Dig – A Little Deeper in the Well
Today’s blog post is inspired by the song, “Dig a little deeper in the well” that I’m sure you’ve heard the Oak Ridge Boys sing.
It’s taken many months to correct a mistake I made with my customers that started many moons ago.
And it is my hope that if need be – I will have helped you avoid this mistake as either a seasoned affiliate or even an entrepreneur just in the startup phase of being an affiliate.
Organic Traffic Strategy
You are welcome to read back to a blog post of mine where my financial situation had changed.
I had to pivot from a paid traffic strategy that was doing well employing Facebook Lead Ads.
And I fully believe this to be a temporary situation as I really like finding new customers using those lead ads.
Most of the leads I have now as well as my customers will recognize the newspaper delivery guy with a message to check out a video and in exchange for your email address, I offered to send a daily email regarding running an online business for affiliate marketing.
My pivot was to use an organic traffic strategy which really means I needed to put more time into my core focus of getting folks interested in learning one of the best ways to run a business online as an affiliate.
And there is more to this core focus.
My intent is to capture the email address of those who I hope to whet their whistle for running a business as an affiliate – and again in exchange for keeping them informed of my progress as an affiliate – in hopes they take my experience to help them to either move forward with their business or as in the case of this post – advice on avoiding the mistakes I make.
AWeber Email Management Software
I use AWeber to manage the emails that I send out on a daily basis weekdays.
Within that software, I have basically segregated my contacts into two groups.
Those whose “whistle” for affiliate marketing has been whetted – my leads.
And those whose thirst has gone a bit deeper in the well so to speak – my customers.
On a monthly basis I will review the responses that I get from sending out emails.
I am looking for engagement that ranges anywhere from opening my emails to clicking on any links that I provide.
I typically warn my email recipients right from the get-go that if they are not engaging with my emails – they will be removed from my emailings without warning.
And so it is with my leads – if they are have not engaged over the past three months – I say bye bye.
Customers of the Educational Products
that I Promote
My customers however are a different story.
I value their trust in me and I’m not about to just chop them off my list.
But my Customer list is a stagnant one and I’ll tell you why.
Very early on – when I was just starting to get customers, I continued to email them after they placed their order(s).
Then once they placed their order, my mentor Dean Holland would also send them emails.
And I did have a conversation with Dean – wondering if the two sets of emails might be a bit too much.
I did get some assurances that it would not be too much as we both would have different messaging content to send their way.
Plus Dean’s content would be coming from the stand-point of a successful online millionaire.
And so as to not appear as an imposter I was coming across as a new affiliate myself.
And I found out early that there are always exceptions to the rules.
Clawbacks on Customer Orders
Ooo – I hate the sounds of that word – “Clawback“.
But it is a stark reality that anyone with money-back gurantees must endure (and comply with).
As an affiliate and Certified Partner with Internet Profits out the UK, I was well aware of the 30 day money back guarantee – no questions asked.
One of my first customers ordered a book to be delivered and saw the value in taking advantage of an upsell.
After their order, Dean started emailing them and I continued to email them.
Well – this customer was quite annoyed and without any further conversation their orders were clawed-back so to speak – meaning no sales for Dean and no commissions for me.
My Mistake
Given the clawback, it made me rethink my strategy and I was thinking I would be completely hands-off until a customer’s order had passed the thirty day mark.
But that left a question in my mind once again.
And as a Certified Partner in the Accelerator program at Internet Profits – any time you have a question, it is in your best interest to get that question answered.
You really don’t want to be stuck or have anything stuck in your head for any period of time without getting answers.
Luckily we have coaches that answer our questions either live or in a recorded video (depending on the weekday), and I submitted my question.
In response to my query, I was told that yes, I need to continue to build the relationship between me and my customers.
A New Blogger
In that first year I had a couple more clawbacks – but not due to the multi-email thing.
And I did not take my coach’s words to heart – and now I eat those words.
Very recently I found a blogger whose posts I started commenting and sharing on.
In conversation he mentioned that over his holidays he read The Iceberg Effect.
And further conversation revealed that he was a successful affiliate of six years.
So I asked him who he ordered the book from as I figured it must have been one of my colleagues.
But the answer was fuzzy in his mind and I didn’t think anything of it until…
…until I came to my customer list as I figured it was time to send an email to them.
And who did I find there? The new blogger I had found – he was already my customer!
Conclusion
Well, to finish off my story – I sent an email out to my customers and lo and behold – NOTHING!
Not one open on that email. I had failed to build and nurture a relationship with my customers and now in all likelihood my emails disappear in never never land.
And this is the lesson I want to pass on to you.
When you get new customers – continue on to build the relationship – even if the owner of that product or service you are promoting is doing the same.
You may get pushback the odd time, but for the most part when you dig – a little deeper in the well – you and your customer will come to appreciate each other.
To make amends, I whole-heartedly ask you to review my customer’s blog post.
This is what I recently wrote on my social media accounts:
The best laid out plans of mice and men can be easily derailed by failing tech. Check out Jim\’s latest blog post where he gives you a thumbs down on an online course to avoid and he turns around to refer you to a good YouTube source of content you will love.
Let me know in the comments whether you think it is a good idea to promote what your customers are working on. HINT: There is no right or wrong answer – but in my mind – it is just a preference and perhaps strategy.
This is a situation I have yet to come across. I don’t have enough people on my email list. I had wondered what happens once someone orders the book. I know Dean’s funnel takes over as far as more emails is concerned but how do you know when a specific person has ordered it? If you decide that you want to stop the subsequent emails from your autoresponder how do you know who to apply the suspension to?
