“Email Marketing is Just Another Form Of Drug Addiction”

Hi there,

I’ve just got back from two weeks travelling around China.

As I was going to be away from home and I wanted to keep on top of things whilst I was away I set up an ‘email forward’ to my gmail account so that I could pop in to any interenet cafe I found and stay abreast of my business as well as all the latest offerings whilst I was on my travels.

Internet cafe’s are common throughout China so I though that I wouldn’t have any problems – boy was I wrong! I didn’t get to visit a single one and it wasn’t through lack of cafe’s either, my mother who’d flown out from the UK to visit me got a bad case of ‘Chinese Tummy’ that just didn’t want to go away… I managed to sprain my collar bone which meant I was laid up in bed for two days and time just seemed to disappear… before I knew it I was on the plane back home.

Two whole weeks without checking a single email…

I hoped that there hadn’t been any support requests that I’d missed (I”m usually very punctual answering those!) and that nothing was amiss – amazing how you worry when the emails are not pounding in…

Well as soon as I got home I rushed to my computer switched on the power to get the trusty old electrons rushing around inside it then went to make a cup of tea…. Aaaah, beautiful!

Tea in hand I delegated the unpacking as unimportant and settled in to look at my emails, with shaking hands and some trepidation I must admit.

I fired up my client and whilst I was waiting for it to download all the mails I went to gmail to see the redirects.

Well I was in for a shock I can tell you… there were thousands of emails! I couldn’t believe how many I’d got and it took me some time to scan them then delete the ‘rubbish’.

Once my email client had finished downloading I then went through each folder carefully, selecting the truly useful emails and of course sales receipts to keep and unsubscribing/deleting the rest. This process took me a few hours – I was on so many lists, sometimes subscribed more than once so receiving 6 or 7 copies of the same email!

What a waste of time…

This got me to thinking about the way I was running my business and how much time I was dedicating to useless tasks, yes I”d heard it all before and was adamant that it was not going to happen to me but… it sort of creeps up on you and before you know it you get addicted.

Yes, ADDICTED and a slave to email, I used to wake up in the morning, switch on my client and let it do its work. Then I’d read through the emails – sometimes taking at least an hour and a half – all the while telling myself I was doing business but in reality just wasting time.

But it didn’t stop there, oh no, I’d leave the client running in the background and every time it played a tune to tell me there was a new message I’d jump – just like Pavlov’s dog – and rush to read it. Not only was this timewasting but it was distracting as well, I’d often be in the middle of something only to have my attention torn away. Afterwards it took me at least 10 mins to half an hour to get it back.

Was I running a business or just ‘farting’ around? I’d definiately say the latter!

Important Lesson…

This wake up was a really important lesson, I calculated that I was wasting a minimum of 15 hours every week playing around with emails – no wonder I hadn’t got the freedom I was looking for.

So now if I subscribe to a list it I’d better receive high quality relevant info otherwise I won’t stay there. Also I’m more circumspect about who I subscribe to now – I know you can always unsubscribe but, emails tend to accumulate and it takes my valuable time to unsubscribe.

If I’m a recent unsubscriber to your list I apologise, but either your message or products didn’t match my needs. I urge you to look at the lists you subscribe to and see how useful they are to you, this includes mine. If my writings and offers are not for you why waste your time reading them?

Next I urge you to really take some time to consider your own writings and do your utmost to match them to your subscribers, providing relevant info with exciting headlines to help them stay on your lists.

Finally I am going to limit my access to the email drug and set stict times to open emails, it’s going to be difficult but like all addictions it can be licked!

To your success, Always.

Stuart