Tag Archives forEmail Marketing

Email Open Rates Falling? Don’t Sweat It

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 […]

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How Far Apart Should I Space My Autoresponder Emails?

In 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 […]

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How To Seal A Lasting Bond With Your Email Subscribers

Lately 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 […]

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‘That Won’t Work In My Market’

Subscriber 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? […]

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Do Your Subscribers Love Your Emails This Much?

Nothing 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: […]

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What Is A ‘Normal’ Unsubscribe Rate for an Email List?

Several 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 […]

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Will Sending More Emails Get Me Blacklisted For Spam?

One 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 […]

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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 […]

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How to Sell ‘Technical’ Products with an Email Course

One 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 […]

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Google’s Murderous Product Launch Philosophy

In 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 […]

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The “Bullseye Mindset” for Customer Avatars That Work

Get 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 […]

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How to “Debug” a Busted Email Course Sales Funnel

Here’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 […]

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Should You Use a Welcome Email for Your Email Course?

“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 […]

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Can ‘Boring’ Businesses Still Benefit From Email Marketing?

Marketing 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 […]

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How to Launch a Product and Fall Flat on Your Face

So 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 […]

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Will Formulaic Emails Put Your Subscribers To Sleep?

In 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 […]

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Sent an Email, They Didn’t Buy. What Next?

Subscriber 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.” […]

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What is the Best Time to Send an Email Blast?

Back 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 […]

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How to Do Cold Email Outreach Without Looking Like A Spammer

Right 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 […]

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Would Your Emails Survive an ‘Inbox Massacre’?

Right 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 […]

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How Much Email Is ‘Too Much’ for Your Subscribers?

The 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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