An Internet Marketing "No No" (NOT a promo)

16
2.4M followers

This isn't the first time this has happened and I am sure it will not be the last.

This morning I received an email from one (of the many) proclaimed gurus out there and this is what the subject line looked like.

The main thing that struck me was (NOT a promo).

Seriously. You have to tell your "list" when you are not sending a promo. Talk about low expectations for your audience.

his is a major flaw and this strikes me as subtly saying...

"Sorry, I sell to you so often that you can never expect any value from me. Please, pretty please open this email...I promise I am not lying to you this time when I say that it is not a promo. I know I have constantly been abusing you and I will abuse you after this email, but this is your one chance to get any bit of value from me."

If you are not offering value, you are not marketing. You are a greasy salesperson. Nobody likes someone knocking on their door every day begging them to buy something new...and this is a great way to kill any potential relationships you could create with your list.

I am on several of the so called "guru" email marketing lists just to keep a pulse on the endless amounts of churn and burn product launches being created on the internet. It is crazy. You see them promoting a new product ever single day. It is unbelievable to watch really.

Does Coke promote Pepsi? Heck no.
Does Apple promote Samsung? No (they sue them).

Does one guru promote other gurus products? Strangely enough, YES.


It is a strange world we live in here on the Internet and I really do think a lot of these "sellers" have really lost touch with the fact they are dealing with REAL PEOPLE with REAL FAMILIES that work hard to earn their money. These people also do not want to have to pay for something ever time they want to learn something.

Over the years we have never promoted another product besides Wealthy Affiliate. We simply can't. It is morally wrong to us to promote inferior products for the sake of making money.

Have we left a lot of money on the table because of this? Possibly. But we would rather retain our brand and integrity than to have a few extra bucks and would rather deliver VALUE to people than to sell to people.

If you are at a point where you have to tell people that you are not going to promote to them before you get in touch with them, you need to reconsider what you are doing? What is your real purpose?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this...

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Recent Comments

46

Was on one guy's list who was sending THREE emails Per DAY!! Was not on his list for very long, needless to say. But hey, the MONEYS in the List is what they say! Want to figure out how best to offer value as and when I do have a list. Thanks for the post Kyle

If you want to figure out how to offer the best value possible, then don't do what the people that "annoy" you are doing. Do what the people you find are offering you value are doing. It is easy to emulate what you like and chances are it is the right thing to do.

I have the same dilemma in the penny stock niche....I have only found 1 other person that I promote in my niche...ALL the rest are scammers. Cray

It is cray...

The investment niches work very much in the same way as the IM niche. Anything to do with opportunity seems to attract the snake oil salesmen and converts the innocent into snake oil salesmen.

This is soo true Kyle, still laughing at

"Sorry, I sell to you so often that you can never expect any value from me. Please, pretty please open this email...I promise I am not lying to you this time when I say that it is not a promo. I know I have constantly been abusing you and I will abuse you after this email, but this is your one chance to get any bit of value from me."

I feel like this has gotten a lot worse. People that I respected in the business are now promoting product after product after product without really giving away any value at all. I too subscribe to a few "gurus" mainly for the fun of it and to get some ideas (which has not been many lately).

Good post thanks!!

Yeah, a lot of "noise" out there and a lot of people promoting products that they have no idea what they consist of (and they don't care). Apparently people put money before anything else and this in turn puts their brand in jeopardy which leads to a lot less income over time.

It is OK to watch what they do, just don't try to emulate what they do. The people you assume "know" what they are doing only seem that way at times because they boast about falsified success.

Well said. VALUE is what it is all about. That is why I make it a point to stay off of as many lists as possible, and focus on providing as much value as possible. People that know me often hear me say that "money is a side effect of VALUE". I truly believe that if you focus on value, the money will take care of itself.

Exactly and that is a good motto to live by. Often times people chase money around when it is the value and the "connection" you make with people that create the money. Offer a valuable website, product or service and the money will follow. Yes there is some marketing involved and yes, you do have to ask people to buy once in while, but the premise of ethical success is creating relationships with others through trust (value creates trust).

you say you keep track of all the latest churn and burn products...I was just wondering what you do with the other 35 minuets of free time you have every day lol.

that is actually funny tho. I mean if I was on that list and it just said time for a coffee break i would probably open the email but the not a promo part would prompt me to send that to the trash heap.

Good stuff

Exactly, "time for a coffee break" would have been fine. Unfortunately, if you had abused your list for any length of time they would not be opening an email regardless.

I have never bought an IM product nor do I plan on it. I spend maybe 5 minutes per day seeing what sort of rubbish is flowing down the stream...and it is always "same ol, same ol".

Paul Evans (Nicheology) used to use a system of codes in his subject line to give readers a heads up about what to expect inside.

"EMAIL LEGEND
Email subject lines from Paul will contain one of the following...

[TRN] = Training
[MOT] = Motivation & Inspirational
[BUY] = An offer
[ANN] = Announcement
[PLR] = Private Label Rights
[VID] = Video"

Of courese every email contained some kind of offer or lionk to an offer. I haven't seen the codes lately, so maybe they didn't help his open rate or conversions. I think maybe it was tough to sort into just one category. As a recipient, I didn't find them particularly helpful.

