#55 – Building Relationship with your Email List

Hey guys Stephen Esketzis here from Marketing on the Move.

 

And it’s been a while since I made a podcast or a quarter podcast so I’m pump to finally be back in the office.

 

I’m walking around here might be a little echoey.

 

But it’s awesome to be back in the office today and have a chat with you guys so we can talk about everything marketing.

 

But there’s one thing I want to talk about today, I was kind of scrolling through my news feed and I was reading some crazy things, but one really stuck out with me and that one thing was one of the internet marketing leaders posted an email that he received from someone that is on his list and that email actually was a really interesting one that he didn’t like.

 

So he got an email from another influencer and it’s a kind of “do you hate me” email which if you don’t know what that is.

 

That’s an email which pretty much asks do you hate me.

 

But essentially what this influencer did, I don’t want to name names because it’s pretty crazy thread that I was reading kind of blew out of proportion it got like 300 comments or something like that.

 

Full of positive and negative ones but essentially what this guy did was he sent an email.

 

He’s really rude to his email list who haven’t been active and is like “look I’m currently paying mail to you sitting on there, your costing me money unless you reply to this email and you respond.

 

I’m going to get rid of you and you’re a waste of my time you’re not like the billionaires on my podcast that I interview and then he kept talking and he goes the amount of money that I wasted on you…

 

I’m not really word per word but essentially he was pretty rough on this people that may have not clicked in the email or read something or whatever he automation was.

 

And then what happened was this other influencer came out and tried to post on it and he sort of talk about how this was really bad strategy and then this thread got like 200 comments or something like that with a lot of sort of well-known names popping in and out giving their two cent.

 

But this guy who did it and the overall reaction was pretty bad so the other reaction was look you need to treat your list with respect and you need to treat them regardless of them clicking your links or not.

 

There’s different ways to go around things.

 

So that was the overall.

 

Though people that were saying this was a great idea, that a lot was saying it was shocking.

 

But I wanted to discuss with you guys how you build a solid relationship and foundation with your list.

 

What do you look for?

 

What about the people who aren’t clicking do you send them an email like this which is pretty aggressive and 2 things that kind of annoyed me, number one, I don’t really like the guy that created this email anyway in the first place, and this kind of  proves that now a lot more of people can say it.

 

But the other thing is, how do you build this relationship with your list?

 

Do you go down this aggressive path where you’re saying “look I really want to have like a small list that actually everyone loves me.

 

They are writing fans and I don’t want just a huge email list or do you want to have a bigger email list where you’re giving them a more generic information and things like that and that’s what I want to discuss with you guys today.

 

How do you build that list?

How do you build that relationship with your email list?

 

What type of content do you need to put out? What kind of emails you need to write to build that relationship?  and what I noticed was that there’s a few different ways to do it.

 

What I think is the right way personally is somewhere in the middle and that’s what I’ve been working on towards the end of 2015 to build my email list.

 

How do I build that relationship with my audience and where I can actually have people engaged?

 

Because you will know that through this engagement, through actually building a relationship with your audience, that’s where you get the best results, that’s where you go deep with your audience.

 

They expect you to start reading, consuming a content and all of that.

 

So what type of emails do you write to your audience to really engage them?

 

Do you want to piss them off?

 

Do you want to start telling them “look were not meant for each other if you don’t reply here”?

 

Do you want to start demanding from them?

 

And I think that’s kind of a short term strategy.

 

I know what sort of he is going for, he wants to get really targeted, really respond to engage people.

 

But I kind of think if you keep doing that, people are going to get over it and they’re going to see that we know what you are.

 

We know you’re going to keep talking yourself up and we know that you want raving fans and what not.

 

But I think people sort of wise enough and quicker than that and they know that it’s really not transparent.

 

So how do you build that relationship with your list, what you do, how do you build it, where do you start?

 

And I think you’ve just got to be completely transparent. I don’t think there is any room for bullshit this days with your list building with your exercise. I mean there’s obviously strategies you can use.

 

There’s ways you can do things but I think number 1 is people just try one transparency.

 

And people absolutely love that.

 

Obviously there’s ways you can go about that in the positive way and in the negative way but I think transparency is the key.

 

So these are some of the ways that I personalized, built and build a relationship with my list.

 

So number one, I know that people know that when they put in their name that it’s just automatic.

 

I don’t actually know their names straight away so that’s why I don’t click the name on most of my products, on when people open to my list or something like that.

