December 2002

Email Technique
Offers

If you want to maximize your return from email marketing, offer one thing and one thing only.

When you make multiple offers you dilute the value of each of the offers you are making. You also confuse the potential customer. . . . When people are confused they vote NO.

Let�s say you are promoting a new tape album. It�s not a good idea to send a broadcast email to your list that says,

�Check Out Our New Tape Album and don�t forget all this month we are discounting ebooks by 25%.�

This marketer was undoubtedly fighting internally about the fact that he/she wanted to maximize the return of the emailing. Hold your horses! By doubling the offer, the response will probably be half of what it would have been had the email offered either the New Tape Album OR the 25% offer off multiple ebooks.

You might think that an offer of multiple ebooks is a multiple offer. Not exactly. The offer part of the multiple ebook offer is the 25% discount which is a single offer and should be successful because in the prospect's mind he/she is saying, "WOW! I get 25% off any of the ebooks I want." The offer of "25%" is what is dominant at that point, not the fact that there are multiple ebooks to choose from.

The same thing occurs on a webpage. I had one student make an offer and then right in the middle of the offer he made a pitch for a charity he was running. The response was dismal on both.

So, don't ruin your chances of success by muddying the waters. Make one offer at a time.


Upcoming topics for this section:

• HTML email

• Getting subscribers fast

• How to make money with your zine

• How to gain clout with your zine

• How to maximize the signups on your website

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