The Email Marketing Hammer

by Jon on May 20, 2012

There is stupid and then there is Stupid.

Until yesterday I was content to see the world of stupidity categorised in those two, simple ways.

But now I realise it’s too simple.

For there is a depth of stupidity which sinks as far below mere Stupid as the Titanic sank beneath the surface of the Atlantic. It is to Stupid what Stupid is to Einstein, left to its right, or chalk to its cheese.

Let me explain...

A little while ago, by way of a copywriting friend of mine and a member of my Inner Circle, came the comment made by someone who professes to be a marketing “expert”, and indeed takes clients’ money under this assumption.

Apparently… “email marketing is a waste of time and the main thing to do is develop a ‘brand’”.

Hmm.

Reading this was one of those head-meets-desk moments. Seriously.

I’m not one given to violent outbursts, but I can see a good argument for people like this being tied to chairs and battered with hammers until they Swear By All That’s Holy, they’ll never, ever hang out their marketing shingle again.

Fact: email marketing is one of the most effective ways to sell pretty much anything. It might not be this way forever, but it’s this way NOW and it ain’t gonna change any time soon.

Here are some stats for you:

  1. Sarah’s website converts at about 1% to cold visitors, but around 16% to email subscribers. If you’re new to my work, , then Sarah is my beloved and her website is a ‘fetish’ site selling an ebook with an optional upgrade to an accompanying MP3. She also has a monthly paid-subscription newsletter. Her personal ‘hobby blog’ is worth around $55,000 a year to her on current figures and ALL her selling is done with short and simple daily emails. Oh, and her sales more than DOUBLED when she started emailing daily, back in March 2010. Not a bad return on investment for a ‘waste of time’, eh?
  2. My own list is incredibly responsive (because everyone loves the Evil Bald Genius) and is worth around 6 times the average industry norm per subscriber. My Inner Circle –http://www.BusinessSupremacy.ie — draws exclusively from this list and it converts at about 8%. Sure, I have a sales letter for the Inner Circle… but it’s nothing special. Because it doesn’t need to be — it’s all about the relationship.
  3. My best ever performing sales letter converted at over 47%. And was something like 360 words long. Why was it so effective? Because the Evil Bald Genius is an amazing copywriter with Jedi-like powers of compulsion? No. It was because of the relationship nurtured by email in the runup to the sale.

To be perfectly frank, I find it hard to stay rational when I hear that kind of rank stupidity spewed out by professionals in my own industry.

I’m spitting feathers at the thought of people handing over money to this marketing spastic, so they can take their brand-new shiny “brand” home with them and they can keep each other company while their business goes bust.

Grrr… where’s my bloody hammer?

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What My 88yo Dad Taught Me About Marketing

by Jon on May 19, 2012

I paid a flying visit to my dad a short while ago: chat, chilli, couple of bottles of wine, the usual.

And we got chatting about life, the universe and business and he said something I thought was pretty smart: “if you can succeed now, you can succeed at any time”.

Damn right, old fellah.

Obvious, really.

But it’s something I never really put into words before. The old boy ran his own business for donkey’s years and undoubtedly weathered a whole shitload of recessions in his time (and here weren’t the social safety nets we have now back then, either.

Mind you, I guess, like being hanged, the prospect of destitution being the price of failure concentrates the mind wonderfully).

Fact is, things are as they are

And complaining about them won’t help. There are indeed some markets where the bottom hasn’t just dropped out of them, but it’s vanished completely and the whole industry is flatlining.

So what do you do?

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Copywriting, Scrote Clients and 8 Tips for a Better Business

by Jon on May 18, 2012

This is a somewhat long and ranting post so if you’re of a fragile disposition you might want to give it a miss. But I think you’d be a fool if you did, because there are some valuable business and marketing lessons in here (most of them learned the hard way).

Moreover, while it’s ostensibly intended for copywriters and anyone looking to hire one, it also has to be said the general principles I share with you are wholly relevant to your business, regardless of industry, whether you are a client or a provider with clients of your own.

So, sit back and enjoy the fun.

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Marketing With Leather-Clad Vampire Hotties

by Jon on May 14, 2012

Kate Beckinsale.

My oh my…

There are worse ways to spend an evening than watching her dealing out death and destruction from the confines of skin-tight leather vampire-wear.

I’m talking about Underworld Awakening, of course, the 4th film in the series. I watched it this weekend.

I haven’t seen 2 and 3, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to my following the plot.

Now there’s a funny word to use when describing a film like this (unless it’s preceded by “no”, “devoid of” or “utterly lacking in”).

But who cares?

When you look like Kate and wear skin-tight leather vampire-wear you don’t NEED no steenking plot to have otherwise intelligent men (hah) slumped back in their seats staring fixedly at the screen thinking about nothing but humping.

And death, explosions, guns and shit, of course.

But here’s a thing.

How many of these things can you make before the audience turns off?

And the answer is…

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Email Marketing Tips for Business Owners Who Can't Write

by Jon on May 11, 2012

Interesting email recently from someone who said, in effect, “I love the way you write your emails but I could never do that because my business is so boring and my readers aren’t used to your kind of approach”.

Well… ummm… isn’t this just another version of the old “but my business is different” thing?

Let me share something with you, but bear with me first.

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