Is Email Marketing Still Drive Good Cash to Affiliate Marketers ?!

Note: This article is also for those readers who want to do email marketing but without having any weblog. The article provides reasons why buying lists is waste of time, resources and why you must have a weblog, provides scientific, objective reasons why using lists without blog will result in failure and how can a weblog deliver in terms of results you desire!

This is what you thought? Hann..! Email marketing, putting up a blog and in couple of months you will be having steady flow of income by selling things to your readers, which will gradually increase; this is exactly what you have been hoping!

It’s not happening right? No organic traffic, no readers, no subscribers, no business, nothing and on top of all that “immense frustration!”

Your fears of failing in your small business seems coming true, you feel that hopelessness, It is almost unbearable for you, you hate yourself for not being successful after putting so much effort, writing up that super content and yet there is nothing!

I know because I had been in the same situation!

Let me tell you something, just like +Adrienne Smith  once told me something along these lines, "don’t lose hope, if you lose hope you lose everything, blogging is a journey worth to take!" and my good friend +Naomi Dinsmore once said, “Think about the little achievements, progress you made, you started as nobody and now you have achieved so many things!”

And that’s what I suggest to you, I know how frustrated you are, I know how down you feel but the truth is, if you keep yourself occupied that way, you will never achieve anything let alone having a successful blog/website!

Yes you can make steady income (income that grows overtime) out of your blog but you have to work (consistently) according to some objective facts! And when I mean objective facts, I mean “Scientific Well Researched Facts”.

You holding that iphone in your hand because of science, you are blogging because of science, you are enjoying comforts of life because of solid science, science can lead you to success but that doesn’t mean you skip on spiritual side, that is “Hope” “Faith” Faith in yourself” “Faith in what you do” !

See, Steve jobs (1955-2011) just didn’t do science (innovation) he had faith in his work, in his self though he was seriously ill (diagnosed with cancer in 2003).

Fact: Apple became $600 billion company in 2012 from $2 billion in 1997 largely due to innovation (science) like iphone, ipads, ipods, remember that the man behind this great story was seriously ill, diagnosed with pancreatic Cancer in (2003) that later led to the inevitable!

And yet that didn’t stop him from achieving what he wanted to achieve! Because He had hope, belief, faith in himself, in his work, in his team!

His hope, faith and science made Apple, what Apple is today!

Look at Stephen hawking, a great scientist, theoretical physicists again with crazy hope and faith in himself! Being paralyzed by ALS for decades but yet man of hope, faith, faith that made him world renowned Theoretical Physicist!

So what all of this highlights is, to be successful you need!

Consistent Hope/Faith + Consistent Science = Success

Now here are some scientific well researched facts about email marketing, facts that you can take to the bank!

Remember: “If you neglect these facts, you will never ever be successful in email marketing, no matter what!, yes!, guaranteed failure!”
 

• The usual response rate for snail mail is 1.1 to 1.4% vs email 0.03% [1], remember that snail mail costs $600 per 1000 pieces while email costs almost nothing! [2]
• Research at Harvard shows the following response rates for customers from loyalty database or customers who are in loyalty program [2]

 

Direct Marketing Type	Response Rate
Direct Mail	25%
Direct Email	23%

What these facts actually highlights is a very important point, which is if you are looking for good amount of profit from email marketing then you need to focus on achieving customer loyalty.

Because the usual response rate (0.03%) for email to hundreds of thousands people who are not loyal, don’t know you or your brand, won’t bring you the return on investment you desire! So forget about those “lists” you have bought recently! You just wasted your money!

And that’s exactly the reason it’s not working (for those who just buy email lists and spam without having any loyal readers, blog)!

So what you need to do?

Well simple, first you need a blog!

Why? Because blog is a sure way to earn trust, customer (readers) loyalty and later on you can cash that loyalty with great returns (23% to 25% mentioned above) !!!

Now the question how would you know if your blog readers are loyal (or becoming loyal!)

Customer Loyalty Indicators!

Here are few customer (blog readers) loyalty indicators (according to Scientific Researches)

1.      Positive Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) [3] [6] [8]
2.      Less attention to competing brands & Advertising. [3]
3.      Successful Complaint Resolution [4][5]
4.      Repurchase [6]
5.      Perceived Price Fairness [7]
6.      Innovation [9]
7.      Customer Loyalty Program [10]
8.      Successful Relationship Marketing [8]

Positive WOMM

If your blog readers do a lot of internet, social media sharing of your content (positive WOMM) that would mean they are loyal to you, trust you!

