid membership, and they sign up again, but this time with a different email address. Now they’re getting TWO emails from you each time you send your email newsletter.

So once in a while, it helps if you tell them how to unsubscribe from one of those email addresses (gasp!). If you’re using a automated system like 1shoppingcart.com, constantcontact.com, aweber.com or mailchimp.com, those sytems should be putting unsubscribe info at the bottom of all your emails automatically — but people don’t know to scroll to the very BOTTOM of an email to find that unsubscribe link.

Before you send out a “Are You Getting Two Emails From Me?” broadcast, pause and check your OWN feelings. Are you scared that people may unsubscribe and reduce the size of your list? Or are you feeling that you’re doing them a service by inviting them to unsub?

I know it can be scary. What if they didn’t like what you’ve been writing all along in your email newsletter? What if they don’t want to hear from you anymore? Does it mean they don’t like you? Does it mean the end of your business?

Take a deep breath.

Repeat after me.

“It’s GOOD when people get off my mailing list. They unsubscribe for many, many reasons, some which have nothing to do with me. Those who are interested in what I have to share WILL stay on my mailing list. I trust in the intelligence of people that they will do what’s right for them – an ultimately, what’s right for me, too.”

For your amusement…

Another email from another icky marketer; my “comments and edits” are in brackets [ ]

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Dear Sir [sigh--"Madam," if you please]

I would like to offer you a partnership with my seo company [funny -- I already offer SEO to my clients. I'm listening...maybe you've got an amazing offer that will sweep me off my feet??] .

As i [hey, capitalize "i" when refering to yourself] understand that your goal is to help business owner to increase their profits and expand the business exposure, we want to offer you a partnership deal [wait for it, wait for it].

If your clients are interested to order our internet promotion service, you can recommend us and we will provide them a quality service with an affordable price. We will share [with] you a very generous commission per sale [golly, so tempting, how can I refuse?]. We offer a wide variety of service such as website design, website promotion, online consulting, and many more. [That's funny...WE offer the same thing! We must be related. Mommy! He's copying meeee!]

Let me know if you are interested [ummm...no, thanks. And may I wish you the utmost success in your business ventures?]

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I have to laugh at these people. Do they really think someone will respond to an email like this? Well, at least it cheered up my blah Friday.

I have ebooks and audios sitting on my hard drive that I’ve never consumed. I bet you do, too.

Free information is everywhere, and even if it’s excellent, it’s not always easy to digest it and create a strategy around it.

I think the next place of growth for service professionals and information marketers is to take all the free information you research and produce for your clients, synthesize it, and give it back to people in a practical, DO-able format.

Want to be unique? If you can get people to consume your information products, TEACH people how to consume it and use it, it will set you apart from the crowd.  The reason people spend money on my teleclasses and live training classes is that:

1.  They get to ask questions
2.  They’re given bite-sized homework assignments
3.  They can submit the homework to me for review/comments
4. They walk away with a do-able action plan

Even offering a free teleclass sets you apart from the crowd in your industry, because it allows people to receive a chunk of information, learn how to apply it, and ask questions to clarify points. If you’re not offering free teleclasses, now is a good time to start.

Information is everywhere. But smart people are now saying, “Make it work for me in the real world of busy schedules and conflicting priorities. Help me focus.”

If you want to be unique and stand out from the crowd, start helping your customers consume, digest and USE the information you’re giving them.

If you can simplify a complicated topic, if you can save your customers the time of having to do the research and analysis themselves, if you can cut through the noise and help your customers know what’s relevant and important, then you’ll always be valuable to them.

You MUST have a way to measure the results of all your marketing. Tracking the success or failure of a marketing techniques solves the age-old question of “Which marketing techniques should I use?”

For instance:

• When you joined Facebook, did it increase traffic to your website?
• When you sent out your last email broadcast, did it produce sales?
• When you wrote your last blog entry, did it produce comments or link backs?
• When you did SEO on your website, did it increase your rankings in the search engine results?
• When you made your free offer, did people subscribe to your mailing list?

Never, never start a new marketing technique without having a clear idea of what result you want from that technique, and a way to measure those results.

And at the end of each month take a look at those results and compare them to the results you wanted. Just because something produced poor results doesn’t mean you should give it the heave-ho. The first thing you should do it see if there are tweaks you could make that would produce better marketing results. Only after repeated failure should you get rid of a technique that is not producing for you.

I’ll be adding to this series each Thursday, and you can check out all the past posts in the Why Marketing Fails series here.

Good news…the FREE audio recording of the guest radio interview I did with The Coaching Show radio program is now available (see both segment 1 and segment 2, for a total of 30 minutes)

Click here to visit The Coaching Show radio program website to listen to the recording of the interview.

Listen online or download the MP3!