The Transparent Marketing Project: Month 6, Day 194

I just wrapped up my second set of 90 days on the Transparent Marketing Project and I’m excited to say that I far exceeded my goals, hitting 3,107 subscribers.

Doing a happy dance right now!

To remind you, my goals and projects for days 90-180 were:

Goals

• Good goal: 500 total subscribers (2.22 subscribers per day)
• Better goal: 700 total subscribers (3.33 subscribers per day)
• Best goal: 1,000 total subscribers (7.77 subscribers per day)

Projects

1. Create a compelling lead magnet to convert more website traffic into email subscribers.
2. Publish and promote content that attracts new subscribers.
3. Create regular marketing emails to nurture these new subscribers and build loyalty.
4. Run a second giveaway to attract new subscribers.

In the last report, Month 5, Day 174, I went through the details of Projects #1 and #2. In this report, I’m going to focus on Projects #3 and #4.

So without further ado, let’s get started, shall we?

Project #3: Create regular marketing emails

To be completely honest with you, this is where I could use some significant improvement.

Right now, I’ve been emailing subscribers for two reasons:

1. When I publish new content (2x over the last 6 months)
2. When I run a giveaway (2x over the last 6 months)

This is NOT often enough.

And consequently, I do get unsubscribes every time I send an email.

While getting unsubscribes is completely normal, my unsubscribe rate is a bit higher than I’d like.

Yes, this is partially because much of my list has been built on the back of giveaways and some of the unsubscribes are spammy contacts who aren’t interested in what I have to say any ways.

But, this is also because most of my list is now compiled of strangers who didn’t know me prior (like friends and family). Likewise, if I don’t stay in touch with them frequently, they are likely to forget who I am and remember why they should stick around.

Likewise, one of my goals for the next 90 days is to create more regular marketing emails, even if I still publish only one piece of new content every 3 months.

I’m really excited to show you how I do this, so definitely stay tuned.

It’s a common misconception that you have to be creating original content in order to email your list, and this is far from true.

Learning how to keep in touch with your list frequently but reduce the number of times you have to publish new content will help you be far more efficient and effective with your marketing efforts.

In short, you’ll get more bang for your buck. And who isn’t on board with that?

Project #4: Run a second giveaway

Giveaways have supercharged my list.

Seriously.

Don’t believe me?

Take a look at the impact the latest giveaway has had on my email list size.

Now do you believe me? ☺

The last giveaway helped me grow from 300+ subscribers to 3,000+ subscribers.

That’s some growth!

Here’s what I did this time around.

First, I picked a prize I KNEW would appeal to my target audience: the Away Carry-On Suitcase.

(Seriously, if you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas gift to yourself, this bag could be it. I borrow my fiance’s every time I can.)

I grossly underestimated how much attention the bag would attract. It took off!

Second, my subscribers did ALL of the promotion for me.

Truly.

In fact, I started to get a little bit worried about my subscriber quality because I realized that many of the contestants started promoting the giveaway on sites like this one:

However, this fear was a bit unwarranted. As I’ve run the new subscribers through my nurturing series (see the TMP report from Day 40 for more details), I’m getting a ton of great replies, proving me at least partially wrong.

That being said, I definitely expect to get some additional unsubscribes as I differentiate between the spammy and high-quality subscribers.

Now, this is often the pushback I get from clients and prospects who aren’t convinced they should run a marketing giveaway. They fear that they’ll only get a bunch of low-quality subscribers.

Yes, you will certainly get low-quality subscribers from the contest. But you will also get high-quality subscribers as well. It’s your job to remove the fat from your list post-giveaway. At the end of the day, it’s a numbers game: as long as you’re adding more high-quality subscribers than low-quality subscribers and your list is still seeing positive growth, you’re in the clear.

Bonus Project #5: Refresh the site design

As you may have seen in the TMP Report for Day 174, I’ve been focusing heavily on content promotion to help increase visibility and traffic to the site.

This means cold outreach to strangers who I don’t know to get their feedback on my content and hopefully get a link and/or social share out of the effort as well.

Accordingly, I wanted to make sure that, as I was reaching out to some bigger influencers, that my site gave a better first impression.

So I spent about 3 hours refreshing the site look, making sure it was clean, modern, minimal and focused on conversion (my favorite approach for web design).

The new look…

My goal was to improve both the look and conversion points, but not spend a ton of time on the effort. Finding a template (like the one I used, called Authority Pro) definitely helps speed up the process significantly, as well as save you money.

(This is a mistake I see SO SO SO many people make.)

Most importantly, I had already proven that I could grow an audience BEFORE I did a site redesign. Do not make the expensive and time-consuming error of doing the site redesign before proving you can build an audience.

I’m excited to (1) hear what you think of the new design (you can check it out here) and (2) see what impact this has on my cold outreach efforts.

The next 90 days for the TMP

Now, it’s that time again…to set my goals for the next 90 days.

Ready for them?

• Good goal: 3,500 total subscribers (4.37 subscribers per day)
• Better goal: 4,000 total subscribers (9.92 subscribers per day)
• Best goal: 5,000 total subscribers per day (21.03 subscribers per day)

So, how am I going grow my subscribers?

Again, through a few, well-defined projects:

1. Publish and promote content that attracts new subscribers.
2. Create regular marketing emails to nurture these new subscribers and build loyalty.
3. Run a third giveaway to attract new subscribers.
4. Create a free travel community to attrat new subscribers.

Again, this may look very similar to the past 90 days…and the 90 days before that.

I’ll reiterate: consistency is key to seeing success from your results.

Ready to see how the next 90 days go? I certainly am!

In the meantime, if you have any questions about this report, please comment below, and I’ll reply to you in a timely manner.