Goodbye, “free” gift: A better way to build a list of email subscribers

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What I’m about to say will sound like heresy to some people.

Okay, to a LOT of people.

But I’ve been pondering this for a long time and I want to put my head on the block and see what you think.

For many years, and like many businesses on the web, I offered a “free” gift to people who were willing to join my subscriber list. It was just what everyone did, and seemed a fair and honorable exchange: I will give you something of value to your business if you’ll give me a try to see what I’m about.

The eBook was called How to Pay Us Less: Tips and Tricks to Pay Less for Web-related Services and if you click that link you can now get a copy of that ebook for the low low price of doing nothing at all (well, except clicking).

Although I’ve never bombarded my list with emails, and people can unsubscribe themselves at any time, I’ve always felt a little strange about the whole practice. If I had a brick-and-mortar storefront, it would be like having little glass case set up at the door full of cupcakes, saying, “I’ll only give you one of these delicious cupcakes if you’ll just drop what you’re doing and come in and talk to me.”

Mmmmm, cupcakes.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, right.  These kinds of “free gifts” are known by many names (free gift, free ebook, lead magnet, opt-in incentive, freemium, ethical bribe, etc.)  I would guess that 80% of the service provider websites I see offer some variant of it. I did too for a long time.

But not anymore. Know why?

Because Free isn’t free. When I ask for a person’s contact details, I’m asking for their time, their attention, their inbox space. I’m adding to the 677 emails they already have, waiting to be sorted or trashed. I’m adding a task to their morning by forcing them to decide whether to open my emails or not. I’m adding another twining choice point to their day, along with the dozens or hundreds of other choices that will force them to burn calories. I am making them find and click the “unsubscribe” button if they don’t want to keep hearing from me. (George Kao has a great article on Medium about the topic as well.)

I receive a number of emails every day from people whose “free gift” I consumed, and I just stay on the list because I have seventeen things fighting for my attention as I’m perusing my inbox, and I can’t take the time to thoughtfully decide whether I want to stay subscribed or not. So I keep getting them, deleting them, feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing.

Of the dozens of every-now-and-again subscribed emails I receive, I’d say there are 6 or 7 that are day-changers, even life-changers. They are the emails that I look forward to, that make me smile when they arrive, that I ALWAYS take time to read. These are people I believe in, people I feel kinship with, people who have interesting and valuable things to say. If I don’t have time to read their email right away, I’ll always snooze it with Boomerang until I know I’ll have more quiet.

I am envious of those people, to be perfectly honest. I want to be more like them. I want to build relationships and kinships, rather than entice someone into my circle with a cupcake.

So I’ve decided that I will endeavor to be that instead: Someone that people stay in touch with because I matter to them, and because they look forward to hearing from me. No bribery required. I just want to be among the ones whose useful sharing of valuable stuff makes me a valued part of their far-flung community.

Of course, it would be a lot easier to just keep exchanging some juicy tidbit for someone’s email address. It’s a much bigger task to knuckle down and get into a rhythm of creating/sharing material that’s eye-opening, helpful, stress-reducing, or giggle-inducing. Laser-focusing on the creation of those kinds of things, and taking it as seriously as—more seriously than—the other parts of my work, is so much harder, but so much better.

So that’s my plan. My life—in work and everywhere else—is an exercise in finding more and more ways to operate from a place of integrity. While being interesting, warm, and funny. Picture me creating new content here, with a hot cup of coffee, ambient cafe sounds courtesy of Coffitivity and enjoying a nice warm cupcake. (Sure you don’t want to come by?)

Do you offer a “free gift” in exchange for email signups? How would it be to instead show/tell people the kind of wisdom & help you offer to people who’ve joined your email list, and ask them to give you a try?

Here, I’ll go first:

If you want to follow me for a bit and see how I do, you can click the “Subscribe” link at the top right of the window; as always, you can unsubscribe any time, or if it’s just not your cup of tea. (Or coffee.)

If you still want to offer something for free, then please do. Do it a lot. Be generous, be prolific in creating beautiful things your audience members will use and love and remember. And at the bottom of your content you might gently suggest that—if the thing they’re reading is of value to them, they might consider signing up to have that sort of thing delivered via the occasional email. And give them an easy way to do that.

Love to all!

 

Should you offer a free consultation or exploratory session? Yes. No. Maybe.

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I’ve had some good conversations lately about the ups and downs of offering a free introductory session, consultation, or discovery session to potential clients.

In general, get-to-know-you sessions are a fabulous idea. Although they are often seen as a way to “sell” someone who may not yet be sold on you, I’d encourage you to look at it from a different perspective, and adopt a mindset of curiosity and generosity instead.

To illustrate, there’s a statement in several places on my website that says what my own free consultations are about:

I offer a free 30-minute consultation to talk through your business needs, your new work, or your goals, and to help you visualize a path for making them happen. No pushy sales pitch, no adding you to a mailing list, no hidden anything. Please feel free to contact me – I’ll bet I can help.

