I wonder how many times my long suffering wife has heard me say “Why can’t they just read?” I am convinced that information overload is the biggest obstacle to communications.
Take this as an example: I am heavily involved with the marketing of Adam Eason’s products online. He is a hypnotherapist who produces Self-Hypnosis MP3s. As part of our efforts to get to a wider audience we have promotional offers and even giveaways from time to time. Over this weekend we had some purchases made by people who have been on our mailing list for years paying FULL PRICE despite our WEEKLY newsletter out last Thursday offering up to 65% off. The offer is also made on the home page of the shop.
A term that Internet Marketers use all the time is that the money is in the list. Well yes it is if you can get your communication read. We currently have a mailing list just shy of 15,000 which we send our newsletter out to each week. The opening rate is about 15% and as a serious Internet Marketer I have tried many ploys to improve. Now this list has been built very steadily and has virtually all come from article, blog and video leads where the topic has been self-hypnosis and how it can improve your lives. Therefore the list is not random but have at least expressed an interest when signing up.
OK I am the first to get rid of hype jammed e-mails and others that really don’t interest me. I think it is easy to identify those that you really are not interested in and remove the crap artists (excuse my French).
However I read carefully what is on offer from those authors that do have something genuine to say. I don’t want to miss out on the countless offers that are around during this austere period.
I examine adverts in newspapers for the same reason. You can be sure that there are really great bargains to be had at this time and you can only find out by careful scrutiny of promotion messages.
Just consider this..
Each week as a further enticement to get our list to open their e-mails we have on offer one years membership to Adam’s Inner Circle and two £50 vouchers for products. So three list members are winners each week and we have been doing that for some 6 months and I think that there have only been about a dozen claims.
About a month ago I carried out an experiment which was based on the story I read on the blog of an Internet Marketer that I respect. He had sent out a message to his list with the simple title “Bad News” and to his despair he discovered that it was opened by twice as many people as usual. My test was with an e-mail which commenced “I have some good news and some bad….. etc “ I sent this message to half of our list entitled “Bad News” and the other half “Good News”. My result – nearly three times as many “Bad News” opened compared to “Good News”
How sad is that?
Is it a reflection of our times?
My concern is that our genuine efforts to communicate and offer good value and great offers during the recession is just not getting through and I am baffled as how to improve it. I can’t send out our weekly newsletter entitled “Bad News” every week…… or can I? It would be different!!
