No I Didn’t Die — Although Neglecting Your Blog Is A Dumb Thing
I’ve been busy, fallows and gals … busy making money and busy touring and traveling. It’s high summer here in the Philippines where I currently make my home .. Good Friday is traditionally the hottest day of the year. But it’s the season when lots of visitors show up and a lot of festivals, sales and events are happening. I hate people who make excuses, so I won’t. I write when I can and wish you all the best when I can’t.
Excuses is a worthy subject for today. I got yet another email a day or go about somebody’s’ latest and greatest set of videos. Don’t pay much attention to them, normally, as I have little time or patience for the average marketing videos which could be said ten times better (and a lot faster) by putting the thoughts in writing .. you know Google has a great free online presentation service (free , of course) that lets you do a PowerPoint-style presentation what would serve you and your potential customers.
This morning I had an email from the guy originally announcing the videos, and it was a prime example of what not to do when trying to interest people in your product … or any affiliate products (where the real money is by the way).
The fellow who sent the email is name Jeff Walker. I don’t know him (here’s where he and a lot of those other heavy-duty emailers are located, by the way … I like to track these guys). I don’t mean to make this post into a diatribe against Jeff, but he did what he did and I feel it’s fair game to use his actions as an object lesson. He can always take my name off his mailing list if he doesn’t like what I am going to say.
Here’s the title and start of the email:
oops (video problems) …
OK, first I’m going to tell you about a little "video problem" we (incidentally, who is "we"?) had… then I’m going to tell you about a bit of a "make-good" bonus I’ve got for you…
First of all, if I had a dollar for every ‘oops’ type email like this I have received over the past five years or so, I’d burn all the rest of the money I have and use the ‘ooops’ dollars to hire Bill Gates to clean my toilet.
We all make mistakes, and if this one is an honest mistake, my apologies to Jeff, but this is such a time=worn, sad technique for ’second chance’ marketing that I almost immediately delete every one I get.
… Turns out I was in such a rush that I didn’t test my web page on Internet Explorer. And even though it works on just about any other browser - it seemed to choke on Internet Explorer….
Well way more than half the people on the ‘Net still use Internet Explorer, especially a lot of people with actual jobs and bank accounts. When promoting a product about ‘Product Launches" this seems to me a pretty sad commentary. Either the ‘product Launch’ product doesn’t cover very much in the way of planning and executing a successful launch, or Jeff didn’t even bother to use the product he is promoting …bad juju either way, in my personal opinion. I use FireFox as my primary browser … but I can assure you that nothing leaves my outbox unless it works in Internet Explorer. If I’m asking people to spend money based on my recommendation, wouldn’t it make sense to see that they have the means to actually spend that money? What could be more important that would put a person in such a hurry? People who don’t bother with the great majority of folks on the ‘Net send a very strong message … and it isn’t good.
… (Part of the problem… I’ve gone to Macs 100% in the last few months, and even though I could have booted Windows, I really didn’t want to.)…
And this is the operative sentence that really set me off to write about this issue. I have been listening to the ‘Macs are better’ sheer unadulterated crappola since the very first Mac. before that it was Commodore versus Osbourne or some other set of ancient history brands (I go back way before there was a Mac or even a Microsoft by the way). I don’t own or use a Mac, but I might someday. I have no axe to grind about using Macs or nor using Macs … or Dos-style machines either. I say, use what you like, change if you want to … or don’t.
But to take up my time and email traffic to excuse an apparently major mistake by telling me you know you should have tested but you "didn’t want to" speaks volumes and volumes about how much you care for people on your mailing list. I perhaps should have stayed on your list … but, "I rally didn’t want to." Again, this comes out rather harsh, but I don’t know how else to say it … if you want people to read your promotions, have the decency to at least pretend to care .. and leave the "Mac Superiority" drivel at home.
(By the way, I welcome comments but any and all "Macs are better" comments will be deleted without further ado … I have way more important things to work on)
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I am absolutely in agreement with you on this, Dave. Once it works, but after time 3,543, it’s just old. And silly.
I put this in the same group of marketers who say people should design those single-page advertisements that read like old Ronco commercials and that go 6 miles down the page. When I come to them, I just click away because I know it’s garbage (whatever it is).
And if it isn’t garbage?
I’ll never know because of how it was presented.