To go free, or not?
January 8th, 2009 by Richelo Killian ·
Money in the list?
There is the OLD saying: The money is in the list.
I agree with this wholeheartedly!
BUT, and you KNEW there was a BUT coming…
Most “gurus” tell you to give away free stuff to build your list. This generally works well, and if done correctly, you can grow quite a size-able list in a fairly short amount of time.
I still think there is a caveat to this bit of advice…
Let me explain by way of example….
Yesterday, a fairly big marketer, good friend, and mentor of mine, emailed one of my offers to one of his lists.
The list in question is over 50K in size, and he has built this up over a year or so period by giving away freebies. The list is very fresh, and gets marketed to very regularly.
So, the offer was for a VERY limited set of resell rights at $197 a seat. Not cheap, but, by no means expensive considering some of the BIG launches we have seen over the past couple of months.
The actual email copy was LONG, and had the link in it all over the place. The email itself was brilliantly written by said marketer. I read it top to bottom, and if it wasn’t my own product being sold, I would have bought, just from reading that email!
So, BIG list, well known marketer, GREAT email, great offer, reasonable price. What happened?
I have no idea what his open rate was, but, I CAN tell you how many people clicked through to the sales page…. 530!
How many bought is irrelevant, as it can be argued that the sales page sucked, etc….
So, rounding off the list to 50,000, and then getting 530 clicks, gives us a click through percentage of: 1.06%.
Based on what other people are saying, that is 1% off the average click through rate of 2%. So, all in all, not BAD based on industry standards.
Why then am I getting an average click through rate of around 20% average, and as high as 95% on most of my mailings?
Well, I DO have some freebie lists, built by giving away freebies, BUT, the MAJORITY of my list are people who have actually bought SOMETHING from me. Some as low as $7 and as high as $1,200.
So, am I saying that you should ONLY build a list of buyers, and dump all the freebie list building?
NO!
What I AM saying is that GENERALLY, buyer lists will always perform a LOT better than freebie lists….. BUT…… ANOTHER BUT…..
There are SOME marketers who builds BIG freebie lists, and have HUGE click through rates!
What are THOSE people doing differently then?
Well, that’s quite easy….
They don’t just get the people on the list, and then market them to death.
They get the people on the list via free giveaways, and many other means, and then they do the unthinkable…. They give them TONS of value, by giving them MORE free stuff they don’t even have to opt-in to get, they send them REAL email newsletters which contain MOSTLY real and usable information, along with SOME marketing.
They will still send the list marketing messages, but, they are few and far between.
I personally want to move my own email marketing to a combination of the last 2. I already do both, so, mostly buyers on my lists, and a proper newsletter, which gives REAL value, with a BIT of marketing thrown in.
What I am still doing wrong…
TOO much direct marketing messages, and to few real newsletters. I HAVE to, and am in the process of swapping the percentages around. MUCH more REAL newsletter, and WAY less direct marketing messages!
I would love to hear your comments on this….
Tags: Email, Free, free stuff, freebie, gurus, List Building, Marketing, NewsLetter, open rate, Sales
