Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Post Launch Laundry List = Did You Know You Should Have One?

You pre-notified your opt in list of your upcoming product and put together an incredible army of JV partners and super affiliates and now the sales are coming in like you could have only imagined. What else is there to do but move onto your next project? After all, this baby’s on auto-pilot. Wrong.

You’re in this Internet Marketing game to make money right? So, it would seem logical that once you have launched a product successfully and the money’s coming in, you should decide what you want to do next. Well, that is just plain leaving cash on the table...and lots of it.

It’s relatively common knowledge that it takes 6-10 views of a marketer’s message to entice folks to seal the deal, and open their wallets. In addition to that, almost 98% of folks that see your page the first time will not buy. If you think these stats don’t matter because you are already rolling in it, think again.

Ever heard the phrase “the money is in the list” before? Actually, that’s not entirely true. People with the money, are in the list. The money is in the follow up! You need to make sure you have a 10-15 message autoresponder series (more could amount to overkill and a silly unsubscribe rate) plugged in and ready to go to every new person registering for your list.

If done right you will absolutely see a noticeable increase in click thru to sales rates, sometimes into the double digits. And what does “done right” actually entail? There are a few things you should focus on when creating an autoresponder series.

1)Make sure there’s a logical chronology to your series. I am a subscriber to many lists and read my emails avidly...for one I want to always be learning and for another I just like to see what my competition is up to.

What’s amazing is the number of autoresponder series I’ve registered for where there is no clear and concise path. One day the mail is about this and the next day it’s about that. This is a surefire way to negatively impact your bottom line.

2)Personalize the messages as much as you possibly can. Yes, that includes utilizing code to automatically input the first name of the recipient but it goes deeper than that. People can smell mass production and are typically adverse to blatant pitches...especially when repeated through a series of emails.

So, how do you get your message across and yet still market your wares to your list? Share information about yourself...utilize your experiences and your personal histories to your benefit. Give people a glimpse into your life and they will feel an “attachment” to you and will be better able to relate. Once you have endeared them to you they will be more open to buying from you.

Now don’t go making stuff up and certainly don’t give them every intimate detail you have...but subtle references to you and your family as it specifically relates to what you are selling is a good thing.

3)For the love of all things holy don’t “slam” your list with back to back to back pitches and every affiliate offering under the sun. That just seems like common sense but I get so many messages from marketers where it’s a daily event and a new product each day...all the “best opportunity I’ll ever see”.

Be sure to space out your autoresponder series over the course of at least two to three weeks. You’ll want a Day Zero message which will arrive as soon as someone registers, then a Day One message to follow that up...from there consider a Day Three message for a little breathing room...then a Day Five or Six. You get the gist.

And never try to “product dump” your list. Think about lists that you are on. Do you really enjoy getting tons of email messages from the same person every day which all pimp different products? Kind of annoying, don'tcha think?

So, before moving onto your next big project you’ll want to make sure that you have completely leveraged your existing customer base and that you maximize the monetization of that base. You can help do this by creating a personalized, logically sequenced, consistent, and staggered autoresponder series. Tune in next week when we discuss some other “hot” items on your Post Launch Laundry List.