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Winners Circle
eMail Lists are a Pain in the Neck
Yeah, you heard me. Don't get me wrong. My email list provides my bread and butter. But man! What a hassle sometimes.
Since I got involved with sponsoring the Easter JV Give-Away my email list has grown over a thousand new subscribers. That's great, isn't it? Actually it is. It means I'm reaching my audience more effectively.
I had put most everything in place pretty well, utilizing my best subscriber scripts, and resources. However, I did not take the time to set up my auto-add feature to my email program - GroupMail Pro. I figured that adding them manually would be a small task, but I figured wrong.
After about two hours last night, I finally had everyone added to my email list for follow-up / updates. I even remember some of the names as there happened to be a few duplicates, that my program eventually weeded out. And I saw a few email addies that look as though they were contrived especially for this event. I am hoping that they are not going to turn out to be duds once the event passes.
Around 3AM I sent a short note to my group because today is the last day of the Easter JV and because there were a lot of new freebies added to the private access download area for members that I thought folks would want to see.
When I got home from church this morning I was a little disappointed to see that I had two unsubscribe requests. Out of the several thousand sellers I have in my group, I've only had 4 unsubscribes ever! One was a "freeloader" type unsubscribe, which is to say they downloaded my freebie and immediately unsubscribed obviously never with the intention of becoming a member. (I know! Can you believe that?) Two were very cordial unsubscribes, while the last was the most disturbing of all.
The man emailed me today and said he had never signed up (my records show that he actually either bought a $97 package from me a few months ago, or hacked his way into getting that product bundle.) He went on to say that he was mad because he could not directly email me from the site, which as you know if you know anything about running an online business that putting your email addie up on your site is like waving an invitation in the face of every spammer online. Rather you get around this with the email form submission. Thank you very much. And finally he demanded that I stop sending him "crap". I have sent out no more than 2 messages a week to subscribers (not counting "download" confirmation links as those are obviously under the control of the person clicking the links.) Sometimes, I have gone a couple or three weeks without sending a member email! My messages are usually very short (not like my blog posts-- haha.) And I don't think the info I send out is-- what was the word he used?-- oh, yes, "crap" and I hope my few thousand subscribers don't either.
Now, just to let you know, I answer my subscriber's emails personally. Not some machine somewhere. I only use auto-responders to send out confirmations and download links. When I send a message to my whole team, I write it myself. I even personalize marketing messages, and try to avoid the hyped up writing provided by most marketers who ask me to promote their products.
Maybe, I'm over-reacting to the email I got from that guy. I don't like being mistaken for the type of marketers who bombard their members with email. I guess I just really appreciate and respect my subscribers and hope that it goes both ways. Anyway, sorry you had to see me this way. Apparently, I'm in rare form today. But I'm sure the rest of this weekend will go much more smoothly.
I hope you never have to deal with the downside of email marketing. And I can't wait for RSS to become a readily available and accepted alternative to email. Until then, may your weekend be super!
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