RAJAVANYA SUBRAMANIYAN

Category: Opinions

  • Spammy marketers, best practices and established companies

    I started my journey as a freelancer who worked mostly with spammy marketers or informational product sellers. Most of them wanted to have the same brand voice, same copywriting style, same sequences, conversion tricks.

    But one thing that struck me immediately was how advanced these ‘spammy’ marketers were in their marketing stack. Their copywriting skills, ability to profile customers, segmentation, funnel automation were all top-notch.

    But they have unremarkable products.

    But the rest of the business compensated for it so well.

    I say unremarkable because I wonder how many of them can honestly expose their NPS publicly. (Net-Promoter-Score)

    What % of their customers will happily recommend them to friends?

    I know many have good testimonials, but the problem with informational and coaching products is that it depends a lot on psychographics than demographics and the success rate can be far less than what they project it to be.

    And often they say, “Well, you need to put in the work” and if we don’t get results, it simply means we didn’t put enough work in. It has a scary resemblance to people selling faith.

    I think it would be better if they simply acknowledge their product can evolve and get better, and is not for everybody and can fail even if they put in the work.

    Their marketing was so advanced that they made sales and often sold their own marketing strategies as the product itself.

    Which is why often it feels like ‘people selling courses to teach people how to sell courses to teach people how to sell courses to teach people how to sell courses‘ – I think.

  • The Beauty of Email Sequences

    I really can’t believe email sequences are *not* more popular than they are.

    I also can’t believe that there exist people on the web who teach or coach online and they aren’t using it… yet.

    If you think about it, every business spends loads of time educating their potential customers. I mean that is what most of the sales calls and meetings are for.

    And when I say email sequences, I am talking about a sequence that is sent out for X number of days. For e.g. A 7 day email sequence to help someone solve a particular problem, learn something etc.

    So why can’t I believe they aren’t as popular than they are?

    Email sequences are the easiest way to

    • Get the attention of existing customers or potential customers everyday with their own permission.
    • Educate them everyday.
    • Create what we fancily call “brand touch-points”. Another term for developing a relationship over time by communicating regularly so they feel comfortable with you. Like the dates you go on with a person you like.
    • Help your prospects or customers develop a habit and practice something regularly. If your customers success depends on you helping them develop a habit or practicing something – Esp. Music, fitness, productivity etc. it is a sin if you don’t use email sequences. Just kidding… not really.
    • Pre-qualify and filter the “not-good-fit” customers and clients so you don’t have to spend time with them in meetings and calls.

    I’ll stop there.

    My challenge to you – Can you show me a business that cannot benefit from educating their prospects or customers over a simple email sequence?

  • A Better Way For Thrive Themes to Roll Out Their Updates

    A Better Way For Thrive Themes to Roll Out Their Updates

    For the last three years Thrive themes updates have constantly lost thousands of hours for its customers.

    And I have written already about how to survive these updates (and you save at least $1000 for your business, if you value your time at $50/hr)

    It’s happened recently with their 2.1.0 “just user interface update”.

    And now, I don’t know if you noticed, you cannot download their themes and plugins anymore. You need to download a “product manager” plugin and then that in turn manages download and install of all their other plugins.

    This isn’t wrong.

    Many companies do it.

    Its a great way to track installs and find out about the misuse of their licenses.

    It even makes it easy for users to install just one plugin instead of their many plugins.

    But…

    There is a better way to do it, that many companies already do.

    It goes something like this.

    1. Release a new feature (in this case, the new plugin)
    2. Make an announcement to the users – blog post, email list, social media, website ribbon/banner.
    3. Put up a notice on the download section of the website that – the direct-download method will become unavailable at a future date. And ask users to start adopting the new plugin which makes their life lot easier.
    4. Let the users use it, report bugs. If it doesn’t work, they can still download the older way for some time.
    5. Once everything is stable, eventually remove the direct-download option.
    6. Nobody gets hurt, everybody wins.

