How Often Can You ‘Hard Sell’ Your Email List

As a new marketer, one of the questions I used to agonize over was:

How often can I send a “hard pitch” to my email list for a given product?

Entrepreneurs seem to go through several phases of growth on this.

At first, when you’re new to marketing, the idea of pitching at all is a tough pill to swallow.

Shouldn’t a great product sell itself?

The realities of the market eventually beat that nonsense out of you.

So you grudgingly accept that you do OCCASIONALLY have to try to sell (if you like eating, that is).

The natural response at this stage is to try to “hard sell” your subscribers ONCE after they join your list.

And if they don’t bite, well that must mean they’re not interested.

Right?

Well, maybe…

One of the toughest things about selling things online is:

You don’t know why someone chose not to buy today.

All you see is a conversion rate that tells you 0.5% of your email list bought.

And you assume the other 99.5% gave you a flat-out NO.

Only that’s not true.

Here, I’ll prove it to you:

In a couple of the email courses I created for Simple Programmer, I send an email to all of the non-buyers to ask them why they decided to take a pass on the product.

The number 1 reason that they reply with?

“Wanted to buy, don’t have the money right now.”

Now some of them are… stretching the truth with that.

“I don’t have the money” is a socially acceptable response here that doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

However a large chunk of those subscribers really ARE sold and want the product—and they genuinely felt they couldn’t afford it at the moment when the offer was made.

How do I know?

Because 2-3 months later I’ll turn around and “hard pitch” the product to them again—and a surprising number of those Nos will flip to Yeses.

There are subscribers who have hung out on our list for months or years before finally pulling the trigger on a purchase.

At a minimum, I’d recommend making at least a “soft pitch” once every 3 emails.

And get a “hard pitch” in front of your subscribers several times a year—I aim for quarterly.

Don’t be gun shy about this.

The worst thing that can happen is your subscribers say,

“No thanks, not today.”

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