Better Than A Feast (Part 2)

If you're looking for success in internet marketing, here's another example of how important it is to strike a balance between what you want and what the people on your mailing list will stand for.

In a recent posting I wrote of my annoyance at being mailed by the same person 6 times in one weekend. Didn't someone once say, "You ain't seen nothing yet"? Well, I obviously hadn't.

I've now received an e-mail from another marketer whose list I'd joined because he promised me he'd never mail me more than once a week. That was fine with me.

Unfortunately, despite his promise, it clearly wasn't fine with him. His latest e-mail boasted that he'd been doing an internet marketing course, and he'd learned a great new marketing technique.

All he had to do to multiply his earnings beyond recognition, he said, was mail his list, not once a week, as promised, and not even once a day, but several times a day. As if to prove it, there were three other mails from him downloading while I read the first one.

He may not have been aware of it, but sending more mails than you've promised is not regarded as giving extra value - it's actually classed as spam.

You have to have consent to send commercial mails to anyone, and if they've given you consent to mail them only once a week, or whatever limit you've assured them will be all you'll send, you don't have their consent to mail them any more than that.

If you make that kind of promise, then you have to keep it. If you decide you want to send more mail, you have to ask them first.

The best way is to keep your weekly mailing list, and simply ask the people on it if they'd also like to join one where they'll get more frequent mails from you - if you offer something useful in exchange some will agree, and at least the others aren't going to unsubscribe.

Keeping your promise is about a whole lot more than simply staying on the right side of the anti-spam laws, though, important though that is. It's about persuading people on your list to trust you... because if they don't, they aren't going to buy from you. Not ever.

If they can't rely on you to keep your word on something as simple as how often you're going to e-mail them, why would they believe you when you tell them how great your products are, or that you'll honor any guarantees you give them... and if they can't trust you not to abuse their e-mail address, how are they going to trust you with their credit card details?

No matter what any course might try to tell you, success in internet marketing is much less about techniques than it is about two very basic things - consideration for the people that you deal with, and some simple common sense.

If you expect to be able to trust the people that you buy from, remember that your customers expect the same from you. If you don't want your inbox flooded out with mail, remember no-one else does, either.

If the advice you're given is to take some course of action that you wouldn't want someone else to do to you, you can be sure that people will react badly if you go ahead with it... but if you wish that other people would treat you as well as you look after your customers and the people on your mailing list, you're heading for Supreme Success. Go for it!