Review my JV recruitment email (please :) )

I am hoping to get your feedback on an email I would like to use to recruit JV partners. This will be personally emailed to self help / personal development business owners and product owners that I don't know to invite them to our JV in the summer.

It is quite long but I wanted to pack in benefits and reasons to mail.. I would like any feedback you have, and basically if you think it is an attractive offer for people to get involved with?

Here it is:

Hi,


This is a personal invite from http://www.subliminalmp3s.com. We would like to get a bonus from you so we can list it on our thank you page and send you traffic when we conduct our "1 Week Only Summer Sale" on the 23rd June 2010.

We are only inviting people who have a quality product, a strong market presence and established business reputation; we haven't met but I am aware of your business and I think you fit into these categories.

We are not a brand new business, but an established self help webstore with regular traffic, and solid conversion rates. Rather than a "launch" we are going to do a "1 Week Only 50% Sale". We currently have commitment from several self help business / product owners with combined lists totaling over 220k and our target is to get over 500k worth of mail-outs confirmed.

This is a win-win offer: Giving a bonus gives us some limited availability extras and increases the value of our offer, and it brings you visits from people who have already BOUGHT a self help product in a related niche.

BENEFITS for you:

• Exposure on our thank you page for the week of the sale(we are estimating this will be approx 2000-3000 unique sales). We will send you this traffic without an affiliate link so the full profit will be yours.
• For top JV partners we can provide you with a unique bonus for your thank you pages * please let me know if this interests you.
• We would also be happy to introduce you to any people other people on our priority JV list which you are not already in contact with.
• Obviously you make full commission on all sales you generate - this is paid through clickbank and we offer 75% commission (our website converts very consistently and we have spent the best part of a year making sure of this).

We require just one thing in return:

• That you mail to your list just once about our launch (of course through your affiliate link).

This shows us you are serious, understand internet marketing, and are interested to develop a relationship on a longer duration with us, and obviously if everyone commits to this then the sum of everyone else mailing too is great for you as you get a lot more traffic.

This will work for you because:

• It has worked before - we did a smaller version of this last November 2009 with only one JV partner mailing for us. They received a 7.98% conversion rate and made over 500 sales.
• Since then we have made MASSIVE improvements to our website which have more than doubled the conversion rate of our regular day to day traffic.
• We have also added a shopping cart system (a world's first on Clickbank) which has DOUBLED our average order value.
• We have other partners confirmed this time with combined mailing lists of over 220k (so far). This will cause a buzz around the Internet, and obviously bring a lot of free traffic to your bonus.
• We have a very solid back-end which offers discounts and leads to extra purchases. Your first sale is not the end, multiple sales are very common.

For more information please feel free to reply to this address and I will get back to you within 12 hours, otherwise please just let me know that you want to get involved and I will send you all the information you need.

I look forward to working with you,
Dan
Owner / Affiliate Manager
http://www.subliminalmp3s.com

I would appreciate any and all comments you have, oh and the title is subject to change too, but probably something along the lines of "Name, can we send you traffic" / "Name, can we promote your product?"

I figure SOME input is better than none... I could shoot multiple holes in this but let me highlight a couple as I gotta get back to a couple of things...

* starts with "personal invite", nothing about it seems personal. You don't address them by name, you don't mention a connection, you don't reference their site, you don't ______ (there's nothing custom about them). ANd you talk about you as we. If it's truly personal, then it's one on one

* email starts off immediately with "we would like" ... that's nice buddy, I'm busy, I have my business and my life on my mind, I don't care what YOU WOULD LIKE. Who are you and why is this email chewing up my time. Benefit to THEM gets mentioned first. What YOU would like is not important yet.

* the "send you traffic" is good, but I would have Deleted the email as soon as I saw "we would like to get".

* "I think you fit into these categories." ... you THINK I fit into these categories. No no no... ass kissing time. "We're only inviting ________ and you match that profile and then some!!" (or word it better but not "I think you kinda sorta maybe aren a solid business owner)

* The fact that you have the BENEFITS TO YOU is good. But the next section is "We require just one thing in return". The word require. It's strong. Request, ask, etc. Or simply label it as "BENEFITS To US"... the business owner is intelligent enough to realize that you benefit too.

* I'll definitely also argue the "mail just once about our launch". Really? Just once eh. No, that's not the kind of JV partner I want. A shot-gun affiliate who pitches something once and then tomorrow pitches something else. No... I want them to first see if all this is right for them and their audience. But if it is, I want to know they'll take it more seriously... 2-3 mailings at least. Top affs mail 4-6 times for the same offer. Followup/repetition is CRUCIAL for higher open rates.

I'll post another topic right now that talks of this. See if anyone on this board or in your social circle who has produced 5-figure+ commissions for a launch or a promotion will argue it. So definitely suggest you re-consider your position.

* I certainly don't want to be rude..... but this "This shows us you are serious, understand internet marketing, and are interested to develop a relationship on a longer duration with us" ... no, to me it would communicate the opposite. If they only mail once it tells me they are NOT serious and they do NOT understand basic Sales 101 (about the important of repetition/followup) and they are NOT here for a longer term relationship.

and while I'm sure there are dozens of other tweaks you can make ... a final BIG BIG one is this:

"For more information please feel free to reply to this address a"

THAT is a big deal. Give them phone, twitter, facebook, skype, a roadmap to your house, SOS signals, sign language training... whatever it takes... make it *EASY* for them to reach you. Of course, most important is include your PHONE. Let them call. You WANT to talk to them either way.

k... I'm posting another thread right now that I think will help clarify my point about the "single mailing"

Here's that thread:

http://www.jvnotifypro.com/community...ic,3837.0.html

Wow, thanks for this, this is exactly the critique I wanted.

