Mailing just ONCE for an affiliate offer is pointless and amateur

[Rob Canyon]

Hey Rob,

Great thread... I'm wondering however if Affiliates are getting confused in their roles and publishers not getting it either.. In fact, its probably the fault of the publishers IMHO.

When a publisher only gives a sales letter for an affiliate to mail to, it causes affiliates to have to pre-sell with different forms of email series to get their list back to the publishers sales page.

This in my estimation is very short sighted on the part of the publisher (and btw I was there in the past). The publisher should be setting up landing pages that are giving value in exchange for the opt in, then they work at converting the lead to a sale on behalf of the affiliate..

Seems a much better way. But I guess most publishers feel an affiliate should soften up their leads by mailing multiple times to the same publisher sales page.

I for one believe its the role of the publisher to soften up the potential buyer after they've opted into the publishers launch list... Yep, there's that word again 'launch'

Just my 2 cents... I think publishers don't get it and affiliates are praying for the day that more of them do.

Cheers,

Rob

[Omar]

If an affiliate promotes product X today and product Y tomorrow and product Z .. then I stop paying attention to all of their promotions (well, I'd be unsubscribed by then either way, but that's besides the point). But if that merchant keeps harping on product X, product X, product X ... I will take a VERY SERIOUS look at this product X, he has a much higher chance of me buying and he definitely has a much better chance to maintaining that same promotional-power that his endorsements have.

I am not sure if i am missing something, but after the first promotion of X product (using 3-5-7 emails) you will not really stop. You will still promote a product Y "tomorrow" (or in a week, or month), and also send 3-5-7 emails about it. After you just did that for more products, don't you get to same results (people unsubscribe and think you are not serious because you been "very serious" too many times)?!

[Rob Toth]

I promote 1 to 2 offers per month (at most). Each gets 3-5 promos for it. That's still 6-10 aff pitches going out but for 2 products. Vs 6 -10 different pitches.

That's the difference.

[rmartin33]

I 100% agree.

What most people don't realize is that you don't have to straight "pitch" everytime.

Just off the top of my head:

1)The Prelaunch (sneak peak)
2)The Launch
3)The Followup 1
4)The FAQ
5)The Article (link to an high quality piece of content that links at the bottom)
6)The Followup to the article
7)The 'News' Related Follow up (eg tie in to hot topic in the news)
8)The Video discussing the offer (with redirect at the end)
9)The Problem & Solution (guess what the solution is?)
10)The Last Chance

etc....

There are a million ways to follow up...

[Rob Toth]

I just had to dig this thread up again...

Did a 1st email for an offer. Made X$ on our first email.

Waited 2 days.

Second pitch went out. Made 3X$ (3 times more commissions on the SECOND mailing).

Granted... a handful of the sales that are counted in this 'second mailing" are probably from some subscribers checking their emails late (vs in the first 48 hours). But MOST are buying because now they heard of it twice.

We're mailing one more shot and I GUARANTEE the third promo will pull in at least X$ if not 2X$

And that stands the test of time...

So for a JV who truely wants to SUPPORT their JVs launch... doing just one shot is lazy and minimal. Even to them, I'd rather recommend they take a sublist (like 5000 of their subscribers) and hit that 5000 2-4 times for the offer. Even THAT will likely convert better than mailing once.

If the ONLY reason you're mailing is for ad-swap reasons, then the above doesn't apply as, obviously all you care about is to send some clicks so you fullfill your promise. But if you care about earning bigger commissions AND supporting your JV (which means you actually build a close relationship with that JV), then mailing once is lazy.

And yes, as Richard just pointed out... just keep finding smart reasons and different angles to keep mentioning the same offer.


I had a 56k list owner mail ONCE for one of our offers and close 1/7th of the sales that another list owner who has 19k but mailed 3 times closed. That's not some universal rule as there are an infinite number of variables attached to those results... but just to make sure you understand that example...

56k owner mailed ONCE, earned X
19k owner mailed THREE times, earned 7X (even though their list is roughly 1/3rd the size of the other merchants).

When it comes to offering the best private JVs, I go back to those who support me (not just "mail"). And I SUPPORT them in trade.

[Steve Benn]

Fantastic wake up call for some of us Rob - loved your posts. Do you recommend emailing even more to those who haven't opened the emails?

[Rob Toth]

"Do you recommend emailing even more to those who haven't opened the emails?"


Now you're getting CRAZY!! lol.

Yes, definitely.

That's an extra step that *I'm* too lazy to take even though I purposely paid for the Aweber Analytics package so I can have these stats... but if after 4 days, the lead hasn't opened the email then 90% of the time they won't. So you can mail to them with a DIFFERENT subject line and preferably at a different time of day.

(The 90% is the number throw around by "experts"... most people check and open their emails in the first 4 days... less thn 10% wait 5, 6, 7 days).

So yes... in an aff promotion or your own... you can keep re-mailing to those who didn't open.

A very valuable step. Email marketers MUCH smarter than I claim to more than DOUBLE the value of any promotion just by re-mailing 1-2 times to the "not opened" segments.

Tying into that... if you're hitting more than 5000 or so leads, you should also SPLIT TEST subject lines.

and then SPLIT TEST intro body content and calls to action.

I guess the message is... whether it's an aff promotion or for your own product... if you mail once, you'll get X out of your list. But the SAME EXACT LEADS, if you mail with followups, if you re-mail to the un-opens and if you split test (to make sure you're sending the best converting subjects/bodies etc)... it's probably not an exaggerated guesstimate to say you'll make 4X or 5X.

What that means is the difference between $2000 from a promotion vs $10,000 to the exact same leads.

Yet that bit of extra work doesn't seem to be worth it for most "affiliates" and "JV partners".

(Admittedly, you reminded me / woke me up to re-mailing to the un-opens. A bit of laziness I got too accustomed to. So thanks for the slap in the face!).

[John Taylor]

While I agree with Rob that a single mailing is less
effective than a series of emails, my results are
quite a bit different.

I tend to get the best response from email #1 and
subsequent emails seem to achieve a diminishing
return.

In my experience it's almost always worth sending
out a minimum of three emails.

John

[Steve Benn]

I just sent out the wrong email to 23k people trying to test out this stuff. Oh dear