My First E-mail Campaign

boatBurner

boatBurner

shutup, crime!
Feb 24, 2012
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Alright, so I originally posted a thread asking you guys for a valuation of a small project my wife and I had attempted (and really, one of my first real attempts at building a quality brand). Ultimately, we found some success, but walked away due to some time constraints and the lack of knowing how to monetize.

After reading many of CCarter's and BlogHue's latest additions in great advice, and discovering the wealth of information inside of http://www.wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/156327-consoling-google-update-victim.html, I decided to utilize the ~558 e-mails we had acquired during our failed run.

Take a look, take a skim, I don't care but if you give feedback, I'll definitely appreciate it. This was the first e-mail we sent out 48 hours ago:

(Sorry about the image sizes. Gaps between paragraphs are due to image, not the actual e-mail formatting.)


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So within 48 hours, here are the MailChimp stats:

Sent: 558
Hard-Bounce: 15
Opened: 251 (46.2%)
Clicks: 28 (5.2%)
Unsubscribes: 25 (4.6%)
Complaints: 3 (0.6%)

A lot of these e-mails were acquired through landing page signups before we had originally launched, membership signups, and a recent call-to-action I placed on the page (which is still averaging ~40 hits per day).

So, based on these numbers, is this a campaign worth pursuing? Obviously we need more subscribers, but should energy be invested in getting them? Are we on the right track with the strategy?

Thanks for the feedback.
 


You are violating the #1 rule of marketing: What's in it for me?

Your letter is all about ME ME ME and offers nothing for the person reading it. You are basically writing a blog, so when you email your list, you should point them to your newest/best posts.

How do you plan on providing value to this market and monetizing it, specifically? Does this market even want or need to be served? Looks to me like you just want to write a blog and have people follow it.

Also, your unsubscribe rate is pretty high. This means the people reading your email letter are oblivious to why they are getting it and when they even signed up for it.

On the plus side, dope open rate!
 
Garret nailed it.

Try offering something to get them on the list. A free ebook/guide. Something easy to make like "11 super foods that help you lose weight". Then start working on building trust. Send an email everyday with useful advice. After about a week or so you can start slipping in some products. "I lost weight for the first time in 3 months, I think it might be from using this..." Don't sell them anything yet. Kind of build it up. Eventually your going to want to make a pitch of some sort. Think back to the flogs. Make an 'update' on your blog. Post some before and after photos and play dumb... "Remember that ... I've been talking about all week?"... go into a pitch.

If you do this right you will have a nice list of buyers who will start to believe anything you say. But you need to build trust.
 
RaptorJesus said:
Weak headline

Spacing is awkward

Try a different font
Click to expand...

"If you placed just your headline and a phone number in the National Enquirer classified ads, could you get a response?"

~ Dan Kennedy

Tweak it until you get to that point op.
 
Thanks for all the feedback.

I think a mistake I made was misinterpreting one of the pieces of advice given in the thread I listed that mentioned something to the effect of building the audience expectation. I thought it was important to give some sort of a background story while building the future expectations.

But with just under a 50% open rate, it leaves me wondering if 1) was this enough validation to continue this campaign and 2) what I should do now as a follow-up since some of the audience may not have opened this time around, but if they open the follow up email, how do I make sure they're not lost as to what is going on and why they're receiving this email?
 
boatBurner said:
2) what I should do now as a follow-up since some of the audience may not have opened this time around, but if they open the follow up email, how do I make sure they're not lost as to what is going on and why they're receiving this email?
Click to expand...

Segment the list, for the non-openers, change the headline and send them the email again. Maybe make the headline also mention something like "In case you missed it" and you can also change up the message content.

Sometimes people open, but they don't allow images which messes with the tracking.
 
I think you went in WAYYYY to early with attempting to pitch them. You should have just gave some great advice in the first 4 or 5 emails.

Also, did you switch topics on your audience? I don't recall what the original campaign was, which you gathered the email, but now your talking about weight loss? Don't switch or get off topic, especially in the very first email. Look at then open rate 46%. They were expecting something related, then everyone that click through (100%) either un-subscribed or complained? That tells me what you originally signed them up for and what you are sending doesn't match. That's why I assumed you switched topics or niches on them.

You went in way too early without building rapport at all. wait for the 4th or 5th email to them before you sell them. Rapport is the key, if you don't have that, you're just spamming.
 
Also, just because you failed once, is not a reason to give up. Keep at it. Edison failed 1000 times before he get the light bulb right.

Also, you're not thinking outside the box, if I had a website that focused around military families, I could send them 101 different solutions to problems like re-location, finding housing, healthcare, etc.
 
So I did a very quick scan down the page, and I have no idea what you're offering.

Two approaches that work with copywriting:

1. Clever.
2. Clear.

Very few people are good enough at copywriting to pull off clever, so go with clear.

What are you offering them?
How will it help them?
What do they need to do next?

Add a sprinkling of social proof / authority, and you're good to go.

Oh, and spend 50% of your time on the headline. If it fails, the rest of the ad fails.

Headline Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Writing Viral Blog Posts | Headline Hacks will help you there.
 
You could rebrand an ebook and call it BaseWives Bootcamp or BaseWives Booty Bootcamp. The focus of the ebook could be calisthenics. Your angle could be the response a BaseWives' husband would have coming back from a 12 month tour in Afghanistan and seeing his "new" wife. I do have a question though. What is your plan to sell to your list since MailChimp doesn't like affiliate marketers?
 
3 points to add:

1. A 50% open rate is pretty damn good.
2. Like other people on this thread, I have no idea what the hell you are pitching. And if you are pitching, it's too damn soon. Just do informative pieces with ps line or text ads before pitching. Better yet, have a canned gauntlet series before hitting them with any type of pitch.
3. You got the niche "military families" it looks and you are pitching what.. weight loss? The fuck? There MUST be product niches that appeal more strongly to military families than weight loss.

But you are on the right track. Keep sending out mails, and don't burn out the list.
 
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