Unsubscribing From Every "Oops" & "Sorry" Email...

internetmarketer99, ste25, et al...

If you're signed up for my list, unsubscribe. If you're not, don't ever sign up. I make mistakes. Save yourself the aggravation of dealing with the fallible side of the species.

Yes, a noticeable fraction of these are lies. (Stupid tactic, when they are.) If you want to assume they all are, that's fine. You can always unsubscribe. But coming on here and making a big deal out of something that is quite often nothing but a legitimate correction of an honest error, without allowing for that possibility, just makes you look stupid.

Buh-Bye. Have a nice existence.


Paul

Shannon, If I were, I would. Simply because you requested it.

If your objection is to my "tone," that's fine. A preference, therefore not something for debate. And I can certainly understand a person not finding that appropriate for their way of dealing with people.

Personally, when someone goes around calling people liars without at least some factual basis for the claim, I don't feel they deserve any special courtesy.

internetmarketer99, for example started the thread by saying this was "intentionally deceptive." In some cases, I'm sure it is. In others, I feel pretty safe in saying it's not. Stating it as a universal case, without allowing for honest mistakes, is exactly equal to saying, "Anyone who sends an email saying they goofed is a liar."

If your objection is to the content, you might want to think a bit about why I reply to these sorts of threads.

When someone comes in here and posts, they're broadcasting to a LOT of other people. The majority of those people are relatively new and inexperienced, as is normal in most fields. If the information they broadcast is wrong, the folks most likely to be damaged are the new and inexperienced.

Nature of the beast. They have less on which to base their judgments.

This generalizing of "sometimes" to "always" encourages the sort of sloppy thinking that kills many new businesses. People learn to think that their preferences represent the market, which any experienced business person can tell you is one of the worst mistakes you can make.

Dispensing bad information is potentially damaging to others, but it's fixable. You learn quickly that the information is wrong and you adjust. Teaching people bad assumptions and inaccurate or ineffective thinking patterns is much more dangerous. Those can sabotage even the hardest working person for a very long time.

internetmarketer99, Wrong target, dude. I have never defended intentionally deceptive tactics.

When it's done deliberately, I consider it not only wrong, but stupid and lazy. And I acknowledged that it is sometimes deliberate.

My point is that it isn't anything like always the result of deliberate intent. If you want to assume that it is, that's your business. Teaching people that it's always a lie, and calling someone a liar for acknowledging and correcting a mistake, is something which needs to be corrected. [splorf]

Dude, signing up for my newsletter does not make you a customer. It also doesn't give you any rights, except to unsubscribe if you choose.

It doesn't give me any rights either, except to send the information I promised on the sign-up page, until you choose to unsubscribe or I choose to remove you from the list.

That's it. A deal between equals, which either side can cancel, at any point, without prejudice, for any reason or no reason at all.

As for how I treat them, I'd say it's pretty well. I read every email I get that is in any way identifiable as coming in response to an issue of the newsletter, and I reply to 85-90% of those, depending on available time.

In addition to the usual content, I recently put together a 112-page book that I gave to them for free, and which I could easily have turned into a commercial product and sold for $100. Would have taken about another week, and cost me nothing extra to do.

That's 112 pages in the default format for Open Office, with no extra line spacing or font size tricks. And no pitching, of anything. Ed Dale described it on his blog as "a must for any online marketer."

Yeah. I treat my subscribers soooo badly.

Debbie, Absolutely true. Which is why I (and several other people) regularly jump in on threads that attempt to create patently false perceptions. For example, the OP's suggestion that all "ooops" emails are deliberately deceptive.

It does one a lot of good to remember that perceptions are just that... they're not reality. If we look at them that way, we're much less likely to make critical mistakes.


Paul

Really?

Who?

Do you (or anyone else) have proof of who does this on purpose?

Or are we simply making ASSumptions?

Is it likely that some marketers do this sort of thing? Sure.

But that doesn't mean all - or even most - of them do it. In fact, I'll bet that 99% of those who send out those emails are NOT doing it on purpose. They know it looks "suspicious". But the alternative is to not correct a link (or whatever).

