First, a few definitions for those new to the subject:

Single Opt-In Email Form: the subscriber enters their email address, clicks submit and is then taken straight to the free content or thank you page. They are now subscribers and no further action is needed on their part.

Double Opt-In Email form: the subscriber enters their email address, clicks submit, and is then taken to a page that tells them they need to check the email box they just entered. The email service then sends that email address a confirmation email containing a link that must be clicked in order to join the list. If they don’t click the link, they never get subscribed and never get the free content.

Double opt-ins, while growing your list more slowly (because a certain percentage of subscribers will never click on the confirmation link) result in a cleaner, more responsive list because you don’t acquire bogus email addresses or 3rd or 4th tier web-based email addresses the owner never checks. It also ensures someone isn’t getting subscribed to a list without their permission.

There is a compromise though and it’s the behavior we’ve settled on that works well for our lists.

All of our lists are double-opt in, but the confirmation link in the first email takes the new subscriber directly to the promised content. It’s the most “friction-free” way we know to both confirm the subscriber’s address AND take them to the content in one click.

The trouble with most standard double opt-in strategies is that it adds one unnecessary step to the process and it truly hurts their ability to grow a great email list. The standard Aweber double opt-in process goes like this:

1) User subscribes
2) User gets sent a confirmation email that must be clicked
3) User clicks that confirmation email link and then is told they have to wait again to get content in another email
4) User finally gets email with the link to the content or the content attached (which is email #1 in your auto-responder chain)

That step 4 is what can really kill your list building efforts - eliminate it! Why should your subscriber have to take action and then wait AGAIN to get yet one more email before they get your content?

In my opinion, that’s simply asking too much patience and effort from your subscriber.

Thankfully, the fix is simple. In Aweber, you can specify the page that your user gets taken to once they click the confirmation link. Instead of taking them to a “thank you, now you have to wait again” page, make that URL the link to a page on your website that contains the promised free content.

They will still get your first email in the follow-up series (that likely takes them to that same page) but that’s OK. The user gets to your content one step faster and you get the full benefit of a clean, responsive and double opt-in email list.

She immediately noticed that we don’t personalize our emails with the subscriber’s first name like many of the “gurus” do. Why not?

Good question and there are several reasons:

1) We don’t ask for the subscriber’s first name on our opt-in pages because the conversion rate for people who actually sign up is lower when you do (or I should say, when we do – others may have different stats but from what I hear it’s common across the board). The more information you ask for on your opt-in page, the lower your conversion rate will be for that page. In order to achieve the highest conversion rates (views vs. actual completion of the form), we ask for one thing and one thing only: their email address. Even one more field – something as simple as asking for a first name will decrease your conversion rate significantly.

2) Personalization was awesome and cool and unique when the technology was first available, but in the years that have passed since it was the cool thing to do, everyone knows the email wasn’t written just to them. Initially, conversions and clicks and opens on emails that included the subscriber name went through the roof. That just isn’t the case anymore. And since it doesn’t help conversions (see #1) we simply don’t see the need anymore.

3) There are too many chances for it to get screwed up. How many times have you received an email that started exactly like this:

Dear {first name},

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah (Where the sender somehow mistyped the fill-in code that was suppose to insert your first name but instead the raw code is the only thing that was inserted.)

——or——

Dear Chris

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah (when your name isn’t Chris)

——or——

,

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah. (where the first name area was blank where the software was suppose to insert it)

I’ve received emails just this week with all 3 of these mistakes. Anyone on the planet who still thought the guru was emailing them personally now knows that isn’t the case. Bottom line, there are just too many chances for error in inserting the first name and when you or the software screws up, it’s embarrassing.

So there you have it. All the reasons we no longer personalize our autoresponder emails. If there was a minor reason #4, it would be that it’s simply one more line of text to read before they get to the “meat” of the message and the link we want them to click.

Anything we can do to get them to that “take action” link faster is a good thing.

Of course, I welcome your opinion on the matter!

We’re constantly tweaking, adjusting, deleting and adding to the emails that are in our autoresponder chain at Aweber. Our email follow-ups have become the single-most important tool we have to bring a prospect in and convert them to paying members of our sites.

A few weeks ago I snuck in a new email at around #6, meaning they received it about two weeks after joining our list. The idea was this: we’ve given them some great content and pointed them to some great resources on our site. Let’s show the subscriber we know what they are feeling and can relate their place in the learning curve. Our sense was that most people who joined our email list for our online trading membership site were relatively new and would appreciate a “we’ve been where you are” type of email that then also invited them to become members and join the community.

