This last rule requires you to be bold. It requires you to expect and accept the fact that some people are going to flat out reject you. If you can’t deal with rejection, learn to deal with it.
Trust is a result of people seeing you as a real person willing to share of yourself and not just a automated cloned robot pushing out recycled articles and ads just like everyone else seems to do.
Part of that has to do with the way you write to your readers. You have to write in a way that it looks personal. Like an actual person sat down and took the time to communicate with them. Every single one of your readers knows you have many hundreds or thousands of subscribers but that doesn’t mean that you can’t write like only one person is reading. In fact, that’s what you have to do.
One of the easiest ways I’ve found to learn how to do this is to look at your database of subscribers and pick one to write your letter to. Just one. Then compose your emails in your email client that’s addressed to just that one subscriber.
It’s a little intimidating, but you can also just imagine that you’re writing to one of your bigger competitors which forces you to put some real effort into the information you present. It kind of forces you to raise your game a bit.
No matter how many people you write to, only one person is reading your email at a time so it’s important that it “sounds” like you’re writing to that one person.
Personal stories help as well because they help solidify that fact that you are a real person. There’s too much use of the word “we” online. If you’re the only person running your business then who is “we”? Carefully remove the stick and relax.
If it’s just you, say I or me when you write.
There’s nothing wrong with that because again, anything that allows people to picture you having a one on one conversation with them goes a long way towards helping you build a relationship with them.
Now here’s the thing…
I have to clear this up because I know it’s something that may confuse you. When I say write personal stories I don’t mean you have to talk about personal things. It’s not necessary to do that. What I mean is talk about something that isn’t about your online business or if it is about your business, do it with your own words and personality.
I’ll give you an example…
I’m subscribed to a newsletter that has nothing to do with Internet Marketing or marketing at all for that matter and one of the guys who writes it routinely starts out by telling me something completely unrelated to the subject of his newsletter.
One issue he started off by saying…
———
Not too long ago, in a fit of exasperation over the lack of
American entertainment available here in Spain, I picked up
the Miami Vice box set.
So next thing you know, I'm rolling through the clubs in
Barcelona with my boy (Name Omitted), and we're introducing
ourselves as "Sonny" and "Tubbs." Nobody has any idea what
the hell we're talking about, but as you're probably aware
by now, I like to amuse myself.
I've even started rolling up the sleeves on my blazer.
Just kidding.
——— Has nothing to do with his newsletter but it’s funny and it makes me feel like I know the guy a little because he does something like that in every issue. You could tell people you like the color green and they feel like they know you better. What you tell them doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you should tell them something. The more personal you can get your newsletter to look, the more your readers will start to respond to you. You see, you’ve been told to build your list and send out a newsletter and of course you should, but why should you? Do you know why? Has anyone ever told you why? The #1 goal is to build a relationship with like-minded people who seek guidance on the way to their goals. Your job is to help them get to wherever they want to go. All people care about is where they want to go and if you can help them get there. Your job is not to send out a bunch of recycled articles and ads. People don’t want that and the thing is, many of them won’t unsubscribe when you send them junk. They will just stop listening to you. So, even though you may appear to have thousands of subscribers, you actually don’t because many of them have quit reading. You have to ask yourself, why should anyone care about you or what you have to say or even relate to you and your business? Do you give them a reason to? If you don’t, start. People don’t care about or relate robots. They care about and relate to other real people. I remember a few years ago I wrote an email course and wanted an outside opinion on the content so I sent an email to Terry Dean. If you don’t know who Terry is he owned BizPromo.com but made enough money to retire from Internet Marketing altogether and turned his business over to one of his partners. Anyway, here’s what Terry told me … ——— Hi, The only thing I didn’t like in your series was the beginning of each email. The way you did it tells right up front that it’s not a personal email…and that it’s probably selling something. I would keep your subject lines, but I would change the way you start each letter. Instead of doing the “graphics” I would do a first paragraph from you similar to what I now do in Web Gold. The reason I switched was that the current format of Web Gold (with around 3 or 4 paragraphs from me at the beginning of each issue) doubled my response rates. It was more personal, got to the point of building the relationship (the #1 goal), and makes more money. So I would definitely recommend you changing out the very beginning to look more like personal emails from you. You can use the lines and stuff after you do that. This would apply to all the emails.
By the way, I do think you did a good job on the emails…giving
good information and keeping them short.
Susan
———
You have to realize that Terry at one point was getting up to 1,000 orders or more every time he sent out an offer to his list. That’s not bad if you ask me and that’s what allowed him to retire. The only two things he did in his newsletters were …
1) Make the first part of it personal. He didn’t usually write too much about himself because he felt like that wasn’t the important part. What was important was writing anything from him (in his own words) to me as a subscriber so that I could feel like I was connecting with him on some level.