Believe it or not, the non working link happens frequently and for various reasons. Many of these "big guy" marketers DON'T properly check the links simply because they have WAY more going on than most of the people complaining in this very thread.

Is that stupid, not checking? Absolutley. But that don't make them malicious marketers trying to "insult your intelligence". It makes them careless.

Well, now let's string up all these careless marketers. Whoopee!

(my goodness, the things we waste our time on...)

Mike, I like you already.
No harm done. I can take it (and I can dish it out )
Its a forum and these threads are made up of individual opinions. Opinions that are formed based on our experiences.

I don't agree with the OP about unsubscribing from every Oops and Sorry email. But I do have an opinion about them.

Maybe the people you know don't do the "oops" lines over and over but there other "marketers" who learn a ploy and run it into the ground. I'm talking about more than the "Oops", "Sorry" and "my server melted" lines

Think about this for a minute.
In the IM niche its not unusual for a person to be subscribed to many lists. Its the nature of the niche. Also the person who buys products in the IM niche is also LEARNING about IM and how to apply it to their own business. So when you buy IM products what's one of the topics thats usually taught?

• Email marketing
• Building a list
• How to write emails.
• etc

So I buy Mike's product and he teaches me how to write emails that people will read and act on. Including how to write a compelling subject line.
Now I've learned the tactics used by the marketers - but wait. Thats what I'm trying to be.
Now I know what to write for my list but other marketers are continuing to blast me with emails and use the same tactics on me. Remember, I'm on multiple lists so I'm seeing the same stuff many times per day. It gets really exciting during a launch. I'll get 3-5 emails from the same guy on the same day.

I'm wise to tactics used to get a person to open an email AND take out their credit card. I've bought your product and learned all about it. You continue to use those methods on me but knowing what they are, what they are for has changed my opinion about those emails. All I see is the ploy to get me to buy - I'm not even seeing the offer anymore. In fact I become jaded because I see the same stuff over and over again and now I'm insulted that you can't communicate as a peer. I get a canned email with some bogus excuse in the subject so I open it.

Sales people don't like to be sold to.

Now take those same tactics and use them on a niche outside of IM

I'm going to write an email that says "sorry I messed up and sent you the wrong link. Here is the correct download link for your Health & Welness ebook".
My customer reads my email and takes it at face value. I'm not teaching them anything about internet marketing so they aren't "wise" to the manipulating email (which is what the good ones are).
They will react differently to those tactics.

I understand that there are new people arriving in the IM niche everyday and yes they need to be sold to but I also think that there are a lot of Marketers in the IM niche who need to grow up and start respecting their lists.
If I've bought something from you and have subscribed to an "update" list, I don't want to be marketed to through that list. If I've been on your list for a long time and have bought many products from you then maybe you to upgrade me to a more "personal" list.

Send me an email, tell me what you are selling, whats in it for me and your HONEST opinion of the product.
Right now the only marketer who's emails I open ALL the time is Frank Kerns.
Why? Because he treats me (yes I know I'm part of a list) like I know something. The emails are short and to the point. He provides a little entertainment and personality as well as content. If he hasn't used a product he tells you. He sells to you without being an "in your face gimicky sales person". I don't act on all his emails (sorry Frank - can't buy it all) but I do open all of them.


Colin - I don't think anyone is expecting you to be perfect but this is all about being responsible enough to test things to make sure things work.
When the screw ups happen too often then its easy to think its a tactic because as a professional marketer these things are not supposed to happen to you.

Hey, with my stores - I've got one chance to do it right for the customer. If I screw up, I can't say...Oops I messed up. My customer leaves and I miss the sale.
So I test and make sure everything works before it goes live.
Do the screw ups happen? Yes, but not very often and very few people experience them. My livelihood depends on things working right.

I didn't want this to be a long post. I just wanted to make the point that marketers in the IM niche might want to re-evaluate their emails to their IM lists.

It doesn't matter if its an intentional ploy or not. Perception can be just as damaging as reality.