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Email Marketing Mistakes#

These are the most common email marketing mistakes to avoid.

Simply being aware of those will keep you out of a lot of trouble.

Mailing Too Often#

This doesn't need much explanation, but if you email your list more than once per day, you'll experience a lot of unsubscribes because your subscribers are getting "too many emails".

During a specific affiliate promotion (email series) it's "ok" to email your list twice on some days, but make sure to announce it first.

During "normal" times when you're not running a specific promotion, never mail your list more than once per day.

Danger

We're very aware of a few "solo ad focused courses/trainings" that teach people to send out only promotions (no value) and up to 4 messages per day. This type of email marketing - also known as "churn & burn" - is NOT what we're interested in.
Instead, we're building a subscriber base that's looking forward to our emails and a loyal audience that'll serve us for years to come.
This long-term thinking will also serve us well in many other situations, for example when choosing valuable & really helpful affiliate offers.

Not Mailing Often Enough#

On the other hand, mailing not often enough is an error many new affiliates make.

Here's the bottom line:

You want to email your entire subscriber base at least once per week.

That's the very minimum.

Otherwise people move on, forget about your brand, and you lose all "top of mind awareness" of your subscribers.

So make sure your list hears/reads at least once per week from you.

Not Cleaning Your List#

  • Bad example: mailer sites/safelists

See also here

Not Segmenting Your List#

  • Sub-niche topics, specific offers, traffic, list building/email marketing, websites/no-websites, ....

Discussing With The Wrong People#

It simply leads to no improvement for their nor your situation.

Therefore:

  • Simply unsubscribe haters manually yourself
  • The end & move on

Not Providing Enough Value#

  • Constant "theme" throughout this training for a reason...!
  • Send pitch, pitch, pitch emails and I'm gone.
  • You won't cultivate any audience if you make this mistake

But if you're new to this...

... You're likely making the mistake on the other side of this spectrum.

Especially if you're a good, ethical person without any professional background in sales/entrepreneurship or marketing:

Not Making Enough Offers#

Yes, the opposite of mistake 6 is also true:

  • If you never make any offers, you won't make any money
  • You'll cultivate a "freebie-seekers list" which isn't good
  • People are "trained" by you to expect everything for FREE only
  • You'll be attracting a lot of tire kickers (often the most engaged people)
  • You want your list to make progress

Therefore:

  • make frequently offers or mix value & offer
  • Clean your list frequently (at the very minimum monthly!)

Forcing The Stats (Opens Or Clicks)#

This tactic is highly misleading, and it's unethical.

  • Examples: (RE:) (RE: Your Commission Payment) (RE: Your Account)
  • Example: Other AM/EM courses... Courses on solo ads... DFY emails from unethical marketers
  • "You've got to see this. Click here"
  • "Action Required: Your Commissions Are Waiting"
  • etc.

Here's an example of what NOT to do:

SPAM Email - Don't Do this

This is bad, and ESPs (email service provers) are catching up quickly with these types of emails.

The sender basically disguises an affiliate promotion or promotional email as a fake "transactional email" that pretends an "account to expire" that obviously doesn't exist.

Does an email like this - if it doesn't land in spam, which is very likely - get a lot of opens?

Yes.

Does an email like this often get a lot of clicks?

Yes.

But that doesn't make this email right.

It's just a desperate way of "forcing the open and click" and frustrates people/subscribers.

And the ESPs know that, too, and therefore these kind of emails land 90% of the time in the spam folder.

Making a long story short: Avoid sending any emails like this.

Stay out of trouble.

Not Asking Questions (Often Enough)#

  • let them describe the pain / problems with the current state of the market
  • be a cool, helpful, human being
  • forget your "agenda", just help -> good things will follow
  • goodwill creates lots of money and other good things to happen

Freaking Out Over Making Mistakes#

  • relax
  • mistakes happen, especially within your first 3 years of doing this
  • just course-correct and move on
  • say "sorry" when you mess up and make it right
  • move on
  • try to make it better tomorrow
  • try to get better every day at this...
  • don't freak out over mistakes - nobody is perfect, everyone makes mistakes