MLM List Building and Email Marketing Strategies

Here is an excellent free report from one of my favorite marketers, Paul Myers.

Now Paul is not a network marketer. He is a copy writer and I doubt he would touch mlm with a ten foot pole. But with that being said, he is an incredible marketer and has much, much to share that will benefit anyone who markets anything.

There are only two people that I read every email I get from them. One is Joe Schroeder. Paul is the other one.

Something I really like about Paul is he often gives away his reports without requiring you to subscribe to anything. Which is another reason why I want to share this. You have the option to subscribe to his list. And I hope you do.

But that is totally your choice. Whatever you do, take the time to read The Wombat Report. Marketing Lessons From the Unlikeliest Places. It’s only 11 pages so it won’t take long to read.

But you might miss out on some valuable lessons if you miss it.

OK, I didn’t really fire my downline. I don’t think you can fire them. But I did nicely suggest that they quit. I guess I do need to explain that, but first a little background to help it make more sense.

Elevator music, please

If you have never thought about this before, hopefully what I have to say will give you some ideas that will help you improve your business. Ready? Here it is…

People are going to do whatever it is that they decided they will do. You couldn’t stop them if you tried. Some people are going to join Company X. Some people are going to buy Product A. They have already decided and you had nothing to do with that decision.

I compare this to toilet paper. Because in my bathroom there had better be Charmin Ultra Plus. If there isn’t, that means we ran out (again) and someone needs to go to Wal-Mart, and fast.

I personally chose this brand of toilet paper. You could say I am emotionally attached to it. You could not get me to change brands. Not without a fight anyway. And I don’t care how much it costs.

The funny thing is, from a network marketing point of view, at no time did any Wal-Mart representative call me, email me, or send me a post card, screaming and yelling about how I absolutely must use Charmin Ultra Plus and buy it from Wal-Mart. That never hapened to me. Not once.

And, I was never contacted by any independent Charmin distributor either. Or any toilet paper distributor for that matter.

Wal-Mart simply knew that people like me have already decided to buy it, so they just put it on the shelves where it can be found.

Hey, you can do the same thing. I do. Right now, today, there are people who want to buy your product. There are people right now that actually want to join your opportunity. And for these people all you have to do is show them where it is. No convincing allowed. No cold calling required.

Because it’s easy to get someone to do what they have already decided they will do. You just need to be the person who has what they want when they want it.

So what would make me do the unthinkable, and suggest someone in my downline quit? Because they were going to anyway. Couldn’t stop them if I tried.

In this case, they made a decision to join this opportunity. I never told them about it. They heard about it somewhere and decided to join. I was just there at the right place and the right time.

But just as quickly as they joined, they decided it was not for them, and ready to quit. Makes it sound like I have a bad opportunity, doesn’t it? I don’t. But it’s like Tom ‘Big Al’ Schreiter says:

All MLM companies have problems. You just choose which one you want to have problems with…

Why waste your energy trying to convince someone to stay? In their minds they had already decided. I just agreed with them, suggesting they do. It’s senseless to stick with a company you just started with that you don’t love.

But by telling them it was a good idea that they quit, I let them off the hook. Now they are happy. They can leave without shame and continue on their journey.

I am happy. I won’t have to keep thinking ” here we go, more complaints”. Plus I offered my assistance for when they did find what they were looking for.

Here is why that is important… Nobody got their feelings hurt. Nobody’s pride was damaged. No bridges were burnt. And you never know what will happen in the future.

This couple has experience, and acted as pros. They may always come back. Or they might come to me for some other type of service.

If I had taken it personally, or if I had tried to convince them to stay when they clearly did not want to, no good could have come from that. But by approaching the situation as a consultant, looking out for their best interests, all things are still possible.

So you probably caught that there was never a relationship built before they joined. And you’re probably thinking that if there had been, they may not have quit.

You would be right of course.

So does that mean you should never allow someone to join your organization without creating a relationship first? Nope, not at all.

And in an upcoming post I’ll share how great things can happen using the exact same “being at the right place at the right time” technique.

An interesting post on Kim Klaver’s blog caught my attention. She talked about how we know (at least we should know) most people are going to tell us no.

so given that knowledge we can A, try to convince these no sayers to say yes and join our program, or…

We can focus on the prospects that already have the same vision as we do.

This post goes along with an upcoming short article I am writing about why I fired my downline, and how much easier it is when you know how to find the people who already said yes.

But the thing Kim said that I really agreee with is you can build your business either way. And you can work on retailing, or recruiting. There are several ways to build an organization, or a strong customer base, but you need to decide which way appeals to you most, and learn how to do that.

That’s one of the things that make this industry so confusing starting out. So play around. Experiment. Feel your way on how you want to build your business.

Then you can find people who agree with you. Or at least that’s what I do.

Autoresponder company Aweber made an excellent point with this post Google Uses Multichannel Marketing. Do You? discussing what I call cross marketing. Something I am finding more and more important for your mlm business.

It talks about how Google has aquired these different companies that offer such things as video and RSS. And how we can be using the same idea to market our own business and opportunities.

While the post itself is not directed at network marketing specifically, the information does apply to us.

We often get stuck in the same routine and rely on only one way of marketing our business. Me, I am a big fan of article marketing, email and blogs. Plus taking advantage of R.S.S. I am also expanding more into video and social networking sites such as MySpace.

The thing to do here is not run these different types of advertising separately, but to cross promote your different types of content.

For example I created this MLM Newsletter System so newer Internetwork marketers could take more advantage of email. But in each of those issues you could point to a video you made. Or to a blog post you wrote.

And your video marketing campain could point to your ezine for list building purposes. It’s like creating a circle around yourself and your business. Each part providing different bits of information.

And that’s just online. Robert Blackman has a simple call, email, and mail a postcard system for people that want to sell his mlm leads.

We talk about the importance of duplication for downline building. But you have to ask yourself, what exactly are you duplicating?

Does it work or not? What do you think?

Let’s do something interesting, shall we? Let’s compare two systems that incorporate a funded proposal, both that will not cost you an arm and a leg to use. Both good systems, but each having different approaches.

I think by doing this, you, will have a better understanding of the two systems and hopefully just what each one, or either can do for your business.

I have a feeling that by doing this I may offend some fans of these two people ( Joe and Anne) but that’s not my purpose. I don’t plan to suggest one over the other. Or even reveal which one is more profitable.

But I will give you a deeper look at the inside of these two marketing systems. So you can decide which one, if either, fits you and your business model. But you won’t go wrong learning from each of these industry leaders.

Click on the images for more information about each system

Joe Schroeder’s Cash Flow Recruiting Machine

Anne Sieg’s 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing aka The Renegade Network Marketer