Much Better Than A Feast

A word of heartfelt advice to everyone whose vision of Supreme Success includes Internet marketing - when it comes to e-mailing prospective customers, enough is much, much better than a feast.

Recently I was sent an invitation to an online event known as a Joint Venture Giveaway. In case you haven't come across one, it involves downloading free e-books and software in return for giving your e-mail address to online marketers.

Sounds like a good idea? Well... maybe.

Some of the gifts turned out to be worth having, others much less so. That's only natural. So is the fact that the online marketers in question, having got permission to contact me, have been taking full advantage.

I really didn't mind at first. Some of the offers have been good ones (and, yes, there have been one or two I couldn't quite resist!).

The problem is, I'd based the number I'd signed up for on the assumption that I'd get one or two e-mails from each list every week, which would be manageable – and that's not how it's worked out.

Most have mailed me every day, and some much more than that. My e-mail program's crashed repeatedly, and I quickly reached the point of loathing e-mail.

I thought I'd got the situation under control by unsubscribing from the main offenders' lists, but this morning when I checked my mail I discovered to my annoyance that one marketer whose list I'd stayed on had over the weekend sent me 6 e-mails, inviting me to buy 6 different products.

A bit of common sense would come in handy here.

First, some people have a life outside of work, whether that's online or otherwise, and don't download their e-mails at the weekend. That means they're getting 6 of them in one go, Monday morning... and that's assuming that you haven't started off the working week by sending more of them. It's unlikely that they'll be delighted.

Secondly, if you get e-mail addresses through Joint Venture Giveaways, please bear in mind the people who will sign up for your list will also sign up for lots more through the same Joint Venture offer.

That means they're going to get a lot of mail, which, in turn, means they're going to unsubscribe from most lists very quickly... and, because they cause the biggest nuisance, the lists they're going to come off first will be the ones who send most mail.

Thirdly, it doesn't matter what the so-called marketing gurus tell you – your objective is not to build the biggest list you can, in the shortest possible time. The trick is to build a list of people who stay on your list, and actually buy things... and if you deluge them with so much mail they unsubscribe from it, that isn't going to happen.

Fourthly, if you're in any kind of business, online or otherwise, prospective customers are more than just the lifeblood of your business. They're your employers – and if you turn enough of them against you, then you aren't going to be in business very long.

Imagine for a moment working off-line. Would you honestly show up at your boss's home, unannounced and uninvited, three times on a Saturday and three times on a Sunday, each time trying to pitch a separate idea that would be good for you but cost them money... and if you did, would expect you'd still be in employment on the Monday?

Potential customers don't have employment laws and severance packages to hold them back. They'll simply hit the unsubscribe link, and as far as they're concerned you're history.

Prospective customers are like wild birds – if you want to have them eating from your hand, you have to treat them gently and not crowd them. The alternative is, they just take off and don't come back.

Try telling them that you respect their privacy, and to avoid taking up too much of their valuable time you won't mail them more than, say, once or twice a week.

You won't actually lose sales, because no-one's going to buy from you that often, anyway, but at least you just might keep them on your list and open to your offers... and if you can't do that, a mailing list's a total waste of time.