Every 17 years, Western Pennsylvania where I make my home gets *invaded*. These nasty-looking bugs the size of your thumb called 17 Year Cicadas crawl up out of the ground and start buzzing around everywhere. Unfortunately they’re slow, clumsy fliers. When you’re out driving around, they splatter on the windshield. It’s not so bad when […]
Continue readingIn chemistry there’s a concept called a “half-life.” From what I understand, the half-life is the amount of time that it takes for radioactive material to decay to the point where it’s giving off half as much radiation as it did on day 1. This happens at a very steady, predictable rate. Well, emails have […]
Continue readingLately my wife and I are binge-watching our way through “Parks and Recreation” for the fifth (possibly sixth?) time. (“Parks and Rec” is my all-time favorite sit-com—sorry, Seinfield lovers, George Castanza can’t hold a candle to Ron Swanson.) The other night we watched an episode from season 7. And in one of the sub-plots city […]
Continue readingSubscriber Sönke says his #1 problem is: My super-sensitive market when it comes to marketing… I am offering online support for psychotherapists. Many standards of email marketing don’t fit that well. Giveaways? To sales-y. Survey participation? Depends. Just trying to figure out how things work well with my audience. The #1 advantage of this market? […]
Continue readingNothing makes me happier as a teacher than seeing a student take the ball and run with it. Subscriber Chad is one of those. He’s been paying attention and implementing—and his list is starting to perk up and take notice. Chad recently forwarded me an email he got from one of *his* subscribers. Chad says: […]
Continue readingSeveral years ago I moved my still-tiny “Sublime Text Tips” email list from Aweber to MailChimp. MailChimp had a feature where they’d send you a daily email update on your list growth. Seemed cool, so I set it up. Every morning I’d get a message: 4 New Subscribers 4 Unsubscribed 515 List Subscribers Let me […]
Continue readingOne fear that newcomers to email marketing have is: SPAM COMPLAINTS. Spam complaints are nothing to take lightly. Rack up enough of them and you could find yourself locked out of your email software. Or you could wind up on the “naughty list” like subscriber Justin, who writes: Have you had to deal with de-listing […]
Continue readingAs 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 […]
Continue readingOne of the biggest challenges when you’re climbing the copywriting and email marketing learning curve is: Looking at what’s working in other niches and businesses and reverse-engineering it to find the principles you can apply to YOUR business. Software developer Wojciech is at that point. He asks: ~~~ I enjoyed your series on email courses […]
Continue readingIn my first “real” programming job I worked at a large healthcare company in Pittsburgh called UPMC. At the time, Google was making a push into the healthcare market with a product called (what else) Google Health. And the team I worked on was tasked with building an app to help patients get their UPMC […]
Continue readingMany moons ago, when I was still learning the online marketing ropes, I bought into this really crippling lie. I can even picture where I was when this lie sank its talons into my brain: Pushing a shopping cart toward the checkout at Wal-Mart, a podcast chirping away in my ears. The guest on the […]
Continue readingGet a few marketers together in the same room for a bit, and it won’t be long before someone brings up “avatars” or “personas.” That’s because they’re excellent tools for understanding and connecting with your customer. Too often though, I see entrepreneurs and marketers who invest the time and effort to put together an ideal […]
Continue readingHere’s a scenario I see a lot: Entrepreneur has a product idea. Builds a small list. Launches a product. Money! Then our entrepreneur sets up an evergreen sales funnel and… No money! That’s pretty much what happened to a reader named Sam, who recently launched a video course teaching English as a second language. So […]
Continue readingSubscriber Sam recently ran a 24-hour product launch for his very first product—a video course with an accompanying workbook that helps students to improve their skills speaking English. He writes: So a little update. I made just over $350 in sales in the 24 hour promo – which I’m pretty happy with for my first time […]
Continue reading“Welcome” email with an email course—yea or nay? That’s what life coach Ed is wondering: Hey Josh – Here’s a question for you. What are your thoughts on sending the first email lesson right away vs sending a welcome email first followed by the first lesson coming a bit later. I’ve seen it done both […]
Continue readingMarketing and SEO consultant Shae has a tough problem: I have a couple of clients in the recruitment (bricks and mortar biz based in Australia and has two target audiences: job seekers and employers) and an online life insurance broker and I’m trying to convince them to send daily emails the way you do. But […]
Continue readingSo last week I did just about the dumbest thing yet in my career as an email marketer. Here’s what happened… Recently my business partner John and I launched a new product for Simple Programmer, a short video course called 10 Ways to Make Money from Your Blog. Now it might seem a little weird […]
Continue readingGot a massive kick out of this from reader Jason: Subject: Auto-responder disaster and the kindness of friends Hi Josh I wanted to tell you about my brief, disastrous (and not so disastrous) foray into email auto-responders. So I finally plucked up the courage to create my first list auto-responder welcome email series for new […]
Continue readingIn the Email Copywriting Workshop I launched last month (which is just wrapping up), student Ram queried: If I keep on repeating the same structure, won’t my mails look very routinized and formulaic over time? Will people trust me with my stories any more? Very valid concern. In the workshop, I handed the students a […]
Continue readingSubscriber Taylor writes: Hey Joshua, love the content. After someone has gone through an email course and gotten a hard pitch, how long do you wait before pitching the product to them again? The thing to keep in mind when it comes to pitching is this: If your subscriber doesn’t buy, they haven’t said “No.” […]
Continue readingSubscriber Stuart runs a website to help lonely singles find love online. And he’s worried about coming on too strong in his emails: He asks: Do you try to sell in every email? For my drip series, there’s a PPS in every email with a different reason to order online dating profile feedback from my […]
Continue readingBack when I was commuting into Pittsburgh every day, I used to hate Friday afternoons with a passion. I worked on the 57th floor of the tallest building in the city. And every Friday at 3 p.m. I’d wander over to the window and see the great weekend exodus already underway. There are many great […]
Continue readingRight now I’m getting harassed (virtually speaking) by this guy named Matt. Matt apparently created the best infographic EVAR about WordPress plugins. And he (or more likely, his virtual assistant) keeps spamming me to share it via the contact form on my site. So far I’ve just ignored the emails, but one more and I’ll […]
Continue readingRight now I’m wrapping up this 30-day boost-your-productivity challenge. One of the first assignments was to do a massive “inbox purge”—unsubscribing from all the email lists that aren’t bringing immediate value. I unsubscribed from something like 90-100 lists! Nutso. I highly recommend this exercise. You can think much more clearly when your attention isn’t being […]
Continue readingThe other day I got this email from a subscriber named Galit that made me laugh: I am loving this series! I’m curious, though, the first few emails seemed to be about an email course then this one is about running a giveaway. If these are, by chance, two different drips, is there a way […]
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