Description
Step 1: Preselling By Not Selling Anything
Most marketers (new and seasoned) make the HUGE mistake of immediately sending promotion after promotion to a person once that person is on their email list. If you’re doing this, stop immediately!
Remember: preselling is all about building trust. People will be really quick to slam their mouse down on the unsubscribe link if they are instantly bombarded with promotional material after subscribing. Or worse, they may mark your emails as SPAM, which could cause problems with your emails being delivered properly to others. Right or wrong, this happens, and you need to keep that in mind. Even if neither of those things happen, your list will grow “cold” (unresponsive) if you constantly send promotions and nothing else.
Before sending a single promotion you need to make sure that your list members know you have their best interests in mind. You do this by sending quality, useful information to them—free of charge—and not having a single piece of promotional material anywhere in it.
You don’t have to be the author of this information, but it really helps if you are. Being the author establishes you as an authority in whatever niche you’re working in. It gives people a reason to trust your recommendations when you do start making them. It makes people think, “This guy really knows his stuff!” And that moves people to take you up on your recommendations.
So before you send out any promotions, first provide at least two or three really useful emails containing nothing but solid advice backed up with examples and evidence of the benefits of following the advice. This should not be generalized common knowledge, but real beneficial information.
Think of this as “prepreselling.” It helps to keep your list members’ mouse away from the dreaded “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of your emails the first time they get a promotion from you. Instead, they will look forward to your emails and the information you’re sending, and they will take your recommendations far more seriously.
If you don’t believe me just look at some of the comments on my blog at www.jonathanleger.com. Many of them are people thanking me for sending actual valuable information on a regular basis. Also notice how many comments are on that blog for each post. People are paying attention, thinking about what I say, and adding their own thoughts. It’s that kind of close-knit interaction and communication you want to build with your list. It means you have a responsive list that trusts you.
Don’t worry if some people unsubscribe even if you are sending top-notch information to them on a regular basis. The people who unsubscribe are not the ones who would eventually become buyers anyway. Some people just want something for nothing. Others simply aren’t interested enough to receive additional information. Don’t sweat those unsubscribes. They’re just part of the business.
Once you’ve built up some trust in your list members it’s time to write that first promotional email. There are two methods for doing this:
⦁ A single email that presells on a product only once.
⦁ A full-scale promotion that consists of communicating with your list more than once.
I’ll discuss both of these methods in this report, and dissect a successful example of each. By the time you’re done reading and taking notes (yes, take notes!) you will have the knowledge necessary to increase your affiliate profits through preselling.
Let’s talk about the easiest one first: the one-shot presell.
The One-Shot Presell
The one-shot presell is the most common way to promote an affiliate product. It consists of sending out an email one time to presell your list on a product and get them to the sales page that will (hopefully) convert them into buyers.
I’ll be up-front and tell you that single mailers don’t earn as much as the full- scale promotions that I’ll cover in the next section. But then, it takes a lot less time and effort to do a single mailer, so that’s really the expected trade off.
I try to do a blend of full-scale promotions and one-shot presells. I save the real heavy-duty work for higher priced items, and tend to do the single mailers for lower-ticket items.
The principle of building trust applies with one-time mailers and lower priced products as much as it does with full-scale promotions and higher priced products. Granted it’s easier to convince somebody to make a $27 purchase than a $77 purchase, but trust is involved in both.
I always recommend using yourself as the example for any product you promote. Honestly, if you didn’t find a product beneficial enough to use it, how can you really recommend it convincingly to somebody else? On the other hand, if you’ve had some personal experience with a particular problem, and you’ve found a product that really helped you solve that problem, then you’re in a great position to presell others on that product.
Your one-shot presell should follow this pattern:
⦁ First present the problem.
⦁ Then describe your search for a solution.
⦁ Reveal the solution to the problem.
⦁ Present the reader with a call to action.
