Dear Reader,
It looks like people are really going ga-ga over this “list building” thing.
A few days ago, I decided that I’d start making more posts on twitter. (I had opened a twitter account some months back but never got around to posting on it.) So as part of this I started following some people.
Almost immediately after I clicked on the “Follow” button on some members’ pages, I got a private messages offering a free “gift” for deciding to follow them.
And as you might have guessed, to get this gift I’d have to go through an opt-in form.
Let’s assume I entered my details and opted in, is there a guarantee I would make a “good” list member?
You see, I have 4 email accounts — 3 Gmail and 1 Yahoo account — set up just to receive these list emails.
And the thing is…
Gmail account 1 contains 1703 Unread emails
Gmail account 2 contains 1028 Unread emails
Gmail account 3 contains 485 Unread emails
Yahoo account contains 1106 Unread emails.
So that makes it 4342 Unopened emails in all accounts combined.
I don’t even open certain emails accounts for months together because I’m too busy. And when I do, I only read specific people’s emails.
That being the case, what is the use of making a person like me opt-in to your list forcibly?
What if you have a 1,000 people like me on your list. What if you have 10,000 like me on your list. You’d think you have a big list but that’s not the case in reality.
Hence, I think the time has come to re-think the strategy of doing forced opt-ins while offering freebies.
You can probably just give away the free report or video first(without an opt-in) and then give them the option to opt-in later. This way they will at least open your future emails because you’ve won their confidence.
What do you say?
Thanks,
Dean.
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