Everybody has decided that it would be rude to curse you out, to swear at you, to send you an email letting you know exactly what you’ve done wrong.
Tim after 5 minutes of arguing over the internet.
They’ve decided that it would just be easier to let you fail.
One of the easiest to implement, most overlooked ways to get people to warm up to you and feel like you value them is to actually speak to them and ask them questions. Unfortunately, we’ve got too many marketers who come from the school of “Complementing A Girl’s Shoes Before Asking To Sleep With Them.”
VALUE is not something that you give in the first five seconds. It’s something that you do over and over and over again over a long period of time. That’s why you need to, at least, at the very minimum, ask questions. Do things that require interaction from your readers, whether it’s giving a survey asking for ways you can help or ask them for updates on something you did a long time ago to make them remember you. You’ve got to remember that the average person that’s learning about internet marketing is completely flooded. They’ve got a dozen different emails from a dozen different people telling them a dozen different things, and most of them treat them like money machines.
Building Relationships
When you get used to doing things that you asked them to do, even if they’re small things, it’s easy for them to keep doing things that you ask them to do.
For example, buying products that you recommend.
The more that you get your readers to actually communicate with you and to set up a two way medium instead of mindlessly absorbing the information that you blast out, the more they’re going to feel like they know you, the more they’re going trust you, and the more they’re going to respond.
That is the basis of what a responsive mailing list is, and if you don’t have it, you’re making mistakes.
A relationship is just two people knowing what their place is in relation to each other. That can be you and your boss, it can be you and your wife, or it can be you and each individual subscriber on your mailing list.
Understanding Marketing
You want to be a provider of useful information, and you want to be somebody who helps your readers succeed. There’s a very big difference between effective email marketing and something like television. Think of all the messages that you get from your TV on a nightly basis. You’ll get ads for cars, for trucks, for hamburgers, for stove and kitchen equipment, for everything in the world. But very rarely will you get off your butt, get on the phone, march to the mall, or take action on what you see in a television advertisement. Their goal is to drill you down with message after message after message after message until that brand is omnipotent in your mind.
You don’t have a million dollar budget. You can’t afford to emulate what you see on television of the mindless blast of advertisements. You’ve got to get to that clutter. And remember that perception is reality. So if they perceive you as a person who is a real person with real concerns, and they perceive that you know what it’s like to be in their situation, that you have real empathy for them and the real ability to help them, there’s no limit to what they’ll do for you in return.
Accessibility is Key!
You’re in business to make money, and that means you need to be accessible to your customers. That means no hiding behind your website, no more hiding behind a no-reply email as if you’re too good to put your real email in an address. Remember that you’re marketing to people. So use a real email for your auto responder messages. Be in a people business. Engage them instead of trying to hide from them.
Why make it hard for your customers to get in touch with you? To get in touch with your business? There’s no good reason. A customer should, within reason, be able to pick you up on an email or pick up the phone and call you; the voice of concern that you couldn’t easily handle. And remember that every email doesn’t have to be responded to instantly. You don’t have to hover over your email to check them all twice a day. If you check your email two times a day, chances are that you will be able to respond in a timely manner.
Be A Giver
Give up yourself. Don’t just share resources. Share stories of yourself. Really offer your guidance and attach an emotional value to your help. Remember, that’s why they signed up to your mailing list; not for a bunch of advertisements that in most cases, they are able to find completely unassisted from you.
Focus on content. Focus on perception. Focus on accessibility. When you focus on these things, you will stand out as one of the few people who are thinking on a deeper level than your day to day results.