Andy, I believe the answer to your first question is the Back Office of your Affiliate Hub.
When you open the Affiliate Dashboard, the Link Tracking Stats Report will show you multiple stats including the number of hits or orders of any of the Internet Profits products and services you are promoting.
Plus the “My Ledger” reports will reveal a popup window showing the commissions earned as well as clawbacks.
As for your second question – that might be a good question for the Daily Ask Us Anything calls or one of the community forums/meetings. I have a Accelerator PRO membership using the AWeber email management software. Once a lead places an order they get placed on a customer list and if they are on my leads list and still receiving the sequence of messages – that is automatically stopped.
If you are on the Affiliate System, then I believe you would need to set a trigger automatically or manually – but as I say, our coaches or Dean can set you in the right direction on this.
Robert Klein recently posted…Community To Be Proud Of
Hi Robert,
The analogy of “digging a little deeper in the well” effectively illustrates the importance of building deeper connections with our customers. Your honesty about the mistakes made and lessons learned is invaluable, especially for those of us in affiliate marketing.
I agree that nurturing relationships with customers is essential. Promoting what your customers are working on is a great way to show support and build trust. It’s interesting to see how you adapted your strategy and are open to feedback and growth.
Thanks for sharing this insightful post!
Meredith
Meredith Moore recently posted…TikTok University to Email Integration to Content Creation Achievements
Your reflection on nurturing customer relationships really resonates with me. It’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement of making sales and pivoting strategies that we can overlook the importance of maintaining those connections.
I found your approach to pivoting from paid to organic traffic quite insightful. In my experience, one of the key benefits of organic traffic is the ability to build more personal connections with your audience. Since you’ve shifted your strategy, how have you been managing the balance between continuing to build relationships and avoiding email fatigue for your customers?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Hi Alison,
I am aware that my current organic traffic strategy will take a number of months before I see new customers. I have not yet fully perfected my blog hop/share strategy and I will continue to concentrate on that until I feel some sort of mastery. I still have it in the back of my mind that using a video traffic strategy will certainly enhance my online presence.
As far as my email practices, I look forward to the daily emails I send on weekdays. My entire audience comes from my paid traffic strategy of days gone by. And I’m pledging to include my customers in those broadcast emails. Those emails originally got sent only to my leads. Of course there will be times where I will have more appropriate content for my customers and I would make that a separate email to them.
Even though I said I have no new customers nor new leads, my back office stats show admirable progress. Even on weekends when I send no email I am getting plenty of clicks from both links in my blogs as well as the banners within.
Robert Klein recently posted…Social Selling
Bob, thanks for sharing your experience! I found it very interesting as I to have stumbled into the same situation having multiple emails being sent to the customer. I felt that Dean’s follow-up emails would be better than mine, so I stopped sending them until his sequence was finished. Funny thing most of the time I forgot to keep track of when his stopped and mine should have resumed, so my list also became stagnate. Well at least I know that I’m not the only one that has had to learn this lesson. Here’s to learning!
Hello, my friend! I am impressed with your ability and willingness to pivot based on your current situation. It sounds like you are doing the right thing and taking the necessary steps in order to communicate with your list which I trust and hope will produce some future customers. I am now curious about your thoughts on overcommunication or the perception that some customers might have when we either upsell or just try to build that trust. Interesting and thank you for sharing your story so when I get to that point I will take the things you said into consideration. Have a wonderful week!
Ernie, Thank you for your praise.
I have come to turn my thinking around that I may be overcommunicating. My refraining from emailing customers came from a fear of loss – loosing my customers. As the momentum of our businesses pick up, there will always be some customers that may unsubscribe for any numbers of reasons. And I’ve learned not to beat myself up about that and not worry about the reasons why. There will be many customers that will be thrilled to receive any content I send their way to help them out.
Case in point, I am subscribed to getting emails from an expert with Meta Ads (not just the lead ads). On average, he sends me a couple of emails per day. Not all topics resonate with me – but when they do I am in there reviewing the message, watching the video and taking notes to use in my future endeavours. As long as I get content that resonates with me from time to time, he has a dedicated subscriber. Yes, he has his courses and things that cost money – but until I can afford those things he presents topics that I have interest in – adding to my knowledge base.
Robert Klein recently posted…Out with the Old, In with the New
Hi Robert,
For someone like me who has a minimal list at this point, this is a very great lesson to read, learn from and apply in the future. Thank you!
I do believe that, as mentioned here as well, it’s important to support customers; building trust and support is one of the building blocks Dean teaches us.
Wishing you all the best and thanking you once again for the great lesson!
Hey Robert!
This is the kind of thing Dean speaks of when he talks about failing your way to success. I firmly believe that when something like that happens, you will learn this lesson hard and not make it again. Sometimes, that’s what it takes, to be honest. This is not a cakewalk, as some marketers portray it to be. I know all too well the person that Jim speaks about in his blog (to which I commented). I was in this person’s previous business and lost a lot of money. Two guys were heading that up, which ended badly with accusations being thrown at each other. In my opinion, they both got exceedingly greedy and took it way too far. It was a joke. I personally wouldn’t trust that guy again if my life depended on it. He is the very definition of a scammy businessman and teaches his “students” deceitful practices to “lure” potential suckers. I don’t understand how he can get away with it.
You know the big mistake I made was putting too many links in my emails. I forgot about the value rule. 4 Value emails to one sales. I will do better next time.