Most mailing lists suck. They really do. They are built using weak content messaging which lead to weak squeeze pages. Weak squeeze pages produce weak lists. If you want to make money onlineyou need to fix this process. At the very least, you need to tighten up the series of messages that lead to your squeeze page. You also need to take full control of the message you're sending out with your squeeze page. Unfortunately, using standard squeeze pages or templates is not just going to cut it.
You have to set a consistent storyline from the beginning. This is crucial in forming the right expectations and getting the right kind of actions from your list members. Otherwise, you are just going tofall into the same trap that most list marketers fall into. They focus too much on numbers and not enough on quality. They feel entitled to success based solely on the fact that they have a “huge list”. Even with very low conversion percentages, they expect their huge numbers to result in a decent income from their list. Not surprisingly, these marketers make little, if any, money off their mailing lists. What gives? You have to focus on the right squeeze page and overall messaging you send out to your prospective list members. One of the most effective ways to do this is to use effective storytelling. Effective story telling involves a complete process: it deals with things you do before people get to your squeeze page, while they are on your squeeze page, and after they have entered their email information into your squeeze page.
Effective storytelling-based list building is the most effective way to succeed with email marketing. While you can still get some results using alternative approaches, you will be settling for cents on the dollar. You probably would have to spend a lot more dollars, to get the same amount of results than if you had taken the time to fully incorporate a storytelling-based strategy into your list marketing activities.Converting Subscribers Into Customers
This booksteps you through the psychological and practical dimensions of building a mailing list around storytelling. By appealing to your marketing materials' readers on a deeply personal level, you make the value proposition you're bringing to the table come to vivid life. Since most other marketers resort to dull, lifeless, or predictably generic marketing strategies in building their lists, your story-driven strategy can give you a powerful competitive advantage. Take the ideas I discuss in this book and let them help you build a powerful, unique, and customized list building strategy that can take your business to the next level.
To Your Success!
Chapter 1
Why Stories? Why Now?
Human beings navigate the world through stories. That is how we make sense of all the information that our bodies pick up. We can look at things, we can smell things, we can touch things, we can hear things -we can detect all sorts of things. However, our mind is quite selective as to which of these things impact how we feel, think, and act. In fact, we are so good at filtering out external stimuli that we are only conscious of a fraction of the things our bodies detect. Interestingly enough, of all the things that we allow ourselves to be conscious of, we choose to remember only a fraction of those. What gives? Very simple -we think in terms of stories.
We have this existing story in our mind of: who we are, our place in the world, and how we choose to look at the world. Stories enable us to have an identity. They enable us to explain ourselves, not just to other people, but to ourselves as well. If you were to just process information on a random and wholesale basis, you would go crazy. You would have to have a system for storing that information and making sense of that information. New information must fit the overriding story we have of ourselves.
Stories act as emotional gateways to new information. This is why they are crucial to online marketing. It doesn't matter whether you are marketing through banner ads, articles or other types of content, a squeeze page or a series of pages that lead to a squeeze page-you have to tell a story.
Keep the following in mind.Converting Subscribers Into Customers
What Does Storytelling Have to Do with Making Money Off a Mailing List?
You have to master the art of story-telling for you to effectively communicate your value proposition. If you want people to join your mailing list, they have to have a clear idea as to what you are offering. They also have to clearly see the need for them to join your mailing list.At the very least, they need to understand these two pieces of information for them to get what you are offering. These involve a lot of data points. These involve a lot of pieces of information. You can just tell people to sign up for your mailing list, but you probably won't go very far. Even if you use fancy fonts or great pictures, chances are your likelihood of success would be pretty mediocre. Why? You might be setting the wrong expectations. You might be sending a confusing message and end up attracting list members who have no intention of buying from you.
If you want to attract highly qualified prospects, you need to use stories. Don't get me wrong, very basic and straightforward squeeze pages can get people to sign up. The problem is, once they have signed up, how do you get them to convert?
Conversion is King
At the end of the day, it is all about conversion. It doesn't really make much sense to get one thousand people to sign up for your mailing list, when only one of them ends up converting.It is much better to get one hundred people to sign up for your mailing list and at the end of the day you have fifty of them convert to your offer. I hope you can see the simple mathematics here. Converting Subscribers Into Customers
Story-telling is a very powerful component of a competent mailing list strategy because it helps you filter your prospects. It helps you attract the right prospects. Most importantly, it helps you set the tone of the relationship.
Good Email Lists are Built on Relationships
Getting people to sign up to your mailing list is the beginning of a relationship. When somebody signs up to your mailing list, they are telling you to keep sending them information. Put simply, they are telling you to keep talking to them. They want to have a relationship with your brand.
Using effective story-telling can ensure that you are getting into the right kind of relationship. If you use the typical squeeze page design, you wouldn't have a problem signing up people, but these may be the wrong people. These might be people who are expecting a different kind of relationship. Regardless of how it plays out, at the end of the day, you probably won't make much money. Weaving in effective story-telling elements increases your likelihood of making money off your list. It is crucial for you to understand how stories work, and incorporate as much of storytelling's power of persuasion into your squeeze page as well as the pages that precede your squeeze page. Stories also help boost the effectiveness of information pages.
Human Beings MakeSense of the World through Stories
I have said this already above, but I cannot emphasize this enough: human beings make sense of the world through stories. You may not be aware of it. You might even think this is some crazy talk, but it is true. You have a story. You look at the world as a story. In fact, it happens automatically that you are not aware of it.Converting Subscribers Into Customers
Think of it this way. To prove my point, try to think in such a way that there is no beginning, middle, or end. Take chronology out of your memory. Give up? Of course you will. If not, you are going crazy.
Time and memory are interlinked. They define each other, and this is really important because it is at the core of stories. Stories help you make sense of the world because it reduces the world into a sequence of relationships. Moreover, just as time is related to memory, time also help us make sense of the relationships between concepts. There are also relationships between how you perceive yourself and how you perceive the world and your place in the world.
Great stories help you connect the dots
A great story resonates with you on a deep personal level. A lot of emotion is involved in this. This is precisely why effective stories drive people to do things. They see themselves in the story. They see their personal narratives at play. They become open and susceptible to being influenced by what would otherwise be a 'foreign' idea. People subconsciously connect the dots between the idea presented to them which trigger emotional hot buttons and their own existing needs and desires.Click the tab below to get your own free marketing tool.