What should you email your list?
Let’s say you have a list: people who have signed up to receive your emails. what do you do then? What do you actually send people?
Michael Senoff’s Approach: Emailing Offers
Michael Senoff has a large volume of marketing interviews, recordings, and other digital products. They’re pretty good, too.
Michael’s approach is to create an offer with a watch. Maybe it’s a big discount, more than 96% discount in some cases. Perhaps the product will disappear after a while. He will send a few emails over a few days about this offer, increasing to send many on the last day.
This works for a few reasons:
It has a lot of products, so you can have a sale on the go every two weeks or so.
The offers are incredibly valuable – I’m talking pocket change for hours of one-time interviews and training.
His emails are mostly entertaining, though with deals this good, he also gets away with cheeky sales pitches.
If all you do is spam people from time to time, it won’t work. But if you’re consistent, offer something only a lunatic would turn down, and do it with charm, you can pull it off.
The Bob Bly Approach: Email Newsletters
Bob Bly is a legend in marketing circles, so it’s worth paying attention to what he does.
He sends two emails a week: one is a short sales pitch about a product of his, the other is some thoughts on love, life, and marketing. Then send out a monthly newsletter: a collection of short articles, ideas, and offers.
Bob knows a monthly newsletter, and nothing else, not a great idea. If people sign up and don’t hear from you for three weeks, they’ll probably forget they signed up and mark you as spam. And no matter how good your newsletter is, it’s very little content for a month.
Still, a newsletter is a great way to share articles you find, articles you write, and articles you borrow from other people. With your permission, of course, although if your list is good enough, they will beg you to include something in your newsletter.
The Ben Settle Approach: Daily Emails+
Ben sends out at least one email to his list every day, often more.
And every email includes a link to something you’re selling.
Why isn’t it marked as spammer all the time? Why do people actually love being on your list?
Some reasons:
First of all, it is informative and entertaining. You can learn a lot just from what he says on his list. You can learn even more by finding out how he says it.
Second, he has a great personality. The emails from him are addictively good.
Third, you make offers that no one else can. Some are cheap, some are not, but they are hard to compare to what others are making.
As a seller, this approach might scare you off. It involves writing a lot, which implies being disciplined and knowledgeable. It also involves selling a lot to your list, which not everyone is comfortable doing.
Still, this is my preferred approach. And it’s what I recommend people to at least try.
Typing so much becomes easy when needed.
And it builds the relationship with your readers like nothing else.
But only if you are valuable and entertaining.
