This week I had two interactions with people in my network that I wanted to share with you. Different, but in some ways connected.
Aldwin Neekon posted on LinkedIn about consultants’ reluctance to ask for the sale. Yet, closing business doesn’t happen unless we do. He suggests we take advice from the sales professionals in our lives. What do they do? It’s a great thread and I recommend you read it.
Another was with someone in my network who conducted a Good Friday campaign to promote his course. This week he sent out an email apologizing for it being spammy. He said that the campaign resulted in people taking up the offer. But it also resulted in just as many people unsubscribing from his list.
I replied to the apology with an alternative point of view and questioning the need to apologize. We had a lively back and forth.
My point was that we want our lists to be people aligned to our ideal target. If someone unsubscribes because you sent them an offer, then they likely are not that target. I celebrate unsubscribes as a natural list hygiene activity.
There’s also the fact that most people only unsubscribe when we send them an email. Typically, you don’t have an unsubscribe form on your website, the link is in our emails. It might not have been about the campaign per se. They may already have been considering unsubscribing, and the current campaign gave them the means. What’s more important is to look at the feedback on an exit survey.
To which my friend agreed the aim is a targeted list, so that was what he will focus on. Though he explained his apologetic reaction was because a couple of the unsubscribes said the offer was spammy. We left it at that.
Though I still had a lingering thought…. Are there other ways to act on negative feedback about a campaign. I hadn’t really considered the email as spammy, so the apology was lost on me and only drew my attention to the negative.
Another approach is to survey people who had received the email, read it, but didn’t take up the offer. In that survey you could probe more about why they didn’t take the offer. And ask for feedback that further probed your concerns about the copy. Not a bad practice even if you didn’t experience unsubscribes.
For me, a big part of it is that need to ask for business that Aldwin talked about. We shouldn’t apologize for asking, it’s part of business. Of course, you can work on your delivery. And more importantly your timing. But you need to ask for the business. And further survey to learn from the result.
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