Niching the Right Way to Serve the Right People

In the summer of 2015, I found myself in the Emergency Room. My sciatica was so bad that I could not walk and could barely move.

I went to chiropractors, and they could do nothing. A physical therapist was able to get it from debilitating to manageable, but certainly not able to fix it.

As it turned out a combination of short hamstrings and tendons combined with weak core strength (the result of too much sitting and not enough exercise) led to the symptoms. 

The PT gave me a very effective set of exercises to get me from non-functional to functional.

And not a step beyond that.

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Why I’m so Transparent in my Emails

The secret to the quality of my emails is that I’m lazy.

You know those emails that you don’t like. The ones that are generic and salesy. The ones that identify a generic problem that you may or may not have, then they agitate that problem, then they make an amazing offer while delivering no value?

Those are super hard to write. There’s a whole formula and process.

They are part of big fancy funnels with all kinds of technology, tracking, trigger links, and landing pages.

Want to know my process?

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Why Monthly Emails Have More Unsubscribes

A joint venture expert once told me that when you promote a partner’s launch you should expect 5-8% of your list to unsubscribe.

This expert also told me that every email you send will cause list attrition, so you should send email sparingly.

I was impressed by the fact that this expert could make so much money using email while understanding it so poorly.

The infrequent email fallacy

Let’s say you have an email list that you don’t mail to often, and this list came from colder sources like giveaways or freebie swaps.

You send an email to them announcing your latest webinar, and 2% of your list melts away.

You send another, and another 2% wanders off.

You promote a launch with a series of 8 emails, and 8% more exits stage right.

Holy moley! These guys are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. You better send less emails to preserve your list.

It’s a reasonable conclusion… except it’s wrong.

As you may be aware, I mail my list daily. Out of over 2300 members, the last three emails had 6, 3, and 1 unsubscription respectively.

What’s really happening?

There’s a few things going on under the numbers here.

The first is that there’s a group of people who get on your list who don’t want to be there. They signed up for a freebie, and that’s all they want. They are customers but they are one and one. They signed up for an event, but not for you.

These people are going to unsubscribe the first time they see an email. If you send daily emails, they’ll leave pretty quick, but if you send monthly or occasional emails, they might linger for many months because they don’t see your messages.

Thus, when you do send a few emails together, they will all unsubscribe at once making it seem like a mass exodus, when it’s really just people who never wanted to be there in the first place.

Then, there is a group of people who were interested when they signed up, but they forgot who you are. By the time they get your rare message, they don’t remember signing up, so they feel like they were subscribed involuntarily, and they leave.

Additionally, if you reserve your email activity for the most “valuable” uses then you may end up sending nothing but pitches, so these people leave because they signed up to get your knowledge and vibe, but what they receive is offers, mostly offers for products of strangers.

The solution

You will never avoid unsubscribes completely unless you never send emails.

However, the best way to make sure the right people stick around is to give them high value frequently.

Every email that you send should contain value.

Yes, I said “every.”

Value doesn’t have to mean not making an offer, but it does mean that every email reminds your audience of why they signed up in the first place.

It could be that you teach them something.

It could be your unique style of writing.

It could be a recommendation, invitation, or offer they will find interesting.

Sure, you could preserve your pristine list by never sending an email, but what good is that?

It doesn’t help you because if you ever do use it, your audience will flee.

It doesn’t help your audience because they signed up to get value, not to be stored in a museum.

As they say, a ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

If you want to preserve your audience, then serve your audience.


This was originally shared out through my highly valuable, very interesting, and not-monthly Resource Letter. If you’d like to receive content like this every day, and get my Power5 Networking Tips, just sign up below…

The Monthly Newsletter Myth: Why Sending More Emails gets Less Unsubscribes

One of my agency clients recently asked me to write a monthly newsletter for one of their clients.

When I inquired as to why they wanted a monthly newsletter, I was told that the client wanted to minimize unsubscribes.

This makes a lot of sense as a motivation…
…except that it’s wrong.

This common but incorrect conclusion is built on three false underlying assumptions…

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The Pitch Pretending to Be Training

Recently, I attended a webinar and I learned something very important.

However, I didn’t learn it from the content of the webinar because the webinar was thoroughly devoid of educational content.

I learned it from what happened next.

The fellow teaching the webinar I knew to be a smart guy. I had gotten some good advice from him, and then saw him speak. In that talk, he shared a concept that seemed interesting. He invited us to attend his webinar the next week to learn more about it.

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A Launch In Review – learning for Affiliate Joint Ventures

You may recall a few weeks ago, I shared with you that I was going to be promoting programs for Virginia Muzquiz and Liz Scully.

I set things up so that it was really easy to opt out of the campaign while remaining in my community, and I’d like to share with you a few things I have learned doing that which you may find interesting, especially if you are interested in affiliate JVs.

Get ready for some numbers!

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The industry average is that when one promotes a launch full out, like I did, 5-8% of their email list will unsubscribe.

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Back From California With A Powerful New Community for Entrepreneurs

I am back from California, and this trip will go down as one of those that deliniates a moment of before and after.

What’s that? It’s one of those events where it was sufficiently transformative that there is a distinct difference between the time before and the time after.

Didn’t you come back like two weeks ago?

Yeah. I did, and there has been a lot of catching up to do.

I was out there for JVX, which is the live event that JVIC runs. JVX is three days, but there was a second event run by Michael Neeley and Jay Fiset called Reach that ran immediately after.

It was an amazing experience to get to see so many people whom I’ve known online for so long.

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I Raised $1000 for Charity With My Network

What’s a network good for?

On a recent Saturday, a friend who leads a non-profit reached out to me and asked for introduction to the Rotary Club I used to be a member of so she could apply for a grant.

I was happy to make the connection, and I asked “What’s the grant for?”

“We need a new freezer,” she explained. It is a community meals program that offers free meals to the public and they need somewhere to store the food that is donated.

Not knowing what freezers cost, but assuming we were talking about big bucks, I asked, “How much are you looking for?”

“A thousand dollars,” she replied.

There was a time when I thought a thousand dollars was a lot of money. That time has passed. Networking with millionaires will do that to you.

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