2) He would write his own articles. Mostly. From time to time he included articles from other people but for the most part he mainly shared his own experience. Couple that with the fact that you (over time) felt like you knew the guy from the personal touch he added to the beginning of each email and you could see why people ordered by the hundreds or thousands whenever he promoted a product or service.
Terry understands the art of perception. Whether I actually knew anything about him or not is debatable but Terry made me feel like I did. That’s all that really counts when you’re talking about building relationships online. When you can get people to feel like they know you (or at least know more about you than the average guy just sending them recycled articles and ads) you stand out.
Standing out online is a good thing. You need to rise above the crowd and show people why they should be dealing with you over someone else. If you don’t, your competitors will be on equal ground with you and you don’t want that. You want a person to see you as having no competition because they feel like they know you and that you are someone who wants to help them achieve their goals.
Terry wrote an article about this and I’ll include it here because I think it’s extremely important that you make the message he shares part of your whole newsletter publishing philosophy.
=============================
The ‘Secret’ To A Successful Free Newsletter!
=============================
There are currently over 300,000 ezines on the Internet. The
number is growing every single day.
Most of these ezine publishers never earn any real money (over
$1,000 a month). They work their butts off week after week to
produce good content and then only receive a very minor income
from selling ads or linking to affiliate programs.
You may have found yourself in this very same position.
The first thing you need to understand is that a big ezine/newsletter is not the goal you are reaching for. It is a means to the goal. Your business goal probably isn’t really to build a 100,000 person ezine list. Your goal is to make money online. Building the list is just the vehicle
which will take you there.
This isn’t just semantics. Having the right focus and position for
your ezine is all important online. If you don’t understand why you
are running an ezine, then I guarantee you won’t get maximum
value out of it.
I have been teaching home businesses about the importance of email follow-up, multi-responders, and ezines for almost 3 years now… and I see many people have fallen into some major misconceptions on this subject. Say this out loud with me…
“The goal of my ezine is to build relationships with prospects
and turn them into customers.” You probably didn’t get it the first
time, so please say the sentence out loud once again…
“The goal of my ezine is to build relationships with prospects and turn them into customers.” If you are building a large ezine list just to sell advertising, then you are missing out on the primary income stream it can provide you with. Your ezine is the gateway into
selling more of your products and services.
If you are the member of an affiliate program, then your ezine is the gateway into selling more of their products and earning higher commissions. Your ezine should become the source of multiple streams of income from selling both your products and the products of those you affiliate with.
One of the biggest mistakes I see being made from ezine owners is not inserting your own personality into your ezine.
Part of the advantage to having a small business is you are a real person they can contact, agree with, disagree with, etc.
Don’t just publish other people’s articles and call that an ezine. Sure, you can use some articles from other people. Even all of your articles could be from other people. What you need to do is add in a few paragraphs you wrote yourself to the top of the ezine. Do an editorial section just like in magazines.
Don’t just run ad copy from an affiliate program. Tell your readers how you feel about the product. What did you gain from it? How did you learn from it? What don’t you like about it? You may be so afraid of making mistakes in this area that you don’t do anything. So, make some mistakes. We all do. It is part of being human.
What you say may offend some people and they may unsubscribe from your ezine. So what? They weren’t planning on buying from you anyway! I’m not telling you to purposely offend anyone…just letting you know it’s going to happen. Use spell checkers and have some one edit your writing for you, but guess what? There are still going to be mistakes people will let you know about.
People always ask me how I have gotten my name published all over the web. Here’s the secret…
“Be a real person.”
It’s not what you were expecting, is it? It’s not exciting or highly technical. It’s just the truth. People online are looking for people who are real, who have opinions, and who make mistakes.
One of my most popular articles being published around the web mentions a cow named “Oscar” who lives next door. Some people won’t like you mentioning daily life such as this. Let them unsubscribe. The ones who stay on your list will buy more once they know you.
“Personality” is one of the most under used tools in the ezine publisher’s arsenal. Right alongside personality is good content.
You need to balance the one with the other. You won’t be able to produce a growing ezine without good quality content.
If you don’t feel you can write good content for your newsletter, then
use other people’s articles. Just keep in mind your primary goal -
“to build relationships with prospects and turn them into customers.”
——-
There’s a very important point to be stressed here.
Even though that article is freely available for anyone to see online, I can still use it here without lowering the value of this manual because there’s enough of my own original information around it. That article is only used to support my own words and my own opinions.
You can use other people’s articles when you write but surround those articles with enough of your own information to get people to feel like they are connecting with you on some level. Most publishers don’t take the time to do this, which is why you have to.
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