Tag Archives forEmail Marketing

Can Bonuses Actually Hurt Sales?

I spent the first half of 2017 on a massive project: Launching The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide, written by my business partner, John. Overall the launch went great—we hit #2 on all of Amazon for non-fiction (actually it was #1, since we only lost out to a John Grisham novel that was *ahem* completely […]

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How to Deal with ‘Bad Leads’

A copywriter-friend of mine recently expressed her frustration at the number of “bottom of the barrel” leads she tends to get— People who have never worked with a copywriter before, don’t understand copy, don’t have any real sense of urgency about getting started, won’t return emails… Yuck. She was considering upping the bar and telling […]

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Should You Ask Permission Before Pitching Your Product?

My longtime buddy and fellow Entreprogrammers mastermind member Derick Bailey of WatchMeCode.net recently launched a new product. The video series shows JavaScript developers how they can experiment with all the hot new features coming to their favorite programming language—without screwing up the projects they’re working on for the Big Bossman. To sell this product, he […]

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How To Warm Up A Crufty, Crusty Old Customer Email Database

Here’s a common story sent in by a reader named Trae: First of all thank you so much for your time and resources. Super helpful! Here is my question…. I have a customer list of about 13,000 email addresses. The problem is all of these emails came from the transaction of when they bought my […]

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Should You Ever Delete ‘Dead’ Email Subscribers?

Should you delete “dead” email subscribers from your list? Subscriber Jason is pondering the pros and cons. He asks: What’s your view on culling inactive subscribers from your list? On the one hand, culling reduces costs, and increases open/click rates. But I’ve heard of research done which suggests that inactive users may still be valuable, […]

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Do You Need Your Own Product To Start Mailing Your Email List?

There’s this product I’m *dying* to sell to the list over at Simple Programmer. It’s a course about how to survive the brutality of the “technical interviews” used by many companies to hire software developers. These “coding interviews” are unique to the software development world—and they tend to blindside a lot of new developers. Basically […]

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5 Tips for Writing Emails When You’re Short on Time

Subscriber Chad recently took the plunge and signed up for CopyHour (excellent decision—I’m sure he will not regret it). However… He now finds himself in a time crunch: Josh — Loving CopyHour. But, my daily email efforts are a mess now. I’ve got ideas whirling and I’m off message and letting too many typos slip […]

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Planning Your Next Product: How to ‘Test the Waters’ for Free

Lately I’m sending a LOT more email to the Simple Programmer list. Most of our subscribers hear from us just about every day now. One thing I’m doing with these near-daily broadcasts is testing out different topics to see what sparks the most interest from our subscribers—which in turn gives me a good sense for […]

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How To Transition From Weekly To Daily Emails

Confession time: You know how I email you like clockwork, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year? Well until recently I have NOT done that for my “day job” at Simple Programmer. My excuse is I’ve been just soooo busy building out evergreen email sales funnels and email courses… How could I find time […]

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The $4,000 Email I Almost Didn’t Send

Sometimes I almost wanna slap myself. Take yesterday for example. I nearly let a $4,000 opportunity slip away just because I was feeling a little uncomfortable about sending an email. Here’s what happened: A month or so ago I did a deal with a software development company that wanted to sponsor the Simple Programmer email […]

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Marketing: ‘Tricking’ People Into Buying Stuff?

Lately my wife and I are watching reruns of “Last Man Standing.” Tim Allen plays Mike, a gruff marketing director for a retail chain called Outdoor Man. In one episode Mike’s daughter confronts him about his job: “You trick people into buying stuff!” To which Mike replies, “We prefer to call it ‘marketing.’” This pretty […]

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After the Email Course: What Do You Send?

Back when I first stumbled on the idea of creating email courses, I got really excited. This approach eliminates the “so what do I say?” problem with writing followup email sequences. Well, kinda… Actually it’s more like kicking the can down the road. Eventually the course ends, and you find yourself asking the same question […]

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What to Expect When You Email Your List More Often

Usually when I tell people that I email my list every day, they look at me like I’m nuts for a few seconds… “Really?” Almost invariably the next question that pops out of their mouth is: “How does that affect your open/click/unsubscribe rates?” The natural assumption is that you’ll burn your list out if you […]

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Avoid this ‘Email Neutering’ Mistake

Continuing yesterday’s theme of “pummeling my best students”… Here’s another tip I gave Jason on his “learn to build 3D games” course launch emails. (Jason’s officially at least a brown belt at this now, so he can take it.) The fourth or fifth email in his launch series tells the “origin story” of his product. […]

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Avoid This Common ‘Dead Fish’ Email Opening Line

Check this: One of my students from the 4-week email copywriting workshop I taught last fall, a software developer named Jason, is launching his first product now (a course on 3D game development). He’s been giving me blow-by-blow updates, which I’ve enjoyed immensely. He’s kicking butt with his launch emails too— Until, that is, he […]

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Troubleshooting A Struggling Email Course, Blow by Blow

A consulting client of mine named Geneve recently sent me an SOS. She set up an email course to sell her high-end marketing services to professional photographers. It’s not going well, and she’s getting nervous about it: Hi Josh, So my drip campaign (remember the one for photographers that you helped me set up…) is […]

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How To Use Email To Sell Physical Products

There’s this funny cliche in blogging and SEO circles: Whenever someone is making up an example for, say, how to do search engine optimization, they use the dog training niche. Copywriting programs tend to do this too, although instead of dog training it’s usually weight loss, “get rich quick” or “dating” (i.e. seduction). And 99% […]

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Why ‘Average’ Email Open Rates Are Meaningless

Last week I tried an interesting experiment with the Simple Programmer email list. Over the course of 2 days, I sent out 3 “broadcast” emails with just one major difference between them. And just check out the difference in open rates: Email #1 got an abysmal 1.8% open rate (yes 1.8%, that’s NOT a typo). […]

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Does Every Email Need A ‘Call To Action’?

I need to clarify something: This list and my blog are *not* my main business—more like a hobby, a labor of love. I write these emails because I enjoy sharing what I’m learning in my “day job” at Simple Programmer, and because I enjoy interacting with fellow entrepreneurs like YOU. Because of that, there are […]

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words. Right?

In my early days of “blogging for dollars,” I got some advice about affiliate marketing: If you’re going to promote a product like, say, a standing desk, you should ALWAYS include a “clickable” picture that links to the product. The reasoning being: People like to click on pictures. So if you make sure to link […]

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