What’s an email list and do you need one?

August 25, 2009 By

Last week I talked about some uses of autoresponders in managing your email. This week I want to talk about the idea of an email list.

Email lists: The conventional wisdom

If you’ve read anything about Internet marketing, you’ve probably heard the prevailing view, which is that you must have an email list. Apparently, you’re supposed to start collecting names as soon and as aggressively as possible — before you even have a product, before you even have a website, before you even know where your business is going.

You’re supposed to “capture” (yep, that’s a technical term) as many email addresses as possible, as quickly as possible. Then you’ll have a group of people who have given you permission to send them email. So as soon as you have a product, you can serve up a tantalizing advertisement to your captive audience. A small percentage of them will click through, a smaller percentage will actually buy the thing you’re advertising, and you’re in business.

This is what’s called a sales funnel. You start with the wide end (everyone on the Internet), and narrow it down to smaller and smaller numbers, until the few who drip through the bottom are actually bringing you money.

Why the conventional wisdom is exactly backward

The sales funnel is old-school marketing. It worked in old-school circumstances. I believe it’s time to not only treat people differently, but act differently as businesses.

Seth Godin wrote a free ebook called Flipping the Funnel three years ago in which he talked about the power of the Web and social media in marketing. I agree with much of what he said then, but what follows is purely my own take on the whole sales funnel metaphor.

Here are three reasons the conventional “sales funnel” wisdom fails to understand the real world, including the transformational online businesses we’re trying to build:

  • It’s mechanical. Each prospect at a given level is treated as an interchangeable cog. The whole process is viewed as a machine, which will produce the proper amount of a desired output (money) if you feed it the right number of cog-prospects and program it correctly. But the people you want to work with are individuals, not cogs. And your business is alive and growing, not a piece of machinery.
  • It’s violent. You’re supposed to “capture” these email addresses, then “target” people with messages that will “convert” them into cash for you. Ouch, I say! Do you want your Right People to feel hounded and hunted, or do you want them to feel like they’re getting the greatest gift in the world just by working with you?
  • It’s scarcity-based. This zero-sum system treats money as a precious, limited resource, and assumes that all your sophisticated marketing machinery is just a way to extract it from your customers. No matter if they’re empty husks afterward — you’ve got their money, so you win. What if, instead, you treated money as a renewable resource (to borrow an environmental term) and cultivated your customers into a sustainable ecosystem instead of a one-way trip through a funnel?

So what’s this got to do with email lists?

OK, back to the email list question. I love and use email lists; they are essential to my businesses. I believe you can collect email addresses with integrity and that both parties can (and should) benefit.

If I didn’t believe this, I wouldn’t be OK with asking people to subscribe to the blog. And I wouldn’t happily recommend email list provider AWeber and offer AWeber consulting services.

But an email list is just one tool, just one small branch of my small-business tree. It only makes sense to have it (and cultivate it by sending regular messages) if I’ve got a trunk to support it, and roots to nourish it.

That’s why the advice to start gathering names first seems backward to me. I believe that building a list is an activity that grows naturally out of providing a valuable product or service (just as branches grow naturally from a tree trunk).

What are you saying? is a much more important question than how many people are on your list?

With the wide availability of RSS, and the proliferation of blogs, an email list is no longer a one-size-fits-all must-have marketing tool.

Instead, an email list is only a good idea if:

  1. You have something to say
  2. You have some idea of who your Right People are
  3. Email is the best way for your Right People to receive this information
  4. Email is the best way for you to provide the information to your Right People
  5. You’re ready and able to invest upwards of $120 per year to manage your list professionally (that is, protect yourself from being labeled a spammer)

What do you think? I’d love to read your reactions. I know this is a big topic (and apparently I’m totally incapable of being brief!), and worth discussing further. So leave a comment and let’s talk!

Until next week,
Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood swim-goggle-wearing technology-to-English translator

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What exactly is an autoresponder, anyway?

August 18, 2009 By

An email autoresponder does just what the name suggests: It responds to incoming messages. Automatically.

Most email programs will let you set up simple email autoresponders. For instance, you may have seen (or used) “out of office” or “on vacation” messages. When one of these autoresponders is active, any incoming email will trigger an automatic and instant reply.

You set up the reply before you leave for your vacation, and anyone who emails you, whether they’re a spammer, your boss, or your grandma, gets the same form-letter response, usually within a few seconds of sending their email.

You don’t have to send the response. You don’t even have to see the incoming mail. Your email program will do it all for you.