Within 3 days I knew we had a problem. Unsubscribe rates doubled for this specific email number and it quickly became the leader as the email that resulted in the most unsubscribes of all the follow-ups for that week.

Part of the unsubscribe issue was that it was the first “all pitch, no content” email in the chain so that accounts for a lot of the unsubscribes. But there were just to many on a percentage basis for that to have been the only reason. But it also genuinely pissed people off. We started getting some nasty email replies – not good (I’ll share a few of them with you in a moment just for kicks).

Here’s the email in full and then I’ll tell you why I think it didn’t work…

Ok, I assume you listened to the interview I sent a few days ago. Let me make a few more assumptions – this time about you: You’re smart. You know you have what it takes to trade well, you just need some good information from someone who knows what to do.

Perhaps you’ve even traded a bit – and lost some and made some. But…you just can’t seem to get consistent – as in month after month of gains. You feel like the market seems to know when you enter a trade – and loves to reverse right after you get in.

When you do get a winning trade, you exit too early or worry that you’ll give it all back if you stay in much longer.

You’ve tried all the “guru” free trials and it hasn’t helped much.

How am I doing so far? How did I know? Because I’m describing myself just a short time ago. Then I decided to talk to a few traders who were consistent.

And it made all the difference. It finally clicked. It’s not hard, it’s not complicated, and it makes perfect sense when you hear these traders describe it.

Sign up now with TraderInterviews.com – I’ve even slashed the price for you:

http://www.TraderInterviews.com/traderinterviews_signup.php

Call me or email me anytime.

All the best,

Tim Bourquin, Co-Founder
Trader Interviews
(direct email): tim@traderinterviews.com
(direct phone): 1-949-348-2590 ext. 15

P.S. How much longer are you going to wait to find the perfect trading service? This is what you’ve been looking for!

http://www.TraderInterviews.com/traderinterviews_signup.php

Our intentions were good. I honestly thought that by describing the state of mind the subscriber was probably in, we would generate goodwill and a few sales from folks who understood that we “got them.” That may have been the case for some people, but what we found out is this:

People don’t like being told how they feel – no matter how right you may be.

I think people said to themselves, “Dude, you’ve emailed me 6 times and you think you know me? You don’t, so don’t assume you do!”

They were right. Even reading it now, I somehow get a flash of “We’re better than you but if you become a member, you can be as good as us.” It’s not something I felt when I wrote it and it definitely wasn’t meant that way, but stepping back I can see it plain as day.

The lesson learned: certainly we can all make assumptions about our subscribers and write emails and offer products that help them achieve whatever goals they have. All the surveying in the world can get you close to the facts, but ultimately you’ll have to make some assumptions to fill in the blanks. But in most cases, stating that fact outright just makes people feel you are taking liberties with the relationship and acting like a know it all.

This may be a perfect case of, “Do it but don’t say you are doing it because no matter how you say it, it won’t come out right.”

And the email replies? Here are a few:

1) “You know what they say about “assume” – it makes an ass out of you and of me!” (of course we’d get that one)
2) “This isn’t me at all actually, and I’m a little annoyed that you think so…”

Plus a few others with colorful language, to say the least.

So obviously that email is now gone from the follow-up chain. We’ll keep testing, tweaking and trying. It’s the only way to improve and hopefully our experience here. You never know which emails will work and which ones won’t until you give them their chance on stage.

Our sense is that while many people understand that joining a list means an occasional sale pitch for the products of the website owner or their partners, many do not – or at least appreciate a direct statement to that effect in the beginning.

In part, the emails now say something similar to this:

Here it is: we’re going to be emailing you ideas and tricks we use but never publish on our blog. And we’ll explain it in a step-by-step way that you’ll be able to understand and use them on your own website right away to make some coin (or euros, pounds, dollars, pesos, etc.).

That’s what makes our list so valuable to subscribers.

But we’re also going to introduce you to products and services we think are top notch and worthy of your attention and dollars – things we’ve bought ourselves.

In other words, we’re going to ask you to buy stuff too.

So if capitalism, grandma’s apple pie, or marketing offends you, you’ll want to find that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email and put yourself out of your misery right now. Go ahead, we’ll wait….

So are we seeing more people click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of that email? The answer is YES. Not a lot more, but before we implemented the more direct text, very few unsubscribed after the first email. But, interestingly yet not surprisingly, less people are unusbscribing, percentage-wise, on the first sales pitch email that comes around email 6. This is across the board on all our sites.

So we’re just getting rid of non-buyers sooner in the follow-up chain. Which is A-OK by us. If there is no chance they are ever going to buy something then the sooner they are off the list, the better.

