Terry Dean’s latest ‘My Marketing Coach’ article is reprinted here. The article is titled “7 Steps to a Worthless Email List”.

The money is in the list, right?  Sure it is.  But not every list has money in it.

I’ve seen little 700 person lists outsell monster sized lists of 100,000 subscribers or more.

It all comes down to the audience, the message, and relationship they’ve built with the list publisher.

Often we talk about how to increase the conversion of your list, but today let’s do the opposite.

Here are 7 ways to ruin the list you’re building…

1. Target everyone.

Create a generic gift and then go for the cheapest, easiest traffic you can generate without considering who is subscribing to your list and who you’re appealing to.

The lists with the highest income per subscriber are laser targeted to people with the same set of problems.  They often even segment their lists into categories of interest.

To develop a large unprofitable list, go the opposite direction.  Go after the highest traffic keyword phrases you can if you’re doing search engine optimization even if those prospects aren’t a good match for your offers.

2. Give away a garbage bribe.

Slap something together quickly so you can get it out there.  Maybe it’s a ten year old private label product that you didn’t even edit (and forgot to even change the name on) or it’s a 5 page report you wrote in an hour while watching TV.

The gift you give people for signing up is one of the first impressions you make on them.  If you want a worthless email list, ignore the value in this contact.  And whatever you do, don’t educate them to the benefits of your message and offers.

3. Avoid offending anyone. 

Be Mr. Nice guy.  Make an effort to get along with everyone and never rock the boat.  If you offend people, they may unsubscribe!  And most worthless email lists watch their unsubscribe rates like a hawk (definitely more than their sales numbers).

This goes right along with strategy #1.  Target everyone and keep as many of them as you can on your list.  Profitible lists focus on going after their perfect target customer and primarily only care about that audience’s reaction to their message.

4. Send out daily promotions.

Run sales messages every single day.  No content.  Just one sales pitch after another.  Even better for a worthless list is to join every single product launch and promote them using the exact same messages as everyone else.

Just copy and paste the affiliate messages they give you.  Creating original content takes too much time and should only be saved for those who care about their lists.

5. Contact them infrequently.

If you send multiple emails per week, you might get unsubscribes from every mailing.  So a great way to have a big useless list is to only contact them once a month or even less.  That way your list can grow between every mailing, and no one will ever complain about you mailing too often.

They might forget who in the world you are of course and you’ll definitely earn less, but that’s the price you pay for a big useless list.

6. Just share the facts.

Be like Sgt. Joe Friday in that old Dragnet show and share,’Just the facts, ma’am.’

If you share personal stories, hobbies, and interests they may get to know and like you.  But if you share those, there will be others who aren’t your perfect target customer who complain about all that fluff!

Refer back to #1.  The least risky thing to do is to please everyone you can…even if that makes the least money.

7. Ignore the purpose of your list.

If you run a business, then the primary purpose of an email list are to turn subscribers into buyers, and buyers into long-term VIP customers.  Yes, you want to provide content and value to people through your list, but the primary goal is still a return on the investment.

If you want a worthless list, forget that purpose.  Just publish content without ever asking for the sale.  The subscribers may even love you for it.  They just won’t buy.

If your goal is a worthless email list, then follow the 7 strategies above.

But if your goal is to publish an effective, profitable email list that drives the profits of your business, then check out the www.MonthlyMentorClub.com.

About Terry Dean

Terry Dean started his online business from scratch in 1996. He went from delivering pizzas for a living to building a million dollar Internet business promoted primarily through the Internet. Within a few years he was also consulting with home based businesses, local companies, and million dollar corporations. His original company and websites were sold in 2004, and he founded MyMarketingCoach, LLC. which is dedicated to coaching entrepreneurs in the 10 key principles of success in business and life.

 

** IM NewsWatch would like to thank Terry Dean for granting permission to reprint this ‘My Marketing Coach’ article.

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