More uses for simple autoresponders

If you use email filters (some programs call them “rules”), you can introduce a little more customization into your personal autoresponders. For instance, you could:

  • set up one vacation autoresponse to be sent to people in your address book, and a different one for people you don’t know
  • automatically send a copy of your latest prices to anyone who emails you with the subject line “price list” (even when you’re not on vacation)
  • instantly reply to anyone who sends you a forwarded email (the subject line has “Fwd:” in it) to tell them you never read forwards

What autoresponders are not

Notice that so far I haven’t said a word about marketing, about building an email list, or about sending a newsletter or communicating with subscribers. Those are all meaty topics that I won’t get into in this particular Heart-Centered Tech Tip (look for future installments, though!).

No, all I’m talking about today is one simple piece of technology: An email message that gets sent automatically under a certain circumstance.

This technology can be very useful. It can save you time. In certain specific cases (like the price list idea above) it can improve your customer service.

But autoresponder technology is not a substitute for human interaction. It can be (quite easily) misused (have you ever left your vacation message on by mistake? See what I mean?). And autoresponders alone certainly can’t handle the varied messages you need to send.

Not everyone needs autoresponders

If you are happy with your current email setup, and if the people you’re corresponding with are equally happy, then you don’t need to set up a bunch of autoresponders. And you certainly don’t need to go buy a paid solution!

One good rule of thumb is that if you frequently find yourself sending almost the same reply, consider whether you could use an autoresponder. If you’re answering the same questions over and over, it might be time to set one up (it might also be time to set up a Frequently Asked Questions page on your website, and simply start referring people there, but that’s another post).

The true power of autoresponses

Think of an autoresponder as one tool in your toolbox. It’s great at what it does. But it becomes much more useful when you combine it with other tools (like a blog, a sign-up form on your website, an email newsletter, and the ability to personalize the autoresponses).

And even a whole toolbox is useless if you don’t have any building material to work with. All the sophisticated email management tricks in the book won’t help you if you have nothing to say, or don’t know what you want to say.

So: What are you here to say? Let’s have a conversation! Leave a comment… or a question about autoresponders if you have one. I’ll be covering more uses for them, in combination with other web tools, in future newsletters. Thank you!

Until next week,
Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood swim-goggle-wearing technology-to-English translator

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Let technology do the heavy lifting!

July 22, 2008 By

I’m on vacation now. Really. In fact, the last several posts by me were all set up before I left on vacation, and published automatically on the dates I chose. And if you’re reading this in your email, you can thank AWeber for letting me queue it up before I left.

So I get to enjoy my vacation, while various web servers are doing my work for me. And I love it!

I’m betting that there’s something in your life that technology can ease for you, too. Something you find yourself doing over and over again, some computer function about which you catch yourself thinking “There’s got to be an easier way.”

Listen: If you think there should be an easier way, there’s a great chance that a tech geek somewhere had the same thought, and then went out and built a solution. Just search Google for how-to tips — and then search YouTube for easy-to-follow video instructions on just about anything. You’ll be amazed.

Why the photo of the factory floor? Two reasons. One, it’s a picture of the interior of the Tillamook creamery, which makes delicious cheese and ice cream (and which we just might be visiting on our vacation). Two, it’s a reminder that behind the scenes, there’s a whole factory set up, filled with workers and machines, just so I can enjoy my fabulous Tillamook Extra-Sharp Aged Cheddar anytime I want. Just like my computer (and the Internet) are filled with software, algorithms, and code that click away invisibly and make amazing things possible, including the fact that you’re reading these words on this screen right now. Incredible when you think about it for a minute.

This week’s heart of the matter: Let technology do the heavy lifting! Pick something that your computer can help you with, invest a few minutes to set it up, and enjoy! Here are some examples to get you started (these are all free, and I’ve used all of them):

  • Set up an email filter to automatically file messages (say, from a specific person who sends you a lot of email) in a folder just for them.
  • Use your calendar or clock to create a weekly reminder that pops up on your screen and tells you to back up your stuff.
  • Put some appointments into Google Calendar and set up automatic email reminders.
  • Need a to-do list that travels with you? Check out Remember the Milk, an online to-do list (also integrates with Google Calendar).
  • Do you ever send voicemail to yourself to remind yourself of something? Check out Jott, a free service that lets you set up email reminders by phone
  • You get the idea. If you have a problem, chances are there is a nifty service or application that was created just to solve that problem. Have fun with your solution(s)!
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