The “different perspective” I referred to?  I don’t see these words as a sales tactic, and I make that very clear. I get a ton of joy out of meeting people who are working for themselves and bringing their skills and gifts to the world. My consultations are one part gabbing over coffee, one part wide-eyed wonder at learning something new, and one part intuitive assessment: Are the two of us a good fit for one another? Would I be happy and proud to bring their work to a larger audience? Will they find my style comfortable and empowering?

It almost never enters my mind to use this time to coerce or convince. If that makes me a poor businesswoman, well, so be it.

I came to this point of view after a number of chance encounters with certain professionals and wannabe-gurus. I was slow to learn that some people promote free introductions heavily in order to fill spaces on their calendar during dry times. There’s nothing wrong with this—it’s hard to grow a business, and we need to try everything. But it was clear, in my case(s), that their interest in me as a human was very thin, and thus when it came to our appointed time,

  • Some didn’t show up at all.
  • Some were late, sending an email 15 minutes into our allotted time apologizing for their tardiness.
  • One did the consultation when walking in a noisy store, obviously running errands and multitasking. I heard the tinny scrape of clothes hangers in the background.
  • In most cases, the session was followed up with an automated email sales pitch, and I was automatically added to their mailing list and started receiving daily emails.

Sigh.

But I eventually developed a stronger intuition about this, and in the past few years I’ve only experienced sessions with those who operate from a place of integrity and respect and curiosity. Each of the two coaches I now work with treated me with great respect and kindness in their introductory sessions, as an equal, exploring our respective preferences and needs to find out whether I was a good fit for them, and vice-versa.

What does that look like?

I felt respected, heard, and appreciated.

They showed up exactly when and where and how they promised.

They had a clear structure to explore my needs and their offerings and where they might or might not fit each other.

They followed up with an email that proved they were paying attention and cared. This was a personal thank-you note (NOT automated), with thoughts on next steps (or why they didn’t feel the fit was good) and best wishes for my success.

Done right, a free consultation/discovery session/exploration is a lovely idea, a beautiful idea, and it can help you find more of the right people. Here are a few thoughts to help these sessions be the best they can be for both you and clients:

  • Keep them short. Ish. Fifteen to 30 minutes is a good zone that—according to many practitioners—also cuts down on the number of people who may see a free hour with you as too good to pass up.
  • Gather some conversation fodder before the call. Many contact forms and schedulers will allow you to create robust “intake forms,” short questionnaires filled out in advance that help you to know more about the person booking. That way, your time together is as juicy and productive as possible.
  • Be ready with the answers to the common questions about your work. This is especially important if you’ve experienced having to explain just what it is you do. YOU might know what you do inside and out, but most people need a little help visualizing the beautiful intersection between their life and yours. Help them see the tangible, real-life before and after stories that can blossom.
  • Map out and do a follow-up sequence that is personal and respectful and not hinged on outcomes. Give some next steps. If it’s not a good fit, say so, and trust that the space you’re keeping open for the right person will be filled. All of this takes about five minutes of your day, and it means a lot.
  • Stay in integrity. If you want to stay in touch, in your follow-up sequence state HOW you’d like to stay in touch or check back with them, and ask permission to do so. (Not only is it distasteful to start bombarding someone with newsletters and clever emails, it’s illegal.)
  • Stay curious and open-minded, and see your free sessions as a gift to YOU, an opportunity to peer into the life and heart of another good human being and see if you can help elevate one another.

Search yourself. If there’s the slightest down-deep feeling that some sessions are going to be “good” and some “wasted time,” then consider only doing paid sessions. There’s no ick around choosing this route. My experiences with paid assessment sessions, even brief ones, have been 100% on-point, on-time, over-delivering and honest. Sometimes we’re more likely to see the time as productive—without dependence on a certain outcome—when something of value is exchanged.

Free introductory sessions or consults can be a joy. They’re a great way to keep our energies strong positive by sharing them with another soul who’s curious about our work.

Enjoy them!

Keeping your website from getting lost in the crowd, Chapter 2

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Yesterday I wrote about the folks in my tribe who claim they don’t have a story to tell, and thus miss out on a key way to stand out in the minds of the people they most want to reach.

Because I know that 99.9% of you are the type who can better visualize things by seeing examples, I wanted to offer you this jumpstart, which takes you to some unfamiliar and unorthodox places to look for your story. I don’t expect they will all be appropriate for everyone; my hope is that they will warm up the Play-Doh of your mind, make it malleable and flexible, so other stories will come to you more easily.

I also offer a bite-sized coaching session on storytelling for your existing website if you think you’d like a sherpa to help you get started. No pressure though—you’ve got this!

Pick any one of the following, and tell us that story. Be open to others that pop into your mind; I call these “opportunistic stories,” the ones that bubble to the surface when you’re working with memories.

