And then, how to do it deliberately
I love beefy discounts. The beefier, the better.
Many discounts require some effort to find, even it's simply going to a coupon site to look for a code, or installing Honey to do it for you.
Once in a while, though, one drops in my lap, and I'd like to tell you about it.
I had subscribed to someone's email list
If you're an online creator, you can't help but love your email list. Where social media wants to charge you for extended reach to your followers, and search engines update their algorithms often not in your favor, email is one of the few remaining digital assets that remains mostly in your control.
Still, even though it's more reliable than most, deliverability (the ability to reach people's inbox) is key. Part of deliverability is an active subscriber base, filled with people who love your offerings, open your emails, and click on your links.
Good email list hygiene requires regularly getting rid of inactive subscribers. Basic hygiene drops subscribers who haven't opened any emails for some time. More aggressive hygiene would drop subscribers who don't click on any links inside.
Often, inactive subscribers signed up for a freebie lead magnet, and then just dealt with the emails without actively unsubscribing. From the sender's standpoint, though, this subscriber isn't providing value. They're contributing to a lower click ratio and other metrics, so it's best that they go.
Then I found that I wasn't subscribed anymore
This past weekend I realized that I had been removed from a couple of email lists. I'm fairly active in unsubscribing to newsletters that have run their course for me, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't unsubscribe deliberately to these two.
Getting removed from someone's list can happen for a number of reasons, but likely it was that I wasn't active enough clicking on the links in the emails, and I got removed in their periodic hygienic cleansing.
Since these were people that I actively support online, I re-subscribed.
This is where the magic happened.
During the signup process for one of the newsletters (Christina Piccoli's) there was a one-time offer for 50% off one of her ebooks. (This is one of many ways of timing an offer at a moment people are predisposed to pulling out their credit card.)
I had seen the ebook before, but didn't buy it at the time.
With the discount, though, it was much easier to pull the trigger. (That's the whole point of her making the one-time offer, after all.)
I got something I had wanted for $11 less, and it was all because I (likely) was a bit lax in interacting with her emails before, and had to re-subscribe.
A happy accident, if you will.
Which got me to thinking …
If she had a one-time offer, what about other people that I follow or subscribe to?
What do they have that they're offering now? If they had offered something before, are they offering something different? Are they offering it for an even better discount than before?
Why not check to see if there's a one-time offer by going through the sign-up process again?
I wouldn't even have to unsubscribe, or get dropped from the list. I could just sign up through another email to see if they had a new one-time offer. If not, no biggie, and I'd unsubscribe from that email.
Saving money through negotiation
It helps to think of subscribing to a newsletter as something that can be negotiated at any time.
The creators sending out the emails are watching who's opening their emails and who isn't.
Likewise, I think there's nothing wrong with quoting Janet Jackson and asking: “What have you done for me lately?”
It's smart to seek access to someone's best offers.
Profitability comes from making more money, but it also comes from spending less.
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I'm John and I encourage entrepreneurship in people, including myself.
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(Header photo by Ketut Subiyanto)
