Your Missed Connection – The Email Marketing Campaign

You ever check out the missed connections on Craigslist? To give you a general idea, here is one below, from some creepy, lonely dude to some poor innocent female that was probably just minding her own business, trying to chat up some other dude.

You know why the guy who wrote this is never even going to get a courtesy hand job? Because it is a terrible marketing idea! A blind message tossed on the internet has four problems;

1. You have no idea if it’s reaching your target audience. (The girl could have been married, with her boyfriend, etc. etc. Regardless, she was clearly into they guy she was with.)
2. You’re working in a saturated market. (Craigslist has tons of lonely losers and very few hot, available chicks)
3. There is very little chance that the right audience will ever read it. (Only people who are posting a missed connection, or making fun of missed connections, read Missed Connections)
4. If anyone does read it, their response probably won’t be good. (“Eww, that creepy guy who was staring me down is stalking me on the internet!’)

The reason Craigslist Missed Connections is a bad idea is exactly what makes email marketing campaigns a bad idea. The only benefit they have going for them is they’re free. You write up the same marketing message. You paste it into a list of emails you got online and you send it in bulk.

So what if you never make a sale? It’s free, right?

Not really. Sure, it’s free to send a bulk email, but what you lose in credibility and wasted time will cost you in the long run.

Bulk email marketing campaigns don’t work. There was a time when they did, but now, more often than not, potential clients never even see your message. Instead, it goes to their spam box. If you’re lucky, all they’ll do is ignore you.

If you're not, they could report you as a spammer. This has gotten people banned from tons of affiliate marketing platforms, including Amazon.Over time, this practice will  get you listed as a known spammer. No one wants to associate with known spammers.

Does it mean you can never use email? No, you can use email to correspond with potential clients, but your messages should be personalized. They don’t have to be long, or drawn out and half the time, you can send them just as easy as a spam message.

The biggest rule is to never send an email until you’ve gotten permission to send an email. Much like a vampire, you only need to be allowed in once. After that, it’s your party. Just be reasonable. You don’t want to go from potential spammer to potential stalker.

Develop a relationship with people outside of email to get the best results out of an email marketing campaign. If people see a name they don’t know in their inbox, they’re just going to delete it. But if they know you, they’re 100% more likely to open it.  

And you won’t have to go stalking strangers on the internet.