The Mind of Vatke
Thoughts, Musings and Advice by Andre Vatke

Are you getting results from your e-mail marketing?

Statistics and research data here at Leaders Club shows that e-mail has dramatically changed since 1999. Deliverability continues to be an issue.

But even bigger than that is the fact that today’s prospect has learned to ignore e-mail.

If you are sending e-mail to your prospects there’s a 92% chance you are making the 2 mistakes below. If you are it’s already costing you big time. (But it’s easy to fix!)

[More:]

Mistake #1: Forgetting context…

Prospects are people, not names, e-mail addresses or phone numbers. 99% of the online marketing we track seems to forget this simple fact. Forgetting that there is a single person reading your message and how that person arrived on your list is the start to many other errors that end with a prospect turned off permanently.

If you advertise, social network or get your leads from a lead company like Leaders Club you cannot assume any more about your prospects than you already know. If for example your prospects requested information about your product, sending them e-mail about your opportunity would be out of context. Even more out of context would be sending them a message about an unrelated opportunity.

And yet, this practice is commonplace in network marketing.

The fist step to building trust and credibility with your prospect is to respect the context of your relationship. If you step outside of this you might as well save yourself the effort, it doesn’t work and will only make you look bad.

Mistake #2: Leaving out common sense…

Many marketers mail out letters they were given by someone else without ever reading through them. In so many cases we have found factual and logical errors that quickly turn off prospects and will brand you as an amateur or worse, a spammer.

A prime example we’ve observed is where a marketer tells a prospect they will not call or contact them again. This move is intended to create a sense of urgency in the prospect (though it’s not your best move). What we found is that marketers will indeed contact the prospect again after a short while, usually by e-mail but even by phone.

Your prospect will pick up on your contradictions and your credibility will be shot. In the process your posture strategy backfires and you end up looking desperate and needy.

This brings up another point on common sense.

When you stretch the truth on what it will take to make money in your business you stir up anxiety in your prospect. Common sense tells us that making money for doing nothing isn’t the way the world we see works.

There is a difference between honest marketing that’s effective and hype. Hype attracts only the most desperate and gullible. Those are not the people who will build a long-term business. In fact they will act like a cancer and tear your organization apart.

There are plenty of people willing to take money from the gullible and sell them hope – even if it’s unfounded and at best temporary. We have found that realism not only builds real hope, it creates real and lasting change on many levels.

Want to learn more about e-mail marketing? Request our free E-mail Marketing 101 podcast audio from: http://www.leadersclub.com/email101/

This week read through the messages you send out and make sure they are logical and use common sense.

Your results will thank you! :-)