Sean D’Souza’s latest ‘PsychoTactics’ article is titled “How To Grow Your Subscriber List”.

How To Grow Your Subscriber List
Ooh that’s a loaded question. But a big piece of the puzzle is
where you get your traffic from, in the first place. And the way to
look at this concept is to simply look at it through the eyes of
someone who’s ‘dating’,
If you were dating, where would you look?
You’d definitely avoid some parts of town, avoid some communities,
even go so far as to avoid certain income groups/behaviours etc. In
short, if you don’t actively seek people of a certain kind, you’ll
end up with anyone.
This won’t work for you, of course. And it won’t work for them. So
before we consider any products, any offering–any thing at all,
we’re bound to get a weird response simply because we haven’t
chosen the right people.
So how do you choose the right people?
This is hard work, similar to dating. You have to find places where
people are similar in thought and action to you. As you already
know, when we started out in Psychotactics a massive number of our
clients came from MarketingProfs.com.
This was a very good source. The people who frequented
MarketingProfs were not only used to a weekly newsletter, but were
very actively seeking solid marketing information. And many were
more than happy to pay for it.. The point was simple. If they came
from this source, they were more likely to buy.
So without us doing a single thing, the list was already more
responsive than any other people who found us. And you think: Hey,
we need more folks like this. So off you have to go, to find
sources where the response is greater.
But this brings up two solid questions
1) How do you know where to find such superb alliances?
2) How would you know whether any of the groups are more responsive
or not?
Let’s tackle Question 2 first
Just like you’d figure out, “Hey, we should go to this restaurant,
because it’s so much fun there”, you can find out where your buyers
are coming from.
Now this is tricky because unless you have some fancy software and
database, it’s a bit of a manual process. So you have to know where
the customer came from in the first place, and then how many of
those customers bought products over the duration of say, 3-6
months.
This gives you an idea which list is more responsive
When we first started, we had nothing to sell, so there was no way
to know if someone was more likely to buy. But there’s an even
earlier giveaway signal. If you publish something with an alliance
and you get a ton of subscribers, then that list is more responsive
to whatever message you’re sending out.
And through some weird correlation, the customers that sign up from
a specific alliance in herds, are also more likely to be more
responsive when buying products. At first we couldn’t check this
theory–and it remained just a theory.
But over time, the statistics are clear
If you work with an alliance and get a pathetic response in terms
of subscribers, it’s almost guaranteed that the same will play out
in terms of buyers.
In recent cases, we even found that if we publish one type of
articles, we get a great response from an alliance. But if we go to
the same alliance and publish some other topics, we get a crappy
response. This lack of subscriber response then becomes a yucky
conversion rate as well.
Which takes us to Question 1: Where are you going to find superb
alliances?
Same problem with dating, huh? You have to search. And then do your
due diligence. When we find people who are of great value, we take
our time courting them. I will sometimes make contact with
alliances and be in touch with them for a year–sometimes
more–without ever asking for a favour.
You earn their respect. You keep in touch. You keep at it over and
over again.
Eventually the opportunity presents itself.
We’ve made contact with some pretty awesome names in the Internet
world and we did it slowly. But we didn’t make contact because we
wanted something in return. Most of the contact was made out of
sheer respect for the other person’s work. When you appreciate
someone’s work, it’s easy to gush and be full of praise. It’s easy
to want to give and not expect anything in return.
And then at some point, you have a conversation that leads to
something. It always has with us. But we’re very patient. And we
pick the people we like. And the funny thing about these people is,
that they’re fussy too. And that they draw a certain crowd too. And
so we come full circle.
We can honestly introduce our audience to them, and they in turn
can introduce our audience or our work to their audience. Making
contact with such folk is neither boring nor tedious. It’s built
out of sheer respect.

But there’s no fast track.
There’s no ‘guru-schmuru pre-formatted letter’.
It’s like dating. No wham, bam business. It’s a slow courting dance
that leads to alliances.
So the short answer to your question is.
1) Find a list that’s responsive by finding people whose work you
respect.
2) Those people attract interesting people to them in turn.
3) When they send their list to you, it’s usually out of respect
for your work. And if you get high subscription rates, it’s more
than likely that your sales (if done right) will light up as well.
4) If you believe the gurus and want to do everything quickly, then
believe them. But gurus like wham bam! So be prepared for wham bam!
This has been our core philosophy, either online or offline. If I
don’t respect you, I won’t go on a date with you. And this dating
philosophy holds in good stead with our work too. It takes time.
And it’s worth it. And if you want the relationship to prosper, you
have to start now. Create relationships now. Nothing happens in a
hurry.

How have you grown your subscriber list? What techniques do you use?
Add your ideas here.

Sean D’Souza

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*IMNewswatch would like to thank Sean D’Souza and Psychotactics for granting permission to reprint this latest article.

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