Author: Raj

If there is one sentence that makes me cringe when I read emails it is this -> “I have a confession to make“

Fun fact, 5-7 years ago I copied the same line from Ramit Sethi’s emails when writing an email sequence.

Today I had signed up for the Mighty Networks free trial. They call it a course, membership and community-building platform – all in one!

The platform is slick, I love their design. It is like a private social network, forum, course and membership platform. But their killer features – design and user experience. It is clean, bold and slick. Finally, it felt like a team in Silicon Valley created a platform related to my niche. (No, offense everyone else)

Most of their platform felt bold, re-imagined and slick. Including their website, on-boarding process, experiences, settings panel.

But then an email arrived. It was from the founder Gina Bianchini. ”$43,016 and the one thing I wasn’t expecting, Rajavanya” was the subject line.

And inside the email text, I saw it.

After 3 short paragraphs, those dreadful words were there at the beginning of the 4th paragraph –

“BUT I HAVE A (wait, for it…) CONFESSION TO MAKE.“

Why do I criticize it?

This isn’t a criticism for Gina. I’m sure she’s an all-round awesome human being. She has created something fantastic. The effort and work she put in to reach where she is right now must be colossal. I love her platform (aside from my usual reservations of hosted platforms).

My criticism is for using scripts without caring.

The whole email screams – scripts and patterns. And there is a massive disconnect from the MightyNetworks brand experience. I’d have no problem if this was from Gary Vee or Russell Brunson. But when it was from the founder of Mighty Networks I sensed a disconnect.

Today, people online see the exact same email scripts used by every business. It is the fastest way to lose credibility and get the“pesky sales-y marketing people” label. It is an insult to their intelligence (and a disservice to your amazing self and your incredible journey, whatever the type of entrepreneur you are!).

A Better Way

I get that people want their email to generate sales. Businesses have to make sales. But it is possible to do it without compromising your true-self.

It requires some deep soul-searching. Here are some questions to get started on that journey.

• What would emails look like if you actually believe in them? If they’re going to be bad, why?
• Can we treat sales, not as a game? Instead, as the service involved in connecting the right product and the right people?
• A better question would be – “Would you do this if the person on the other end was your loved one?”
• When emailing your friend with advice, do you worry about open rates and subject lines? I love Jonathan Stark’s take on this.

Thinking about it, I only wish Gina did things, a little differently.

• Start a conversation and ask me about my goals. (and start segmenting me in her email marketing software).
• She could have enticed me to signup for a free mini-course signup prompt and then up-sell this full course. ( Instead of making me an offer for her course right of the bat after signing up for her platform)
• Not send a marketing email without my permission. I never signed up for her marketing emails. This is actually illegal (in Europe) with GDPR laws, for a good reason.
• Seth Godin wrote ‘Permission Marketing’ in 1999. And yet, here we are 21 years later sending marketing material without permission. *sigh*

A year ago I was on a discovery/strategy call with a client to discuss creating lead magnets (PDFs, eBooks, Videos, etc.).

I asked him what his company can provide that is valuable for their clients. He replied “nothing”. He added that our business is not really an informational business. These PDFs, eBooks won’t really work for our industry. That’s why nobody does it.

His company builds custom high technology, luxury looking mobile structures used for roadshows – big enough to fit a car inside along with beautiful couches, interior design, and lighting.

He added – “These are high-value products and the sales process happens differently.” By differently he meant – cold outreach, continuous follow-up, multiple meetings that might result in a sale after a few months.

The only other channel was the *drum-roll* evergreen ‘word… of… mouth…’

Digging deeper, I found that most of the business was word-of-mouth. The sales process was hard and long. (t.w.s.s.) But that one sale still leads to generating more word-of-mouth business in the future.

So I asked him what happened in these meetings and sales outreach, I was especially interested in the word-of-mouth folks. “What do you talk about?” – I asked.

He spoke – “Well, Raj… everything! They have no clue about what they want exactly. They just come to us with a vague idea because someone in their business circle did something that worked well. So now we want the same thing. They do know they want a mobile showroom that is slick and feels luxury and high-end. That’s about it”

Talking more, he spoke about what goes into the pre-preparation of a unit, and how decisions are made. I found the entire thing really interesting. But also, if I was a potential client I would love to have this information!

So that is exactly what we did. We made a lead generation landing page + PDF whose title started like this “9 things brands forget when….”. I know. Its cliche. Even he was skeptical.

Truth be told, I was scared. I’m always – when delivering, as I do want it to generate results.

A few days later, leads started to flow in. Of course, part of the magic was that the blog was already receiving traffic to a few blog articles about this specific product that was never utilized.

The blog posts had no offers, lead magnets, etc. Not even a strong call-to-action.

Plus, I love reading email replies about how much these people loved the PDF. Which according to him, wasn’t valuable information. But not in the eyes of potential leads.

This isn’t about how I was right and my client was wrong. Rather about show you that we all have blind spots like this.

I love finding gaps like this in the world every day. Our perceptions give us a blind spot about what is valuable for others Vs what is valuable for us.

And hey, I am NOT exempt from this bias. Today morning I received an email from Thrive themes about their latest YouTube video titled – Create Content that Sells Using The Post Product Fit Method.

I kid you not, at the 19th second of the video I was like – “Of course! why do you need an 8-minute video to explain this obvious thing?”

I smiled to myself, looked at the comments and likes. Obviously, it was helpful to a lot of people. I thought about what could be their process (at Thrive Themes) to uncover such gaps and to have such empathy for their users.

