I recently bought another self-help book, and that experience was instructive. The book's author clearly knows how to market well, since I bought his book at amazon the day I got the newsletter announcement. The book sold out, and the amazon ranking went from basically infinity to like, #20 in all books for the day. Clearly good marketing. One of the things that made his marketing so effective was the fact that he'd put together a co-marketing effort with a bunch of other people in the self-help business. If you entered your Amazon order code, they sent you to a web page with "thousands of dollars" of free offers. Now of course, the "value" of the offers is nominal only, the point is to make everyone feel like they're getting a deal, and everybody knows this, and it ticks some people off, but that's not the point.
Anyway, most/all of these free offers were actually subscription offers; they'd send you something in return for your email address. Of course, your email address is valuable, so this isn't remotely "free", and that's well understood, and some people hate it, so be careful. But even this is not the point.
One of the offers was for something to help with procrastination. I have a problem with procrastination, so it seemed like it was worth the minimal risk of maybe having to train my spam filter in the future if they got obnoxious. So I gave them an email address (a one-off, custom one of course)...
Once they had my email address, I was sent to a page that said
"we just sent you something, you need to confirm. "So I look, and sure enough, there's a message there. It says, essentially, "You need to double opt-in". Cool. Love to see that, and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about these guys as I clicked through to confirm and double opt-in. That's when this otherwise successful Internet Marketing attempt went seriously off the rails.
After the double opt-in, I get another mail. So far, so good. I look at it, and this one says, more or less:
Thanks! We'll be sending your free stuff over the next few days. Be sure and look for it. Make sure we're in your address book so your spam filter doesn't delete the forthcoming valuable stuff.
No other content. Epic fail.
I jumped through hoops, I trusted you with my email, and you essentially said "wait here" and ran off to the back room to do I-don't-know-what with it. For I-don't-know-how-long a period of time. I'm left standing there with.... nothing.
Beautiful.
Even better, you added nonfirmation that reminds me that I can spam-can all your responses, and mentions one way to do it.
Stunning.
Hopefully, I'm communicating this clearly enough that the reader is feeling me right now. I hope you're feeling the let-down, the frustration, the annoyance I did, the same annoyance that builds up over time to ultimately result in hundreds of nightclubs and bars where, right this instant, there are women screaming at men "I gave you my number, you said you'd call and YOU NEVER DID!" Now he's got an EXCELLENT chance with any other woman in earshot after THAT.
Let's examine where and why this promising interaction went so horribly wrong.
Firstly, on the Internet, Instant gratification is just barely fast enough. They could have included SOME kind of hints or tips or any kind of content valuable TO ME. It was basically all overhead, no payload. Hell, I can come up with something right now (attached below). The fact that they didn't even spend the 10 minutes it takes (I timed myself) trying to throw me some kind of value-bone in return for my precious, precious email address basically teed me right off. I immediately knew where I rated on the value scale, and I felt my value to them drop as I read the "wait for it" message. And by "felt it" I mean to say my ears popped. I showed them mine, and they showed me... Nothing.
The fact that they were promising to help me with my PROCRASTINATION was just the final, laughing nail in their coffin. Yep, their stuff is ALL getting round-filed. I'm not even going to wait "a few days" to see if they're really that lame. Glad I rolled up a custom email for them, and I wish them the best of luck with THEIR procrastination.
People, email addresses are valuable commodities, and you should encourage your customers and potential customers to trust you with them. But if you don't offer value in return, and right frakking now, you're being very foolish. When they give you their email address, one of two things will happen immediately, depending on how you respond. Either you start a dialog with someone who may be a return customer for many years, or you immediately make a very bad first impression. You know how wary you are when someone asks you for your email address for marketing purposes. Everybody feels that way. Some of us feel that way so strongly it's a little bit silly. You have to visibly and immediately honor that trust in the full view of the customer. Otherwise, all you're doing is ending up in the spam can a little (or a lot) faster. If you're unlucky (and given the numbers, you soon will be), you'll frustrate one of those very special people (there's a bunch of us out here) who will TELL THEIR FRIENDS what a dork you are. And they just might make it their mission to tell all their friends ON THE INTERNET. This is NOT the way you want to learn the power of Internet marketing....
Here's an example of the minimum they should have sent me:
Procrastination feeds on interruptions. If you can minimize interruptions you minimize the temptation to procrastinate. Here are the 3 most important ways to minimize interruptions at the office:
1. Schedule "office hours" and "productive hours". If you possibly can, set aside a portion of your day (even an hour or an hour and a half) and close your office door, turn off the IM and email client, put your phone on "do not disturb" and focus on being productive. It'll take a while to train your co-workers not to interrupt until after the "productive hours", but eventually you'll have part of your day where you can just focus and produce without interruption. Remember, an interruption slows you down 3 times: First, while you try to understand the interruption, second, while you address the interruption, and third while you try to remember where you were before the interruption.
2. Schedule periodic "email patrols", and stay out of your inbox otherwise. People who "camp out" in their email tend to try to address everything *right* *now*, which means they are constantly interrupting themselves. This will kill your productivity quicker than any other behavior.
3. Don't ignore your meat-sack. Human bodies aren't built to sit behind a desk, motionless and think and type. If you do this continuously, you'll end up fat, myopic and crippled by carpal tunnel. Make sure to take frequent and short breaks, and do something physical for just 1-5 minutes. Walk down the hall. Walk up and down the stairs and wake your heart back up. Look out the window. Do some stretches or isometrics. There's a lot of things you can do. Of course, don't interrupt yourself if you're "in the zone", but whenever you finish a task, or whenever you are doing nothing but thinking is a good time to move around a little. I find it particularly helpful to pace the halls while I'm trying to wrap my head around a problem. Of course, ALSO go to the gym or participate in active hobbies if possible but don't let yourself become a pure "weekend warrior" who only moves (and generally pulls a muscle) on weekends. Frequent, short activity will make you more alert, productive and healthy.
Watch for more more hints in our newsletters (about once every two weeks), or visit www.xyzzy.com for more helpful free information.
(See, told you I was a self-help consumer... That's different from being a self-help PRACTITIONER, but that's not the point...)
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