    This is not rocket science. Software has been done this way for ages now. Its called deprecating a feature, then make it obsolete. Companies should care about testing properly. Companies should care about backward compatibility.

    Ffs, even Apple is making their operating system updates to improve speeds of their older Macbooks now. (I just updated to Mojave on my Early 2014 Macbook Air and love it 🙂

    A new big announcement

    So all this while this email list has been the only way to interact between you and me. Now you can also

    • Interact with other members on this email list
    • Get free fast support from me and few other thrive themes experts when you run into problems
    • Help other thrive themes customers yourself when they run into problems

    How? Simple. I am launching a Facebook group where you can get all of this.

    • Strictly no spam. Spammers will be removed with a 2-strike system. Spam will be deleted asap.

    I am looking forward to all of you joining it today.
    Click here to join the new free facebook group for thrive themes users.

  • Why I Prefer Learning From Mediocre Success Than Massive?

    Why I Prefer Learning From Mediocre Success Than Massive?

    Everyday we come across massively successful people on the internet – people “crushing” it in their business.

    Oh! look… someone just moved from six-figures to seven-figures.

    Did you hear about the marketing guru who quadrupled their revenue in 3 days? And her newbie student who has NEVER run a business before, went from zero to a million in just 3 months!

    Its all fancy stories, overnight successes and you-are-wasting-your-time-instead-of-this schemes. What I hate about these type of stories is that they undermine people getting mediocre successes.

    Its not front-page material if you go from 0 subscribers to 30 subscribers in a month. 1 subscriber per day is still an achievement. You’ve created something that has managed to attract 1 person per day digitally, to listen to what you have to say, without you having to be there physically. Isn’t that something?

    Anyways, I see stuff like this as nothing more than vanity on social media. People paying attention to the rare 0.001% of the world.

    There are a few caveats with paying attention to people like them

    • They are just an illusion – Its just a page or an instagram profile with a condensed view of the most successful moments of their life. What about every boring day of their history? Their failures before? You would be surprised to see what happens behind the scenes. And no photos/blog posts/case studies have been written about their mediocre days. I remember a successful person once said – “My overnight success took me 8 years”.
    • They just make you feel bad – “Comparison is the thief of joy”. Nuff said.
    • They seem so far from where we are right now – They all started from scratch, sure. But capturing details of their current successes and ignoring countless days of their past where nothing happened isn’t helping us feel like its achievable. I’d feel more achievable looking at someone who makes $1000-$10000 per month online than our “Seven-figure Shannon” who preaches me without empathy.
    • They are way too perfect – Look at their fancy photoshoots, expensive looking websites, high paid teams. Unless we have all those, we can’t be as successful. Right? (Well let us just stop and think about how they got all the money to spend for their photo/videographers, web design agencies and their employees)

    These are the reasons why I love what I am about to share with you

    How about a page full of people (230+ as of writing this) who all have just made their first $1000 online?

    I loved going through it. So many insights. So much inspiration.

    Some of them made me go – “People pay for this? Really?”

    Some made me go – “How is this website even generating sales?” or “This is some really bad copywriting”

    They are so imperfect.

    And I love that.

    Here’s the link to a page full of mediocre successes

    P.S. Sorry for pulling a Mark Manson today. Wasn’t my intention.

  • GaryVee Vs Seth Godin

    GaryVee Vs Seth Godin

    I found this the right time when I was looking into ideas for today’s post. By this, I mean a video of GaryVee interviewing Seth Godin on Youtube. Before I give you the link to the video, a small introduction to how I discovered GaryVee.

    I came across GaryVee a few months ago.

    He was everywhere on my facebook feed ads and so I saw one of his videos on Youtube.

    Within the first 5 minutes of seeing him, deep in my gut, I could feel the cringe-at-first-sight. I couldn’t stand him. I despised everything about the style of the videos, his body language, his mannerisms etc. To me, he is simply a man-child. Even if he makes billions that opinion won’t change.

