If you’re not upsetting your email list to the point people start unsubscribing, you’re doing something wrong.

Not only are you leaving money on the table, but the rest of your list actually grows to like you less and tunes out your messaging. And the one thing worse than people who are angry, is a list of people that don’t care about anything at all.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather have someone on my side that is a little crazy, than someone who couldn’t care either way.

But that’s not the point, and the goal is to have a mailing list that is as engaged and receptive to you as possible – even if it means pissing off a few people in the process.

I’m going to make the case on why you should celebrate unsubscribes and actively seek out ways to get more people to leave your list – just like they did for mine. And by doing so, strengthening the bond with everyone else that remains.

My Email Subscribers Are Leaving En Masse, And I’m Ecstatic

In the last month, I lost 8% of my mailing list, and I actually set out for it to be higher.

I radically changed my email strategy almost overnight, and saw the unsubscribes start to trickle in almost immediately. Some of these people had been on my list for over 5 years. It was pretty incredible to watch.

As interesting as this was for me to experience, I’m publishing this for you.

This email strategy cut down my list and will certainly cut down yours too, but those that remain will be more engaged, more loyal, and more likely to take whatever action you are funneling them to.

Yes, you will make drastically more money, even with a smaller list.

Here are the three changes that shifted things for me:

1. Email More Frequently

This one thing can skyrocket your email marketing revenue almost immediately. It’s almost silly how simple this strategy is. Send more emails, make more money.

I teach an email marketing course with over 4,000 students, and I’m amazed by the complexity some people go to in order to squeeze out an extra little bit of revenue. They’ll set up complicated segmentation and automation sequences, spend days on tiny tweaks, but then only send out an email every 2 weeks.

It’s not enough.

When I talk about frequency, I’m not talking about once a week. I’m talking about 3, 4, even 5 days a week. Heck, I know many marketers sending multiple emails a day and seeing incredible results from it.

Now you may be thinking, “James, isn’t that spamming? Doesn’t that get annoying?”

To which I say, think about it like this. If what you’re sending is good, and it’s valuable every time, then people won’t be able to get enough of it. You can actually get people eagerly waiting for your next email to arrive. They will go out of their way to retrieve it from the spam bin if it arrives there.

A word of warning – you shouldn’t ramp up your email frequency straight away. If you go from emailing once a week to daily emails, it’s overwhelming even to loyal subscribers. Slowly increase the frequency over the course of a few weeks until you reach your new normal.

2. Start Sharing More Of Your Personal Stories

Honestly this is something we should all be doing, from the beginning.

Stories are incredible tools to build connection, teach lessons, and sell products. When you tell personal stories about yourself, people begin to know, like and trust you on levels that they otherwise never would.

It’s important to do this from the beginning though. You want people to care about you. If you never use stories in your email marketing and then all of a sudden load your emails with them, people have no reason to care about who you are and why they should listen.

I actually load my most important stories very early on in my autoresponder sequence. By the time they’ve been on my list for a few weeks, subscribers feel like they know me to a certain degree and I’ve hopefully managed to make some deeper imprint on their mind, that helps me to become more memorable.

Imagine I didn’t do this though, and people know nothing more than my name and the market I work in. If I started talking about losing my daughter, and how my biggest goal in life is to have a family again just out of the blue, that would probably come across as pretty strange.

If you haven’t utilized the power of stories though, it’s not too late.

Start seeking opportunities to support your email’s most important points with personal or brand stories. Tie them into lessons or points of value. Over time, people will learn things about you that you forgot you ever told them – which always makes for interesting conversations I must say!

3. Hold Strong Opinions

We live in a world today where people are simultaneously so quick to take a stand, but often afraid to share it due to fear of backlash.

Here’s the problem. If you try to please everybody, what actually happens is that you end up pleasing nobody.

You’re bland. You fail to stand out. Nobody takes notice or remembers you.

If you have a group of people, it’s better to have half of them love you and half of them despise you, than to blend in with everybody else. The President of the United States is disliked by nearly half of the country, yet at the end of the day, he’s still the President.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean you start getting political, or that you share your opinion on anything and everything.

What it does mean is that you don’t shy away from taking a stand, when there’s something your company truly believes in.

Even if it means that there will be some backlash.

Because even if some people unsubscribe, everyone else that stayed now has even greater respect for you – not to mention, you’re suddenly far more interesting.

Conclusion

Market from a stance of power, not from a place of fear.

Wanting to please every single subscriber on your list is natural, but it’s an impossible task. The only way you can avoid upsetting someone is by failing to show up at all.

It’s not going to help you whatsoever.

Start taking steps to amplify your engagement with these three strategies. Smile as people leave en masse, just as they have done for me.

Then, enjoy all the new profit you’re making from everyone who’s left.

To your success,

– James McAllister

About This Section:

I personally believe that running an online business is one of the greatest ways to support your family, granting you the freedom to spend more time with your children. Therefore, I occasionally publish some business articles that will help parents with their entrepreneurial ventures.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

We're social! Follow Us Here:

Share this