It is normal for most people to project their values onto their customers. For example, when the topic of "How often are you emailing your list?" comes up I get answers ranging from "once per month" to "a few times per year." When I suggest emailing a MINIMUM of once per week, the pushback is immediate and forceful with the business owner often questioning my mental status and telling me "there's no way my clients want emails from me that often!"

Email adds "stickiness." By hearing from you regularly, you significantly reduce the chance of losing them to a competitor (this is why you hear from me, regularly), and it is why we provide a weekly service where we email to your list.

Think of your clients like a herd of cattle. If you have cattle you will regularly do the following:

Feed them and make sure they have water. This is the content of the email. Now cattle are not particularly discriminating and as long as they have grass to eat. And this is where most businesses mess up their weekly email - they send out emails talking about their product or service. Imagine if you received an email from your car mechanic every week discussing car parts and auto repair... How long would it be before you hit "unsubscribe"? Like a good menu at your favorite restaurant, your email needs to have variety.

You need a fence. A fence is necessary to keep your herd from wandering off and joining some other herd and to be protected from poachers. Obviously, you need to inspect your fence regularly. Like email, I recommend a minimum of weekly. Can you imagine how many cattle a rancher that only checked his fences a few times per year would have? It would probably be half of what he started with at the beginning of the year.

A sustainable plan for monetization. Like cattle, you can't send the whole herd to slaughter without wiping out all future prospects for income. You have to do it slowly and give the herd time to procreate and replace the animals you've sent off to the butcher shop. Emailing your list is the same. If your message is buy, Buy, BUY!!! you will eventually exhaust your list. But, when you creatively weave different offers into your emails, some small, some large, your list will appreciate being given the opportunity to buy more from you and improve their situation by doing so.

For years we've enjoyed cheap easy traffic thanks to the algorithms of Facebook and Google. But the wave of privacy laws and regulations is not only making access to those new prospects more difficult, the costs are rising dramatically. If you do not have a frequent, systematized process to stay in touch with your prospects and customers your business is vulnerable.

But if you speak to your herd regularly - at least weekly - and you engage them with interesting, desirable content, your chances for ongoing business success rise exponentially. In the next 5 years, companies that learn the secret of providing regular, engaging conversations with their list will be the winners.

If you would like to learn more or get our help with this make an appointment with Parthiv Shah today. You can access his calendar HERE.