This is all based on just 6 days worth of data, but I think it’s encouraging and wanted to update you.

One of the things Rob said was that the trick to keeping subscribers on your email list, even while you are pitching something, is to set the stage early and simply tell them to expect it.

It’s a simple idea. Manage your subscriber’s expectation right up front and when the sale pitch comes, they won’t be surprised. Even with this website, which focuses on on how to make money online with content, I just assumed that our subscribers knew we would pitch them occasionally. This site is about making money, right? So isn’t it obvious that we’re making money ourselves? No, it isn’t.

Even though we haven’t pitched much to Membercon list yet, when we did about a month ago, we still got replies saying something to the effect of, “Hey I thought you were giving us free info – what the heck?” I take full responsibility for that – we never said straight up that we would be occasionally asking subscribers to buy something.

So, to make sure we are managing expectations of our subscribers right up front, this morning we changed the first email to what you see below. Using straight talk and a bit of humor, we’ll be doing this with all of our sites going forward.

It’s a bit like how Zappos.com offers new employees $2,000 to quit after the training program. They end up with committed employees who understand what they are getting into.

Let me know what you think. Does this do the trick? How are you managing the expectations of your list subscribers?

Well howdy doody! You found our secret mailing list. Welcome to the
potluck and party! The secret handshake lesson comes later…

Glad you decided to leave that boring “internet marketing guru”
party at that website down the street. Their stories are getting
pretty old, don’t you agree?

Leave your car keys in the bowl next to the door, because you’re
about to experience the intoxicating sounds, tastes and smells
of real online success.

Let’s get something straight right away. Can you handle the truth?

Here it is: we’re going to be emailing you ideas and tricks we use
but never publish on our blog. And we’ll explain it in a step-by-step
way that you’ll be able to understand and use them on your own website
right away to make some coin (or euros, pounds, dollars, pesos, etc.).

That’s what makes our list so valuable to subscribers.

But we’re also going to introduce you to products and services we
think are top notch and worthy of your attention and dollars – things we’ve
bought ourselves.

In other words, we’re going to ask you to buy stuff too.

So if capitalism, grandma’s apple pie, or marketing offends you,
you’ll want to find that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email
and put yourself out of your misery right now. Go ahead, we’ll wait….

Still here? Wonderful! You’re in for a real treat. Stay tuned for the
next email and get ready to finally make some real money online by
selling content.

You can call or email us anytime.

All the best,

Tim and Emile (brothers and all-around good guys)

——————————-
Tim Bourquin | Emile Bourquin
MemberCon | Interview Income

30251 Golden Lantern Suite E-358
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677-5993

phone: 1-949-829-3049
email: tim@membercon.com
——————————-

Each of our sites will have a similar email so let them know that while we are going to be sending them great information, we’ll also be asking them to buy things we trust and feel are worthwhile.

I’ve been in this game long enough to know that when I sign up for an email list, I’ll be pitched occasionally. But it’s not obvious to everyone, so I want to make sure we make it obvious!

It was the same “uncomfortableness” we felt when we started emailing our list every day. We thought our entire list would unsubscribe within a week. It actually grew and so did our sales.

So when I was ready to hit the send button for the second time in a single day, I wasn’t sure what would happen. But we couldn’t stand it any longer. We had to know what would happen when our list received two emails from us in a single day. What happened was we made an extra $2,000.

Last week we ran a promotion to a group of just over 1,000 new email list subscribers who had never been offered a special Lifetime Membership to one of our interview sites. We have 21 emails in our autoresponder follow-up series and we usually wait until after that series has completed to offer a special membership. But I was dying to know what would happen if we made those offers while they were still receiving freebie content at the same time.

So all of the 1,000 subscribers received the first email special offer on a day when we don’t send a follow-up email. Aweber allows us to not send follow-up emails on certain days. For us those days are usually Tuesdays and Thursdays so that we can send offers on those days. But Fridays they do get a follow-up email. But we purposely had the special membership offer expire at 5:00 pm Pacific on Friday.

Most of our follow-up emails go out between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm Pacific time. That week, the schedule looked like this:

Monday: Autresponder email
Tuesday: First email about special offer
Wednesday: Autoresponder email
Thursday: Second email about special offer
Friday: Autoresponder email in morning / Special offer expiration email in afternoon
(afternoon sales pitch email sent 2 hours prior to deadline)

Being the testing fools, we tracked the links in each special offer email separately. The special offer email in the afternoon brought in an additional 4 orders at $499 that we probably wouldn’t have received otherwise. Now those orders could have been people who were going to order before the deadline anyway and just clicked the link in that email because it was the latest. But typically we don’t get a rush of orders in the last few hours. One or two, maybe.