No, this definitely wouldn't help. There is no anticipation. Do you think you are going to open an email that says [BUY]. lol. The trust should come with every email and if you cannot offer things that build that trust, it doesn't matter what sort of CODE you give your emails, they will just end up looking like this: [CRAP]

Thank you Kyle. I appreciate the integrity of what you do here @W.A. It took years to develop and maintain credibility in my field. I 100% agree with you. That is why I KNEW this site was different and became a member way before the 10 day trial was over, as I too have been exposed to so many of the "Chum & Bum' scams out there. I am glad you keep your finger on the pulse of what's pout there as well. We can all learn what NOT to do by listening to your advice. My son was telling me that he can smell a mile away a chm & bum, and that people on the internet want information, NOT 'Buy my apples' in reference to another blog. Good work! MaryelPhD

Buy my junk does work on occasion though, I would never discredit the fact that it doesn't work. However, it does nothing for your brand, your personal integrity or for your long term business. Build something of substance and value and watch your growth take place in a linear fashion versus a "heartbeat" chart.

I honestly don't know enough yet to make an informed response but I do get your point and I've taken it as a definite 'Heads up'.

I do know that my initial visceral reaction to the 'Not a promo' part was that there is some kind of manipulation attempt in progress and I don't like it. One of those things that simply leaves a bad taste memory behind. Even if it was only poorly considered wording the end result was/is detrimental to his purpose.

For me, this is another example of the advantages of the great communication system here which allows me to absorb this type of insight without having to learn it the hard way.

Once again, thank you.

If you comprehend the importance of humanizing "marketing" and this becomes second nature, you are going to do just fine. The fact that you can recognize this as not being a good approach means that you are heading in the right direction.

Wow, some a powerful lesson mate. I remember Mr Frank K recently showing his stats proudly about his open rate, his best subject line had something like a 30% open rate. I used to really dig him, but if you hang around long enough, you get to see a few white lies going on. Anyway, one of my niches which I do for fun is based around retro gaming....yes yes, I know, I'm sad, but I did it purely for fun (and not to sell anything).

I looked at my stats for the last email I sent out which was a gaming newsletter, and it had a 93% open rate. Surely that's gotta be a record? I bet if I wanted to monetise it, I could pull in some good money, but that wasn't my intention. I think it just shows though that if you give value first, good things will come to you. Joniki wrote a great post about this yesterday which I saw you comment on also. It took me years to learn that lesson (doh), and I nevr tire of reading about it, keep the posts coming. p.s Listening to one of your fellow Canadians right now, Devin Townsend, man he rocks!!

Thanks again
Phil

Yeah, @Joniki had a great post yesterday. That was a good segue into this real life example that I was able to show everyone today.

93% open rate, that is insane. Open rates naturally fizzle over time, but to retain a decent open rate and great following you have to be personal, offer value, and be engaging with your audience. Help them before you ask them to help you (buy something).

It is easy to start sounding like a mooch if all you do is sell and have no underlying substance.

One guru promoting another guru's product, when the other guru's product is complimentary, is awesome. Example: you sell a facebook marketing course and you know a guy who's great at direct mail; you sell elliptical machines and you know a guy who sells great gym shoes kind of thing.

Otherwise, what are you telling your list? I'm not as great as I keep saying I am? Then you shouldn't be selling what you're selling.

I subscribe to lots of lists because I want to see what people do... I subscribe to just as many lists because all they do is sell me something. Every stupid email I got today was selling something. Yesterday, the same, with one exception (one guy sent me a video where he was interviewing someone... some good info buried in there... At the end of the video, he made a pitch for something... But, I picked up a couple of useful variations.)

Last week I got one guy to send me some free stuff... a list of tools... Some I have not heard of... I don't need them... But, if you're new, they come in handy (a list of plugins for wordpress and why you need them, a list of keyword research tools...; and some were free and identified as such). But that's 3 out of about 120.

As regards the headline... But here they might be trying to differentiate themselves from others... might not be about them selling too much. So, it depends. If it's one of the 1st emails you get from them, it's okay. If it's the 20th, you're right... They're selling too much.

I'm on a list for a guy who sends newsletters. Every newsletter, he sells something. But every newsletter has a few jokes and one or two useful tips, or news items. He sells hard... but I never mind because of the jokes and the tips... The jokes are always dorky and corny. Occasionally, they're funny. The once in a while smile he puts on my lips and a couple of tips gets him the right to sell hard... Yes, I bought from him once... I'm out of that line of business, so I will not buy again... But I still want his newsletter.

The choice you have to make is: are you a trusted consultant or the bad door to door sales guy who has to stick his foot in the door before he does anything else?

I agree with what you said when you said "complimentary". That is the problem here is that most of these products should be "competing" but since they treat the opportunity market and seekers as though they are going to buy 10-20 products over the duration of their online career, who cares if I promote their Pepsi when I am Coke.

If a product compliments what you teach, absolutely. Co-branding is also OK. The point I am making is that if you have to tell people there is finally going to MAYBE be some value in the content you are sending them, you are doing a bad job. People should be in anticipation of what you are about to send them.

Unfortunately a good deal of what goes on out there (and it is not just in the IM niche, there are others as well) do not take this approach.

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