That means, to get that 23% response rate on email you need to get your readers (customers) extremely satisfied with your blog content.

Research shows that extreme customer satisfaction leads to increase in positive WOMM! [11]

You may like 20 Hard to believe! Facts about Word of Mouth Marketing

You can achieve extreme customer (blog reader) satisfaction by

• Providing value in your content
• Providing actionable content
• Providing evergreen content
• Showing genuine interest in your readers, their comments, thoughts, problems!
• Trying your best to help your readers

  

Less attention to competing Brands & Advertising

If you conduct a little survey on your blog to see how much they (your readers) know about your competitors and their advertising and the result shows that they don’t know much about your competitors, their advertising (social media/internet shares can also be counted as advertising) then that would indicate that your readers are loyal to your brand/blog!

If you want to dig more on this one, check the article in reference!
 

Successful Complaint Resolution

This one can be translated as successful resolutions of problems (relevant to your blog niche) faced by your readers, if your blog helps them in solving those problems successfully that would make them loyal to your brand, will trust your brand (blog).

Btw this is what all the great email marketers do, solving their readers/subscribers problems!
 

Repurchase

Repurchase here would mean, how many of your blog readers buy what you offer to them via email and how frequently each of them do it.

Frequent purchases by majority of your blog readers would mean they are loyal to your blog! Again you can achieve that by providing quality content as I mentioned above!

Because quality content earns you the most vital thing that is your reader "trust" consequently "loyalty".
  

Perceived Price Fairness (PPF)

For instance you conduct a survey at your blog about prices of items you offer and majority of your readers respond that they see prices as fair, then that would mean they are loyal to your brand/blog!

Innovation

If you provide unique, actionable advice, content on problems, situations faced by your blog readers and they attest to that, then that will result in your readers loyalty to your blog.

Tip: Always think out of the box and be objective as much as possible!
 

Customer Loyalty Program

Research shows that offering loyalty program increases customer loyalty, which means if you want your blog readers to be loyal to you, you need to offer them a loyalty program.
 

Successful Relationship Marketing

If your relationship marketing efforts are successful that would mean increase in customer loyalty to your brand.

To interpret in email marketing terms, it means having great relationship with your readers!
 

And you can achieve that by constantly engaging them in comments, in emails, on social media etc providing them useful tips, help on issues relevant to your brand and sometime wishing them birthdays! Making them feel special!

The more successful you are with your readers in terms of relationship marketing, the more loyal your readers would be to your blog, consequently 23% response rate!

Remember you don’t need to work on all these tips, working constantly, thoroughly on few, couple of these facts will get you loyal readers consequently 23% response rate.

Working according to these few objective facts will surely help you to achieve what you desire because science never makes empty promises! 

Lastly basic understanding of onpage & offpage SEO is a must too (don't worry you can learn it in 5 to 10 days! at maximum)

Over to you guys!

And YEAH DON’T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE for more actionable handy tips!

References:

1.       Direct Marketing Association
2.       Harvard Business Review Ref: https://hbr.org/2012/08/why-email-marketing-is-king
3.       Desai, K.K. and Mahajan, V. (1998), “Strategic role of affect based attitudes in acquisition, development and retention of customers”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 42 No. 3, pp. 309-24.
4.       Blodgett, J.G. and Anderson, R.D. (2000), “A Bayesian network model of the consumer complaint process”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 321-38.
5.       Shields, P.O. (2006), “Customer correspondence: corporate responses and customer reactions”, Marketing Management Journal, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 155-70.
6.       Zeithaml, V.A., Leonard, L.B. and Parasuraman, A. (1996), “The behavioral consequences of service quality”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60, April, pp. 31-46.
7.       Martin-Consuegra, D., Molina, A. and Esteban, A. (2007), “An integrated model of price, satisfaction, and loyalty: an empirical analysis in the service sector”, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol. 16 No. 7, pp. 459-468.
8.       Exploring relationship marketing in membership associations Nathan A. Vincent and Cynthia M. Webster Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
9.       Huang, HL (2013) Performance effects of aligning service innovation and the strategic use of information technology. Serv Bus. doi:10.1007/s11628-013-0192-z
10.    http://www.foster.washington.edu/centers/salesmark/Documents/loyaltyprogram.pdf   
11.   Anderson, E.W. (1998), “Customer satisfaction and word of mouth”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 5-17.