 

I just started email and then I start my emails with hey cause people are smart enough to know that I don’t know their name by heart, they just put their name in.

 

There’s a couple of exceptions, I think a couple of forms where I get their name but not particularly.

 

I don’t care that much to be honest, and then there’s a few other things which I use and the other one is segmenting my list.

 

So I segment my email list in three different ways for my work, for my websites.

 

I have to beginners, experts, intermediates.

 

I know then straight off the bat who’s an expert, who’s an intermediate, who’s the beginner.

 

If people decide not to segment themselves or don’t go through a process I put together then I ask them to segment themselves they get through reminders and then they go into an inactive lists.

 

So then I don’t want to speak with them anymore.

 

They’ve had the option to converse with me.

 

They can reply to my emails that’s all of that.

 

And then the third thing I do is I instantly get replies in almost every email I do.

 

So I ask for replies in almost every single email I write.

 

Not an actual click but a reply.

 

So I think a reply takes time it’s personalized.

 

It also allows me to write back at customized message straight one on one.

 

I think that’s really valuable.

 

So there are a few things that I use in email marketing particularly and then obviously you’ve got blogging, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got all your other social channels, Snapchat.

 

But that’s how I’m planning on building my relationship with people that are reading my blog, listening to my podcast, reading my emails.

 

And then I’ve also got a whole selection of email and orders, one that I put on together with a whole lot of value that I know peoples going to love.

 

And this stuff sort of they could be pretty much be blog posted that long and is of that much value.

 

Meanwhile I also sent campaigns when special things are happening during the year.

 

So I’m really trying to put myself out there, be transparent and show the legitimacy of what I’m doing to help them build their business in this household.

 

So that’s essentially what I’m trying to do and I think people will build their relationship and really value that.

 

Whether or not people need to actually go through and send do you hate me email.

 

That just shows me that obviously he is trying to just get rid of all this crap he is giving on his email list.

 

If he is getting all this crap on his email list to begin with he’s not doing email marketing correctly.

 

So it’s fast standing stuff. Haven’t think about how you plan to build your relationship with your email marketing list.

 

The list, the money is in the list and obviously your list size depends on a few different things.

 

You might have a massive list, you might have a tiny list, it might be super segmented, and it might be huge and generic.

 

It really depends on what you want to do.

 

So have you think about how you build your list to a relationship you want to have with people and then start from that?

 

That’s my 2 cents video.

 

Guys if you want to find out more about this actual thread I’m talking about, maybe send me a message on Facebook or something like that and I might link it to you and see how we go, we’ll see if I think it is appropriate but yeah it is really an interesting thread and I think it sort of sparks my ideas.

 

I find it really fascinating to see the responses because a lot of this paper are on this persons list so I think it’s going to be really interesting to see now how people adapt and what people value.

 

Because people aren’t stupid that’s the number one thing you remember.

 

Well, I thought for a while, I was smarter than a lot of other people.

 

I quickly realized that people aren’t stupid they’re actually a lot smarter than you’d think and just acting smart doesn’t get you anywhere and making yourself look good intentionally doesn’t get you anywhere.

 

Providing value and lending your services and quality speaks for itself.

 

That’s what gets you everywhere. Having people come to you and invite you and putting yourself out there just your quality is what your results of what essentially build the relationship and sharing those with people is just fantastic.

 

So things like case studies and building a relationships, sending emails, replying to people.

 

Spends his entire day in his email in his inbox replying to people individually.

 

Same thing, spends her entire day replying to people in social media and email individually.

 

These are whether results come from building this one to one deep relationships not just emailing the masses a generic message, emailing the masses a do you hate me email.

 

It’s just causing a fuss and it’s kind of stupid, it’s kind of childish.

 

I think if you want to become a good marketer you’ve got to realize the quality and the versatility of a great email list and building a solid relationship with people.

 

A long term relationship is where there’s a lot of values.

 

So have you think about it guys. Id love to hear your reply, put it in the comments below on the website or let me know.

 

You have to listen to this on your phone or while you’re driving or while you’re doing your work but go on the website leave a comment and tell me what you think about building your email list.

 

How are you planning in building a relationship and where do you think your customers.

 

How do you think they’ll feel with the content that you sent them on top of the relationship and email list you want to build?

 

Let me know on the comments below.

 

All right guys have an awesome day.

 

We’ve got a couple more interviews coming up very shortly.

 

I’m looking forward to sharing those with you.

 

Take care and I’ll speak to you soon.