I knew the answer too – “Listen more without judgment”. But it is so hard to do in practice. Ugh!

And I blogged about it. Thoughts?

So I feel like I’m going to be blogging more regularly again. So I went back to look at “my mailing list signup funnel” that I setup a long time ago.

When I say funnel I’m talking about these 5 things

1. Form (that accepts your email)
2. The nudge message (shown after you submit form that asks you to confirm your email)
3. The “please confirm” nudge email.
4. Post confirmation page you see after you click ‘confirm’ on step 3.
5. My first automated thank you email.

Most of the times when I want to quote-on-quote “reinvent” a part of myself in life, I withdraw myself from as many stimuli as possible that keep me going on the same path everyday.

I had disabled all of my email opt-in forms in Thrive Leads for a while. I had stopped working for a while too. Seth Godin’s email yesterday seems to say something similar to what I do.

So, today I went back to turn on the disabled Thrive Leads opt-in forms. I could see that I was trying to get people to signup with my free Thrive Architect templates.

It is hard to remember why I set them up, as the past has passed and I didn’t write journals about it. Only thing I can do is guess. I guess I was following what was suggested by people out there who I wanted to mimic. I was simply following a formula and treating people like subjects in a science experiment. There was also more selfishness and manipulation behind going after what I want.

Lot has evolved since then. Drip renamed the subscribers tab to “people”. I think I see the meaning behind it. I want to work with people and businesses that create ‘win-win’-s, than just focusing on one of those two-wins. (I know… I just wrote two-wins)

And the first step is as always is to change myself.

I’m making the templates free without having to signup. I’ve removed the bribe for signing up to my email list. This doesn’t mean incentive to signup is always bad, but in this case it doesn’t serve the purpose of this blog.

You are, if you…

• Are passionate about creating jobs, increasing productivity and efficiency.
• Don’t look at business as just a way to make money, rather you see money as a fuel to create better products / services, serve your customers exceptionally, and improve the business everyday.
• Don’t worry about competition, rather appreciate them as they challenge you and inspire you to innovate.
• Have seen the ups and down of a business and learnt to deal with it calmly and decisively.
• Are okay with being vulnerable when needed without feeling threatened or insecure about it.
• Work regularly on expanding your awareness and mindfulness.
• Pursue self-development regularly.
• Practice gratitude, seek balance and have developed strong boundaries.
• Have an abundance mentality more than scarcity mentality.
• Love the outdoors!

You are not if…

• You pursue business and money to prove something (to yourself, everyone around you or the entire world)
• You have trouble attracting talented people and getting them to share the vision of your business.
• You feel the need to control and be in control every minute.
• You feel the need to be different to different people to get work done, rather than attracting the right team that shares your core values and letting things flow naturally.
• You’re too polite, avoid conflicts at any case and hate when challenged by the people you work with.
• You’re a Gary Vee fan and look at life as a constant hustle.
• People often take advantage of you for being a good person.
• It is really hard to find people you can work with, and once you find them, you feel like you’re stuck with them and their shortcomings.
• You often feel like you’re just unlucky.

I came up with this list as I had nothing else to blog about today. But it has been something I avoided from a lot of “client persona” and marketing exercises.

Every marketing lesson starts with “define your client”, “develop their persona” etc., and I’ve always been kinda scared to put my foot down and say this is exactly who I want to work with.

But here it is and looks like times are changing for good.

What are your thoughts about this?

I know the importance of long term thinking. I’ve seen how much it has paid off in my life.

But something which I feel is relatively low effort is – adopting a platform’s new features and gaining a quick (often temporary boost) because of it. I’ll explain.

The result of these activities is simple – more traffic/visibility. Remember though, more traffic does not mean anything if you don’t have an effective funnel to convert the traffic. Also, more traffic does not mean the right type of traffic.

We rely on platforms to market online without spending money. When I say platforms, I talk about search engines and social networks mainly.

So these companies that own them – Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Bing, Pinterest have their own agenda. I’m sure you probably know it already. It is usually to get people to spend more time on their platform and keep them coming back.

So, Of course, the 1st answer is to produce great content. Content that is shared, liked and gains followers. This takes skills, practice, understanding and focusing on a specific audience, etc. This is a medium to long term activity.

Personally, I’d say playing this long term game on social media platforms is risky. With a flip of a switch, your traffic can be lost, you can lose the ability to directly stay in touch with your followers, or even have to pay to actually communicate with your own followers. (*cough* boosting *cough* posts)

But there is another way. The 2nd answer is to adopt their new features. Massive teams are working in these companies to keep updating the platforms – again to help stay fresh, so people don’t lose interest and move to another platform. Also to improve the overall experience for its users.

Here are some examples of what kind of features I’m talking about

1. Instagram carousel posts
2. Google’s rich snippets
3. Facebook, Youtube live.
4. LinkedIn’s slideshow.

Now, when a new feature is released, they give a temporary boost and visibility to the posts/creators that utilize it. They do it for two reasons

1. One is to gain data about how users interact with it
2. Promote the new features so that more new creators see and start using it.

Recently Chris Do has been actively promoting his methods to gain 10,000 followers on Instagram and he talks about it.

Thinking briefly about it, you can use it with many other situations too. I’ve seen the same happen with Apple’s App-store. Apple actively promotes apps that utilize their latest features. The latest example that I’m aware of is Apple Arcade.

Perhaps the bigger message is that we are all here to help each other and grow together (even if we have selfishness in us), and when we focus on creating win-wins we grow faster.