    I even have a work-in-progress new homepage where I included his name. I haven’t published the page yet. (screenshot below)

     

    But…

    While I avoid him like a rattlesnake, I don’t hate him. I don’t think his success is wrong or bad. I don’t hate his followers/fans.

    You might be thinking why or how? Perhaps I am bullshitting to appear diplomatic and nice.

    I really respect him for having the courage to be (the obnoxious) himself, building a massive audience and all those products. I respect him for putting himself out there and taking a strong stance on what he believes. I might not (and definitely will not) agree with his beliefs and perceptions.

    That is okay.

    Will I work with clients who are ardent followers of him or his belief? NO.

    I stay away from the hustling culture. I think people who want to look at life just as a struggle/competition need some Vipassana Meditation or therapy.

    For instance, when a client uses the word ‘winner’ on the initial call, I know it wouldn’t work out. I know I am being judgemental and I often try not to be. But hey I have been doing this long enough to start seeing patterns and… the pattern is the pattern. Btw have you watched Maniac on Netflix yet, its psychological genius?

    What’s the point here

    It is easy to be diplomatic and politically correct and have no personality. But only when you add some personality to your service/brand/website/business the *magic* happens. It makes a stronger connection than just some consumer-producer relationship. It creates fans (and haters alike). Think Steve Jobs and his global “against the status quo” appeal. Bill Burr might think he is an exaggeration, but he was in line with Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Teresa and all those kind of people for the tech world.

    And it is hard when you start out. Perhaps you don’t care about any of this and just want your sales to go up. Perhaps this exact thinking is what is preventing that.

    Action Step

    1. Write down 20 adjectives about your business/service/brand. Eg. Happy, Useful, Scientific, Luxurious, Balanced, Enthusiastic, Friendly.
    2. Cut down the list to just 5 of words which you absolutely value and cannot lose.

    This is the starting point for your brand attributes. You can start focusing extremely on these words and ignore every other word/values. You design should reflect this, your words, tone in emails and marketing material. And it will attract people who exactly value these. (and your future employees/partners alike)

    As promised here is the link to the video interview between GaryVee and Seth Godin.

    Also I lookup to Seth Godin like a wise teacher.

  • Single Vs Double Opt-In

    Single Vs Double Opt-In

    People always ask this question and there are a thousands answers around the web. So how do you decide between single vs double opt-in for your newsletter signups?

    My default rule is to always go for double opt-in. I’m a big believer of quality over quantity. Double opt-in ensures high quality readers who really want to be on your list. It validates that your lead magnet is high quality too. Higher % open and click rates, engaged readers and finally and most importantly – lower spam. This means the people who don’t like your material, don’t spoil it for the ones who do.

    That being said there are few cases there you might want to consider single opt-in.

    • After the readers have had good engagement with your product/service/brand. Like during a e-commerce checkout, donation payment. Its okay to simply make them check a box to opt-in for newsletter.
    • If for some reason you cannot provide a lead magnet or compelling reason to get on the newsletter while convincing them to double opt-in. But you feel they will convert over emails. Ideally I would ask you to find your best performing email and use that as the lead magnet or public material to connect and build trust.
    • If you are a email marketing advanced master ninja samurai rockstar janitor, who is looking to squeeze the maximum revenue for your business, go for single opt-in. Ultimately single opt-in does mean higher/faster growth (as it includes people who would have double-opted along with the ones who single-opted). But its not for beginners/intermediates.

    So for me, double opt-in is also used as a yard stick to measure if what we are doing is working. A method to validate the quality of our lead magnet and the copy written.

    If you connect and build trust properly, no matter what, people will find a way to get on your list – Me.

    Related Thrive Leads Tip

    Many people who use double opt-in find it convenient to use this option. I am talking about the post opt-in confirmation action  called success notification.

    • Don’t use this, most people don’t see it
    • Instead use the switch state option

    Thrive themes usually gets stuff like this right, but this isn’t one of them. Check screenshots which explain the recommended step of using switch state.