Yikes.
Got a cautionary tale for you today.
Checky:
Yesterday, I was on a call with a prospect.
As we’re chatting about his email, I asked him what his past performance has been like. I wanted to know if he’s sending regular emails, how often he sends them, what kind of flows he has set up, how much moolah his emails bring in, the whole nine yards.
Well, the story thickened when he talked about his past performance.
Here’s why:
Over the past coupla years, he’s hired a few email marketing agencies.
Annnnnnnnd, they all sucked.
Like real bad.
How bad, you ask?
Well, lemme tell you this first:
My dog could probably write better emails. And he’s a stupee lil 7-lb chihuahua.
This prospect I talked to—who doesn’t know a merge tag from a product block (no slight there, he’s just not an email expert)—increased his revenue per email by 650% AFTER firing they arses.
650%!
That’s a YUGE amount I suspect many copywriters don’t achieve.
But, alas, Jay-Z was wrong:
Sometimes numbers do lie.
If this dude was an email copywriter on Money Twitter, people would never hear the end of his amazing success.
Except it ain’t all that impressive.
Sure, 650% is a massive increase.
But the starting number was so low that it “taints” all impressiveness.
Lemme explain…
During our call, this dude told me he has about 100,000 active email subscribers. He has another 300,000 inactive subscribers, totaling 400,000 subscribers.
Those numbers ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.
And you know how much these agency bums made every time they emailed this MASSIVE list?
$200.
Lol, not a joke.
I didn’t mishear him.
On a great day, they might make $600 from an email … to a list … of 400,000 subscribers!
yeeeeeeeeeeesh
I told ya they were down bad.
I make my clients more money per email to a list of like 1,000 subscribers.
One of my clients has a list of around 35k, where making $20k per email is not unusual.
This dude got robbed in plain daylight.
And I feel for him.
During our call, he asked me which KPIs (key performance indicators) I look at.
My answer?
Only revenue.
Sure, other metrics are kinda important.
But revenue is king, queen, and prince.
While this seems like an *obvious* question to ask… many prospects never asked me it.
So here’s my theory why he asked:
These agency bozos probably promised they’d help him get higher open rates.
I’m sure they talked a good game too.
Because you almost have to TRY to be god-awful at your job to only drive $200 in revenue from a list of at least 100,000.
(And it wasn’t like this dude had a bad offer — he’s actually a major player in the niche he’s in.)
Anyway, moral of the story?
1. Don’t trust email agencies. (This applies double to “digital marketing agencies” barf.)
2. Don’t trust mfs saying they’ll help you get higher open rates. Open rates never mattered. They matter even less since Apple rolled out iOS15. And you can’t pay your bills with 40% open rates either.
3. Always do your due diligence.
There’s a lot of frauds out there.
Agencies, freelancers, and heck, you might even think I’m a fraud.
I ain’t mad about it.
Copywriters (and agencies for that matter) worth their salt ain’t afraid of you doing due diligence. In fact, they encourage it.
$200 per email to a list of 100,000.
You can’t do worse than that if you tried.
Alright, enough of this.
If you wanna send more profitable emails and build a community of diehard fans who devour every email you send, book a discovery call here.
But you gotta have a proven offer and a list. (Your list doesn’t have to be 100k or even 10k, but the more the merrier.)
No proven offer?
Go steal a bunch of clients from these shoddy email marketing agencies and send ‘em my way. I’ll give you a fat 50% commission for any referral you send me.
(I'm only halfway kidding about that...)