Ooh that’s a loaded question. But a big piece of the puzzle is where you get your traffic from, in the first place. And the way to look at this concept is to simply look at it through the eyes of someone who's ‘dating’,
If you were dating, where would you look?
You’d definitely avoid some parts of town, avoid some communities, even go so far as to avoid certain income groups/behaviours etc. In short, if you don’t actively seek people of a certain kind, you’ll end up with anyone.
This won’t work for you, of course. And it won’t work for them. So before we consider any products, any offering—any thing at all, we’re bound to get a weird response simply because we haven’t chosen the right people.
So how do you choose the right people?
This is hard work, similar to dating. You have to find places where people are similar in thought and action to you. As you already know, when we started out in Psychotactics a massive number of our clients came from MarketingProfs.com.
This was a very good source. The people who frequented MarketingProfs were not only used to a weekly newsletter, but were very actively seeking solid marketing information. And many were more than happy to pay for it.. The point was simple. If they came from this source, they were more likely to buy.
So without us doing a single thing, the list was already more responsive than any other people who found us. And you think: Hey, we need more folks like this. So off you have to go, to find sources where the response is greater.
But this brings up two solid questions
1) How do you know where to find such superb alliances?
2) How would you know whether any of the groups are more responsive or not?
Let’s tackle Question 2 first
Just like you’d figure out, “Hey, we should go to this restaurant, because it’s so much fun there”, you can find out where your buyers are coming from.
Now this is tricky because unless you have some fancy software and database, it’s a bit of a manual process. So you have to know where the customer came from in the first place, and then how many of those customers bought products over the duration of say, 3-6 months.
This gives you an idea which list is more responsive
When we first started, we had nothing to sell, so there was no way to know if someone was more likely to buy. But there’s an even earlier giveaway signal. If you publish something with an alliance and you get a ton of subscribers, then that list is more responsive to whatever message you’re sending out.
And through some weird correlation, the customers that sign up from a specific alliance in herds, are also more likely to be more responsive when buying products. At first we couldn’t check this theory—and it remained just a theory.
But over time, the statistics are clear
If you work with an alliance and get a pathetic response in terms of subscribers, it’s almost guaranteed that the same will play out in terms of buyers.
In recent cases, we even found that if we publish one type of articles, we get a great response from an alliance. But if we go to the same alliance and publish some other topics, we get a crappy response. This lack of subscriber response then becomes a yucky conversion rate as well.
Which takes us to Question 1: Where are you going to find superb alliances?
Same problem with dating, huh? You have to search. And then do your due diligence. When we find people who are of great value, we take our time courting them. I will sometimes make contact with alliances and be in touch with them for a year—sometimes more—without ever asking for a favour.
You earn their respect. You keep in touch. You keep at it over and over again.
Eventually the opportunity presents itself.
We’ve made contact with some pretty awesome names in the Internet world and we did it slowly. But we didn’t make contact because we wanted something in return. Most of the contact was made out of sheer respect for the other person’s work. When you appreciate someone’s work, it’s easy to gush and be full of praise. It’s easy to want to give and not expect anything in return.
And then at some point, you have a conversation that leads to something. It always has with us. But we’re very patient. And we pick the people we like. And the funny thing about these people is, that they’re fussy too. And that they draw a certain crowd too. And so we come full circle.
We can honestly introduce our audience to them, and they in turn can introduce our audience or our work to their audience. Making contact with such folk is neither boring nor tedious. It’s built out of sheer respect.
But there’s no fast track.
There’s no ‘guru-schmuru pre-formatted letter’.
It’s like dating. No wham, bam business. It’s a slow courting dance that leads to alliances.
So the short answer to your question is.
1) Find a list that’s responsive by finding people whose work you respect.
2) Those people attract interesting people to them in turn.
3) When they send their list to you, it’s usually out of respect for your work. And if you get high subscription rates, it’s more than likely that your sales (if done right) will light up as well.
4) If you believe the gurus and want to do everything quickly, then believe them. But gurus like wham bam! So be prepared for wham bam!
This has been our core philosophy, either online or offline. If I don’t respect you, I won’t go on a date with you. And this dating philosophy holds in good stead with our work too. It takes time. And it’s worth it. And if you want the relationship to prosper, you have to start now. Create relationships now. Nothing happens in a hurry.
How have you grown your subscriber list? What techniques do you use?
Add your ideas here.
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