But my sense is that at those were people who were reminded at the right time and decided to buy because of the urgency present in that last email. Even if we assume only two of them were buyers that would not have purchased otherwise, that’s an extra $1,000 in our pocket on a Friday afternoon.

(By the way, Friday is a crummy day to expire an offer – I don’t recommend it. We did it because we wanted to test the consequences of emailing twice to a segment of our list, but it would have been better to have the deadline mid-week.)

Unsubscribes were in line with the previous week, where we had a normal schedule and no more than one email per day.

Lesson learned: Emailing twice in one day, when we had an impending deadline that day, resulted in additional sales and dollars.

What we didn’t test, of course, was sending two sales-pitch emails in a single day. In our case, it was one freebie content email and one sales pitch email. Perhaps two sales pitch emails for the same product in one day will result in more unsubscribes. Even if it does, I’d be OK with that. That’s just people qualifying themselves off the list who aren’t interested in buying.

One more thing on our list to test. We’ll keep you updated.

But for now, emailing twice on the day the special offer expires will be added to our standard procedure list.

My last full-time assignment was tracking down parolees-at-large who had stopped checking in with their parole officers and were now fugitives. It was some of the most exciting law enforcement work I did while a full-time cop. Before that, I was a field training officer, working patrol with fresh recruits right out of the Academy, showing them how everything they learned there was applied to real-life situations.

I was two months away from making Detective when I quit to work on my business full-time. At 28, I would have been one of the youngest Detectives on the department. But, I had been working 8 hours a day on my websites and 12 hours a day on-duty and something had to give.

I had a 6-month old daughter and a wife who was a full-time student getting her Masters. I loved being a cop. It was a big risk. But my desire to own my own business was too strong. I “pulled the pin” as cops say and became a reserve officer – still a full police officer, but just not paid for it. (A bit like a volunteer firefighter, but with a gun and body armor).

When you’re writing email subject lines knowing if you don’t make enough money with them you put your family in a tough place (or like you have “a gun to your head” as copy writing expert John Carlton says) you make darn sure the language you write is free of fluff and softness.

Now I have the best of both worlds. I work 2 or 3 12-hour shifts a month. I still have to go through all the annual training and updates as regular officers to keep my credentials active, but don’t make a salary.

I’ve always been a good writer. As a Political Science major in college, I wrote the heck out of my papers. As a cop you do a lot of writing as well. But it’s all about exact facts – with no exaggeration. There’s a little bit of persuasion – but not much. You state exactly what happened and what is known – without embellishing – because those exaggerations will come back to bite you in court when a good defense attorney begins their cross-examination.

Transitioning to writing as a marketing tool was a bit of a shock to my system. Instead of “just the facts, Ma’am” writing, which can often be a bit dry, I now had to write in a way that was irresistibly interesting to the reader. Writing to get “opens” and “clicks” is a lot different than police reports – and a lot more fun.

The best way to improve your skills in writing email subject lines is to split test everything. Write two subject lines you think are both good and try them both. Most of the time, I already have a sense as to which one will win before I even send the email. But sometimes I’m surprised.

With each test I get a little better at writing subject lines that get “opens” and email bodies that get “clicks.”

Here are a few I tested recently and the results:

A) The “brutal truth” interview you have to hear
B) Why do most traders lose money?

Winner: A (in both opens and clicks)

A) Your trading strategy on steroids
B) Steps to improve your trading by 25%

Winner: B (in both opens and clicks)

A) The best MemberCon posts you never read
B) You probably missed these articles

Winner: A (in both opens and clicks)

If there is one thing over the past two years I’ve learned about email writing is that strong language wins every time. Weak words (I call them “loophole words” like “probably,” “might” and “usually” are death for email subject lines and should be avoided at all times.

Words such as “you will,” “always,” and “important” work well. Words like “shocking,” “disaster” and “disturbing” work too, but the trouble with those words is that they wear out your reader very quickly and when you use language like that all the time, it loses it’s punch.

The Lesson Learned: Use strong language and avoid “loophole” language in your email subject lines. The body of the email may be 250 – 500 words, but I spend more time on the 5 words of the subject line than I do on the body itself. It’s that important to the success of your email.

And finally, there’s a tendency in all of us to “cover all our bases” by making the subject lines not too strong because we feel like we don’t want to under-deliver in the email body. Don’t fall for it. Occasionally you may go a bit overboard with your subject lines, but it’s the price you pay for constantly living on the edge with your email marketing. It’s where you need to be to make a living online.

