I love how the internet tells you that you NEED to do things in a certain order. Namely, create a website, wait YEARS for SEO or do inanely expensive media buys. Or just hope that your content is going to be on the front page of Reddit. Perhaps it works on fantasy land, but I’ve never had much success with that business model on Planet Earth. It’s great that they force this on the masses, it weeds out the ones that were ultimately destined to fail. Having said that, let’s get down to it!

You probably fall into one of the following categories.

  1. I have an email list for X niche.
  2. I don’t have an email list for X niche, but I have “data”.
  3. I don’t have anyh email data.

Let’s assume that you have no email data. I like this use case, because it causes you to really think through your ultimate goals. Let’s talk about the bizop and nutra mailers. They want to mail their offers 100% of the time and always try to sell people on whatever their Affiliate Manager is telling them the new hot seller is. Before 2010, this was all the rage in email marketing. Forum after forum was selling talking about this exact topic. It was nothing to hear mailers say “$10k/day was my worst day last month”. I mean, it sure sounds good. If you are an old fart like me, you probably remember it all too well. I personally know people that are still stuck in that fairy tale. There’s absolutely NO reasoning with them. Having said that, let’s get back to the main topic.

Come up with a way to keep mailing people over and over again, while having them happy to receive your mail! That sounds too simple, but it’s the truth. The best way that I’ve found is a newsletter. Pick topics that people are interested in. So, you are going after the nutra folks? Start a blog about nutra topics.

  1. Hire a writer to write articles and post them on a blog (wordpress).
  2. Mail your list (explaining how to get that next) at least 1x daily.

Data…Subscribers…People to email…

As the old adage goes, “Lots of ways used to work”. Instead of listing what doesn’t, I’ll tell you what does. You want openers. Suprisingly, you can either buy the openers or do a rev-share on openers. If a data supplier is any good, they will want to rev-share with you. Email me, I’ll hook you up =] If they are ONLY interested in selling you data, RUN LIKE HELL! They are 100% going to scam you. ok…I think I made my point there. So rev-share dudes are going to want money, so you need a game-plan from day #1. Get your ads in your newsletter emails right away. Get ads on your website (Adsense pays the most, Decide (LockerDome) is also a great choice when the big G hates your content).

Start mailing like this:

Every day…

  1. Mail everything once
  2. Mail only openers at least once (more is better)

You need a sunset policy (removing inactives after X days). 15 days is a sure-fire winner. 30 days is great when your new data is too hot and driving up your complaints.

When your open rates fall under 15% on your opener data, ONLY mail openers until your rates come back up.

Make sure you pay your data partners their share of the revenue. Don’t try to cheat them out of money. Remember, you would have NOTHING if it wasn’t for their data. Don’t act like they aren’t worth their pay…They MASSIVELY are.

While this might sound like a money-printing factory (and it is!!!), you are going to want to watch out for the inevitable and unwanted visit from SpamHaus. They will give you a bunch of shit that is absolutely impossible to fix, ultimately trying to extort you to stay off of their lists. Do NOT talk to these guys! Avoid them at all costs. SpamHaus DBL will get you in trouble with your registrar (unless you move to one that ignores SpamHaus). The IP listings are almost never an issue with any hosting provider, as the providers see SpamHaus as the “email mafia” that it really is and largely ignores them as much as possible.

Ultimately, make sure that you have a working unsubscribe link and you are fine. The biggest problem with “unsolicited email” is people not having a way to unsubscribe. Think about your physical mailbox. How much of that crap did you ask for? And yet there’s NO way to stop it. Same with TV. I want to watch my show, not being sold on crap. Once again, no possible way to stop it. So, if you mail somebody something one time and they click “Unsubscribe”, you are actually a better marketer than snail-mailers and those damn commercials and video ads. The truth is, we’ve been sold on a line of propaganda that says “Email spam is the worst thing in the world”. The only reason that we’ve been sold that lie is because it’s highly profitable and the powers that be don’t want normal people to be able to make money. “You keep them stupid, I’ll keep them poor.”