Hey Stupid, MLM is not about marketing it’s about relationships!
Hey Stupid!
That got your attention didn’t it?
I don’t think you guys reading this blog are stupid! BUT I do think a lot of people doing MLM these days are just plain dumb. Building an MLM online isn’t about your marketing. It’s about your relationships. Even mailing lists are about building a relationship and giving them free information, responding to their questions, etc.
Here is an example of someone who doesn’t get it. Let’s call him “Bill”.
Bill is a member of one of my mailing lists. I just sent out an email about my new web site and Bill has an automatic response that comes back like this. (This is called an autoresponder.)
Make Money Online! I Will Pay Your Way Today!
No Start Up Costs! I will pay your way in!
No paperwork to fill out. We are 100% online!
No special training required.
Unlimited market. We are worldwide!
Flexible hours. You set your own schedule.
Want to know more? Request my free report and I will send you full details on how you can get started.Free Details at…
So Bill sends this automatic email back to ANYONE that emails him.
Really, does that make you want to email Bill for his free report? Not me! It sounds like a bunch of hype. It’s the same old crap you always hear from these MLM companies. “unlimited market” “i will pay your way in” Yikes! What a SCARY program this guy is in! It is full of bull and certainly if the FTC saw this email they’d begin an investigation immediately. This is exactly what gives MLM a bad name.
Bill has it partially right. He should email back and let people know he has a free report, but he shouldn’t make it so full of hype or spam. It just reeks of advertisement.
Here is what I’d do if I was Bill. I’d set an autoresponder like this:
Do you want a little extra money at the end of the month?
Fill out my survey and let me know what your #1 question is about making money online…
That’s a different approach and it begins to build the relationship. You’re showing genuine interest in the person and engaging them by asking them questions instead of spamming them.
What do you think Bill should have done? Would you ever respond to something like what Bill wrote?
- Ben Fitts
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Actually Ben, I’ll take it a step further and add that I think the tactic of sending an “auto response” to all incoming e-mails is tacky at best and unethical in the worse case.
I agree with your point about his approach with hype in his response and that it should be worded differently to put him/her in better position with the person on the receiving end of that e-mail.
However, getting back to my point above about setting an “auto response” to every incoming e-mail. If this is a “personal” e-mail, then this is tacky and I personally wouldn’t send him/her any e-mails in the future. Now, if this person is going around and signing up on folks mailing lists with an e-mail that is specifically setup to do this, I think that this is not only tacky, but also lacking in business etiquette, as well. In that case, I’d remove that person immediately from my mailing list. I personally do not want work with individuals who will not take the time and think through an idea like this one. Not to mention that if you’re paying for an “auto responder” service like Aweber, then they could be potentially costing you extra money. Technically, Aweber is a flat rate up to 10,000 subscribers, but that’s not the point.
Now here’s where I think something like that may have a “role”. What if you took out an advertisement or a flier and instead of putting in a Web site (newbies without sites), you put an e-mail address down that was set to automatically respond with a report to the individual. At least in this situation, individuals who are e-mailing that ID are doing so because they want to get a report or more information sent to them.
The only issue with the above is that it’s “iffy” as to whether or not someone who sends an e-mail requesting information is “authorizing” being signed up for a mailing list. So to get beyond that, I’d actually use it as a way to give them a bit more information and to direct them to a “capture page” where they can sign up to get your free report. However, if you’re sending them to a capture page anyways, why not just send them there to begin with?
Of course, it might be a good way to “track” how well your off-line marketing is going. You could technically put a different e-mail address on your fliers at the grocery store vs the dry cleaners. Then the link you would provide to your “capture” page would be different, as well, and you could track the effectiveness of your marketing. Or it could be used in split-testing “ad copy” for your off-line marketing, as well.
I agree with Nielson. Responding to everything in this way is a quick fire way to get yourself removed from everyone’s address book and lose a lot of potential business. Not to mention create some headaches when people begin to complain.
Secondly, I like the idea you have here about the survey … it goes along with some of the types of questions I ask on my capture page for my business.
Tim/Ben,
There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to do things. The problem is that so many folks are so gung-ho about making money online that they sometimes do not stop to think about the consequences of their “marketing-actions”.
I remember having a discussion on a very popular online forum for entrepreneurs, where I had stated something to the affect that we may not all represent the same company, but we are all in the same industry (speaking of MLM at the time) and that we are not only representing the company we are distributors for, but also the industry, as well. Someone had responded that countered my thought stipulating that they never had bought into that philosophy of a “brotherhood” in the MLM industry.
My point then and my point now is that you do not have to think of yourself as part of a “brotherhood” per se, but you do need to respect the fact that you are not the only fish in the pond and that your actions have consequences for all of us. Each time you send an e-mail, post a blog, post an article, post on a forum, take out an advertisement, you are sending ripples in the pond and they will have an affect on everyone in it. The outcome of that affect is based on how well you thought through your actions prior to casting the stone.
With that said, I think that this is an idea that could be molded. Like taking Ben’s suggestion about a ’survey’ and using my suggestion that your advertising directs them to send an e-mail to a specific ID you have setup to auto respond with this information. However, setting up an email and using that same address to register on other folks sites is “bad business”.