Simple / Low-Cost / Hi-Impact Autoresponder Strategy
One of the most powerful questions I ever asked myself was:
“What would happen if you thoroughly applied the 80/20 rule to the care and feeding of your email list?”
Most people don’t do this AT ALL.
Here’s the breakdown:
-80% either don’t email their customers, or they don’t have an email list at all
-20% do have one and they do treat all their customers the same
-20% of the 20% (4%) have more than one email list, i.e. one for prospects and one for customers
-20% of the 20% of the 20% (0.8% of all marketers) have several email lists and talk to each audience differently
-Only the top 20% of the top 0.8% (0.2%!) properly segment their lists and talk with their customers in exact proportion to their interest, with Autoresponders doing the work for them automatically.
When you have a maze in place that does this, WATCH OUT. When you know how to squeeze every drop of juice out of the email orange, you have the highest trust factor in your market.
I teamed up with Drew Bischof and Rod Brant and created a simple, low-cost, entry-level course for Autoresponder Mastery and it’s called Invisible Streams. It shows you in a very simple, straightforward, step-by-step manner how to segment your list and get maximum value from your customers.
I absolutely believe this is some of the most important material any marketer can have in their hands and for the first time I have assembled this into a course that anyone can afford to purchase and implement.
Check out this product here.
One last thing:
I just gave you an 80/20 breakdown of how marketers nurture their lists. But here’s a breakdown of your list:
80% of the people on your list would like to hear from you once or twice a month.
20% would like to hear from you once a week or more.
4% would like to hear from you several time a week.
1% would happily hear from you every day.
Which means if you have only one list you’re leaving at least 2/3rds of the money on the table.
In the movie “Pretty Woman,” the Julia Roberts character got no service from a swanky store and later she comes back.
She says, "You wouldn't wait on me. You people work on commission, right?"
The shamed clerk nods her head. Julia says, "BIG MISTAKE. BIG. HUGE.
“I have to go shopping now." And off she goes on a spending spree.
My friend, understand this:
You don’t have to treat your customer like a tramp in order to lose a sale.
All you have to do is ignore them.
All you have to do is treat people who have lots of money to spend as though they have none.
Big Mistake. Big. Huge.
Go here now.
Perry Marshall
About the Author
Entrepreneur Magazine says: "Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world's most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax."
He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.
Last 5 Posts by Perry
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OK, here’s what scrambles my noodle. . .
The idea of list segmentation hit me over three years ago. So, I started testing my list. (Long story short: List turned out to be too small and not responsive — NOT the noodle scrambler).
I’ve been getting these emails, but have already got Invisible Streams. I don’t want to over segment that I send offers at customers that they’ve already moved on.
Am I over-thinking this in a 80%’er kind of way?
If you’re referring to the fact that you bought Invisible Streams and still got a pitch from me anyway, that’s my bad. I goofed when I sent the email.
You can’t segment a list that doesn’t respond in the first place, and that kind of question isn’t over-thinking at all. It’s a litmus test for your market.
Hey Perry, you make a very interesting point on list segmentation. I am currently working on list building strategy and will implement this concept in my strategy.
Although I am not very sure if I will segment it to this level. You have gone down upto 0.8%. But overall it is a good strategy.
By the way is it true that you have released the first ever eBook on AdWords? If so, thanks for doing that for the community.
Ravi,
My book is not the first adwords ebook, just the most popular.
Perry
Perry – I think you should qualify this statement:
“Autoresponders doing the work for them automatically ..”
This only works IF you have your own product and have access to the shopping cart code. How do affiliates promoting products in Affiliate Networks segment their list?
I’ve looked and looked … but can’t find an email or autoresponder service that addresses this – including Infushion Soft.
I’m not a techie but buyer data is sitting in the marketer’s Affiliate Network. But how do you get them on your buyer’s list? Is there a way to dynamically append the URL in the email – then download and merge the data?
Opinions appreciated.
Hi David, this is the second time I have seen this comment from you. The first time was on a post at Mailchimp where you spoke to Andrew.
Sorry, my name’s Matthew by the way. I am also an affiliate marketer tackling exactly the same problem.
It infuriates me when we are told that list segmentation via suscriber/customer method will increase profits and longterm relationships and that without it we’ll fail.
It’s more infuriating as an affiliate that we are told we can segment our list and it all be done on autopilot–it can’t be (not with the subscriber/customer method anyway) as you stated we would need to manually put the buyer into the relevant list!!!
I have a half-way solution for you though David.
I suppose it’s a kind of reverse segmentation.
I’m sure you know that one of the ways to segment your list is based on the subscribers interests and location they signed up from (ie. if they subscribed for my recipe newsletter from a posting on a forum dealing with gluten free cooking, then I know that they are not just interested in cooking, but more to the point–gluten free cooking)
Tracking is only needed usually when you have a huge ocean of subscribers with many interests yet to be discovered through constant analysis of what links they clicked etc.
HOWEVER–cut to the chase.
Create half a dozen narrowly targeted niches for your target market.
Mine is home cooking so I would choose:
- Frugal moms recipes (cheap bargains)
- Working moms recipes (products that save time)
- Gluten free recipes (appeals to 98% queries M&S
receive about their food–big
market not to miss!)
and so on…
This way each auto responder series is already narrowly targeted. When a person subscribes to any one of these it is much more obvious as an affiliate what their narrower interest are and each series will curtail to their specific interests easier.
Rather than segmenting the standard way of just getting them to subscribe to general food recipes and THEN funneling them into the different responder series based on their interests, you can shortcut it this way.
Also, put these ads for the different responder series at bottom of each mail as a “Other Resources” subheading.
This way all we need to do as affiliates is create quality content and promos for each narrower list and they are free to subscribe and switch preference as they see fit. When they subscribe we will know about it. And it is them who target themselves into the right list series not us!
Also I use subscriptions to various cooking courses which earn me a residual income (which again is the main reason most marketers use the subscriber/customer segmentaion) If your earning a recurring income from subscriptions, why would i need to segment my list this way?
Let me know if this was helpful David.
Kind regards,
Matthew
Hi Matthew – best ideas I’ve seen to date. I coped it to a text file and will keep it for future reference. Brilliant! – “let them target themselves into the right list series not us!” Looks like you have a great biz model – residual income and building assets. Thanks for the advice. It’s funny how marketing techniques get “segmented” when there is something for sale.