Never lie, but never hold back either for fear that it’s too much or “over the top.” It’s your one chance to make a go at this crazy business.

Related reading:

- Test: Which Font Gets the Best Open and Click Rate
- Our Top Email Subscriber Retention Trick
- Which Web Email Accounts Have the Best Conversion to Memberships?
- Double Opt-in vs. Single Opt-in Email Marketing

On every hike at some point my mind inevitably turns to business. MemberCon has grown nicely over the past few months, but there were (in my not-so-humble opinion) some nice articles written in our early days when the only reader was Emile.

And just this evening I went back and updated one of those earlier posts so I thought I’d point to a few gems that you probably missed in those first few weeks of this blog.

Here they are in no particular order

1) Membership Site Software Plugin Reviews – a good rundown of our thoughts on various membership software offerings.

2) How To Be a Niche Content Millionaire – My interview with David Eedle about how he started and grew his very niche membership site.

3) Should You Start a Forum or Message Board? – a discussion of the value of starting a message board for your website

4) Turn Your Knowledge Into Membership Dollars – my interview with Perry Lawrence about how he promotes his membership site

We’re also starting a new membership site in the motivation and success space this month – stay tuned for tons of test results and tips on how we’re building it from scratch.

We’ve all been taught that in order to get someone to sign up for your email list, you’ve got to offer them an incentive – some sort of free content – that they will receive in exchange for their email. That’s true, but after you fill the “goodwill bank” there will be a time to make a withdrawal and ask for them to part with more than just their email address.

You’re going to continue to exchange their time and attention for free content, but eventually it needs to turn into a real business transaction with dollars exchanged for knowledge and information.

But how soon should that start? Do you pitch in the first email that contains the link to the free e-book, interview or video? Perhaps. Some people would argue (including myself), that the more often you don’t make some sort of pitch, the harder it will be when you do want to sell something to get your audience to pay attention.

What has worked for us is that while the email itself may not pitch, the landing page you take them to in order to consume the content must ALWAYS contain a pitch of some sort.

In our auto-responder series, email 1 does not contain a pitch and neither does the landing page. We’re simply filling the good will bank. But emails 2-8 do lead to landing pages that contain a pitch for our premium content and memberships. The content is definitely valuable, but the pitch increases on each landing page until message 9, 10 and 11 are full sales pitches for our product.

At that point we feel we’ve given them ample chance to see the kind of content we offer – free and paid – and it’s time to make a decision. If we’ve done our job well, hopefully many people choose to become buyers. But either way, there comes a time when every subscriber needs to make that decision.

If they decide to unsubscribe, then so be it. And if they stay on the list without buying, that’s fine too. We’ll work on finding products for them that may, for whatever reason, be a better fit for them than ours and we will still make money via an affiliate relationship.

The tests come in when you work on seeing where that sales pitch comes in to your auto-responder series. For most sites I think that probably happens somewhere between email 5 and 15. I wouldn’t go in for the sale before that or wait any longer after that.

For additional reading on this issue see:

- Email Autoresponders: How Often Should You Email Your List?
- Our Top Email Subscriber Retention Trick
- The Betty Crocker Secret to Email Marketing that Works (Copy Blogger)
- The most critical SEO mistake in your email marketing (blue sky factory Blog)

Winner: Arial font at 11 pt.

The official and most scientific test was Arial font against Courier font.

Speaking with my colleagues from another site who do subscription newsletters, they swore Courier worked best for an older generation who grew up on newsprint. However, I had a feeling that my audience liked the clear, clean lines of Arial.

But does it really matter? In our test we sent 20,000 emails over a 7 day period with the exact same subject lines and content. Only the font was different in the A/B test:

Email messages in Arial font:
Open rate: 34.2%
Click rate: 9.6%

Email messages in Courier font:
Open rate: 31.8%
Click rate: 7.9%

Arial wins – but not by a huge margin. Enough that we’ll be using Arial for all our messages going forward.

One question I’m still not sure about: Why would open rate be affected if they haven’t seen the font yet? My guess is that email programs like Gmail show a snippet of the message and so they do see the font before actually opening the message. Let me know if you have any insight on that.

Interesting side note: Spam complaints with Arial: .02%. Spam complaints with Courier .09%. For whatever reason, Courier messages occasionally got people to click the “Spam” button in their email program more than Arial. That sample size is small enough to be an error either way, but my sense is that people just didn’t like the Courier format and it smelled more like spam to them.