I Just Deleted My List Of 20,000
So it’s the new year…I’m finally back from my 3 week ‘drive’ and I’m looking to have a fantastic 2012. So what better way to start the year off by cancelling my aWeber account and saying bye bye to my lists of over 20,000 contacts.
Huh?
Wait a minute Jon…Did you just say you deleted your lists? On aWeber yes, I did. First of all, I am very happy with Traffic Wave and they have served my needs very well PLUS Brian and his team actually WANTS and appreciates traffic exchange business. aWeber on the other hand, has told me and a few of my friends in the business that they want nothing to do with ‘untargeted’ traffic sources like traffic exchanges. But…That’s not the big reason.
I’m taking a step back from the whole ‘list building’ side of things. Yes, I still think it’s very important to build a contact list but I think for years, the industry has had it all backwards. The old business model is push. Push your mesage. Push your broadcast. Push your promotions. And as someone on the list, there was very little we could do to interact with the sender…Other than reply. Which most of the times it went to a ‘no reply’ email address.
In this day and age of social…It’s not what I consider a good business model.
Now if we flip it…Do two things, where we first worry about the relationship rather than the ability to push promotional messages to your list…I think that builds a real ‘push / pull’ relationship where your readers don’t feel like they are simply a name on a list.
And second, why not make it easy for your ‘list’ to contact you. Send them to a blog where they can interact with you and hear from you directly…Not just a ‘no reply’ email address.
I dunno, maybe I’m completely wrong…I’ve been known to make bad decisions in my life and business but I’m saying no more to the whole top down way of list building…Let’s walk side by side with our ‘lists’ instead of just pushing messages to them. Treat them like real people and not just a faceless name on a list.
See ya later aWeber…It’s been a fun ride.