If anyone else wants to tear me apart like this it is very welcome - really :) This is gold and I will get to work tweaking pretty much everything you say.

The only point I have comment back on is where you say I should ask them to mail 2-3x for me. I have done a launch in another niche before and getting people to mail and making it a valuable offer for them was a nightmare. Pretty much everyone wanted a return mail or they wouldn't do it.. now I am prepared to offer return mails for big affiliates - like people with 30, 50, 80k lists, but if I agree to everyone then I have 10-20 people to mail back for and my list switch off after the launch...

... this is my email for recruiting people who are middle tier, and I tried to put a package together for them which would work and give them value, and asking them to mail multiple times sort of diminishes this value.. no? In reality the ones that mail once and send a load of useful traffic I will be following up with and looking to do further individual cross promotions with in the future for sure... this is enough for me if it means I get more people on board in the first instance... can you see my point, or is it still a little backwards? :)


Okay Edit: ^^^ I just read the second thread you made and I see your point that it will actually work better for getting more sales, and I believe you... but still, I don't really like to be mailing more than twice for other people, and especially not if I am doing regular cross promotions... the real value is the traffic you get back and joins your list rather than the traffic you send out... it seems as if everyone I encounter "knows" this and is protective over their lists too..

I really appreciate your time replying like this - I can see it took some personal effort on your part, and I am a little embarrassed - I thought I was quite solid on minor language elements like this which really make a difference, but seems you pointed out about 10 and I completely agree :)

Dan

re: your reply to the "mail 2-3 times" ... well, actually, I'd want 4-6 times but that's besides the point.

What you ASK of them though isn't the 2-3 times or the 4-6 times but it's also not the once.

What you ASK of them is 3 minutes or 15 minutes (or whatever) of their attention to really consider the WIN-WIN-WIN that you're presenting.

If your offer is strong, will benefit their audience AND will make them money... they WILL mail more than once.

My point was outright stating that you're looking for a single shot mailing means you're not looking for committment.

I don't want them to mail once. I want them to REALLY consider the VALUE of what I put together. If they see the value and mail once, yes I too would get in touch to see what I can do to create something custom for their group or to encourage them to keep promoting.

BTW... I've made sales via Facebook status, Twitter.... some of the top affs in my promos ran advertising and had pretty much no list... others pulled in 70+ sales from a blog post. So don't get too restricted by this "email broadcast" notion. Yes, that's ideal. But especially if you're going after B-Rank merchants, not all of them have the audiece or established name but that doesn't mean they don't know how to send bucket loads of traffic!

A top producer who pushed $60k+ to a merchant was a client of mine. He had nearly ZERO list. But the man knows how to drive traffic. $60k gross later and "top affiliate" spot later, the merchant took notice of this too. B rank merchant just became a A++ super affiliate. ;-)

I agree with the post above.

I've had my best success with with recruitment e-mails that are very reader oriented.

Things that have worked for us in the past:

- Have a time constraint at the beginning. Let them know, you know they are busy so you'll
get to the point.

- Try using the word "YOU" as often as possible.

- If you have some experience under your belt, share them, and share the specifics. What's your metrics?
Conversion rate? Gross sales in past launches? This really builds the credibility.

- If you have previous success results with people creating bonus products for you, share them as well.

- It might be easier to do a 2-step approach to this. One YES at a time. Get them to say yest to creating
a bonus first, then ask them to mail for you too. This direct marketing strategy of 'one goal at a time'
has really worked wonders in our launches.

Thanks, I will cut out the "just once" part and simply ask for promotion and then get in touch with each one to confirm and further sell the benefits of mailing multiple times - I think I will put that assumed and actual results from mailing multiple times stat from your other thread on my JV info page too.

Oli - With getting them to say YES once to making a bonus, and then YES to mailing out - do you do this all within 1 mail, or just have the first mail asking for a bonus and then follow up? Thanks for your comments too I will put some more proof in and some YOUs :)

I think it's good that you highlight the main BENEFITS for them. Matt Morris has a good template in his book Unemployed Millionaire

I've just been working through Lee McIntyre's Inside Out, Upside Down training and one of the techniques he recommends is called 'The JV Scalpel'.

It's basically a technique for getting JV partners to work with you if you're an unknown or newbie with little leverage in a deal.

Here's a link to Lee's blog post which explains how it works, but it's a tremendous technique:

http://www.lee-mcintyre.com/blog/how...0-from-scratch

hope it's useful ... it puts a whole new perspective on creating JV partnerships.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paul Teague

Here's a link to Lee's blog post which explains how it works, but it's a tremendous technique:

http://www.lee-mcintyre.com/blog/how...0-from-scratch

hope it's useful ... it puts a whole new perspective on creating JV partnerships.

---

Brilliant, found this very interesting indeed. I think I've been doing a bit too much of the scatter approach to general affiliate rectuitment, definitely time to get the scalpel out for some serious JV recruitment now :)

oh, and good to hear another Brit :) He's just down the road from me actually :)

Thanks for taking the time to post this Paul, really interesting!
Dan

Pleased that was useful Dan :)

Lee has a workshop in Newcastle coming up in June, it's well worth attending if you can make it.

I went to the February coaching - and will be at the June session too - and it's some of the most useful information I've seen.

When he goes into detail about this 'JV Scalpel' approach, it just makes so much sense.

Cheers, Paul

Hmm, I might do actually, although the timing is a bit backwards for me, I have lived in Darlington nr Newcastle for 3 years now but just yesterday I signed for a flat in London and am moving there next week.. :P

I'm definitely taking more of a scalpel approach now, at least for contacting some of the bigger names in my industry anyway, starting to get a few people on board :)