The spark of your work: When I was a kid, I had a pattern that played out repeatedly. I wanted to be good at something, and wanted to be needed for it. So I ended up helping my friends with their math, or helping them train their dog, or showing them how to grow plants. I was shy about it, and they usually had to ask more than once, but it was always there. From those memories, I can see the spark that eventually lit the flame of my work. I wanted to help, and be respected for helping. Can you see any sparks from your earlier years that might have given you a clue about the work you’d one day do?

The first person you can remember helping: A friend tells a story about her 20’s, when she’d somehow found the right things to say, and in the right ways, to a girlfriend in trouble. The words took root and gave this girl the courage to leave an abusive relationship and steer into a life in which she navigated solely by her inner voice. I find that most people in helping professions or heart-based businesses have such a story if they find some quiet and look for it. What might yours be?

The first person who helped you (or the one who’s helped you the most) and how. These kinds of stories can be so energizing and powerful. They don’t have to be a coach or mentor or even a teacher. In one of my favorite books, Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet, she shares a story told to her by an acquaintance. When this woman was a child, her father had taken her to his office one day. His secretary had come out and crouched down to her level to speak to her, looking straight into her eyes. The woman said that no one in her dysfunctional family had ever done this. She felt as though she was being seen for the very first time; she felt as though she mattered, and it changed her right then and there. Who played a role in helping you become the person you are today, or helping you do the work you do today?

How did you learn what you know? Pick one skillset or mindset tool you’re proud of, or pleased to have. Follow the thread back in time to where you learned it. Tell us how you walked—or fell—into it. Tell us why it felt important to do, and how it serves you (and the people you help) now.

The “future me, future them” story: With your work, you’re taking two existing stories—yours and your client’s—and twining them together to create something better. For example, it might be a story from a coaching client who’s always carried guilt or fear, but you’re helping them into a new story where those things no longer block the way. It might be a story about finding ways to create your art as a living, right where it meets someone whose day is lit up by hearing or seeing what you’re creating. Their story is better and so is yours.

What stood in your way? All self-employed people or business owners have had obstacles, ranging from inhibiting fears we’ve had to overcome, all the way up to ugly events that made us want to drink warm vodka right out of a shoe at the end of the day. Perseverance stories show your readers/clients what’s important to you, and by association imply that you will also persevere for them.

The magic-wand skill: What’s something that, if your fairy godmother popped you on the head with a sequined star and granted you a wish, you’d love to know or to be? So many of us think that we have to portray ourselves as completely bulletproof and all-knowing in our business communications. But really, you can be human, and it makes you far more memorable. The first time I admitted publicly that I wished I could write a book but didn’t know how, I was surrounded by people offering support, skills, and encouragement—many of them perfect strangers. What’s a skill or shift in perception you would love to have, and which would make you more of an ally to the people you want to serve?

Are you sure your story’s true? (I thank Byron Katie for this one.) Tell us about a story you tell yourself. This one can be a story you’ve lugged around for a long time, but that—on examination—you can’t be sure is 100% true. Example: For many years I avoided teaching because I just knew I was too shy, and that I’d stumble and stammer and make a complete fool of myself. What I found instead was that, while I am an introvert, I am not shy, especially when it comes to teaching people something I’m passionate about. What do you “know” about yourself that might not be so?

A Big Shift story: When it comes to our work with people, over time we start to get a feel for how interactions are going to go, how people will react to us, and so forth. Every once in awhile, I have an experience that knocks me off my axis and forces me to rethink my well-worn path. These can range from a positive event coming from an unexpected angle (such as a client recently commenting she likes being around my energy) to a very NOT positive event (such as public criticism or social media grumps). Have there been any experiences recently that—welcome or not—led to a productive shift in how you work or with whom?

A vulnerability story: Don’t be super(wo)man. We all have less-than-stellar days in our work lives. Something said or done by a person zings right into a place where we feel we’re less-than, we didn’t react “correctly,” or we’re just missing the mark. Dare to be vulnerable and show/tell your readers what part of yourself you’re working on. There’s tremendous power in this kind of empathetic resonance, and they may feel much more comfortable stepping into a conversation with you.

What’s a story your clients or wish-they-were-clients are telling often? Remember from yesterday’s post when I said I hear people say, “I don’t have a story to tell” all the time? If you start listening with your ear tuned for these kinds of things—in conversation, in consultations/sessions, in workshop comments, on social media—you will start to see common threads. Capture those stories. See where those threads match the things you can offer to help, and use them to weave useful blog posts, articles, and even product offerings.

Share a teaching story about doing things better. I wrote a blog post a few days ago about my struggle to stay in a calm, centered, productive “state of being” by using a traffic light metaphor. I loved the personal responses I received. Many business gurus would’ve advised me to keep up the ruse that I’m always in total control and life’s always perfect, 24/7. Nothing to see here, people! (smile) But those kinds of stories create more self-awareness and self-compassion in the world. If there is something you are doing to make yourself better, stronger, happier, tell us that story. We are all human. You may be surprised at how people resonate with you.

You’re in this world, so you have stories.
Sharing them can help “your people” find, know, like, and trust you.
I hope you will.