Jonathan Mizel

Thank you so much.

Jonathan Mizel

Let’s talk about why list building is crucial. A lot of people think they know but let’s just remind everybody.

Jonathan Mizel

The reason that having your own list building of people who know you and people you have a relationship with is critical. It is because when you launch something new or when you revamp something or re-release something or when you want to do a joint venture with someone, your list is where you’re going to get your initial shot of traffic.

The individuals on your list building is the group of people who already know, like, and trust you.

Jonathan Mizel

It’s not always a 100% scalable if you have a small list.

Let’s say you have 10,000 people. Well, you can’t get unlimited traffic out of that but you can get a lot of initial traffic from the people you have a relationship with.

One of the things we like to use our list building for is all of our split testing.

Jonathan Mizel

When we go out to the marketplace with a new product, we will quite often have a couple of different landing pages or squeeze pages or sales letters. It just goes start buying called traffic, means you have no idea why a thing isn’t working or converting. You are always wondering is that the traffic or is it the offer or is this headline suck or what not.

Having your own list building means you know that part is taken care of. You know that the traffic coming into the split test is good and is interested in what you’re selling. It allows you to do a lot of pre-test thing before you go out and start buying list or renting list or working with other lists. It just gives you a sense of whether or not you’re on the right track.

Jonathan Mizel

Having a list is great for split testing and launching a new product.

It’s what I consider the asset of your business.

If everything else went away, the list is the thing that you have that you’re going to be able to relaunch with or make money with instantly.

Does that make sense?

Jonathan Mizel

That’s right.

There’s another thing about Facebook too especially people who are involved with search marketing.

By the way, I love Facebook. I love Google. I love Bing. I love all those platforms but there’s one big critical issue.

Jonathan Mizel

The big issue has to do with your competitors. Those competitors are advertising next to you.

I don’t care what niche you are in. Take your top primary keywords.

Let’s assume you’re in a big niche with competition and it’s commercial appeal and all that stuff.

Go to Google and type in your best dog training or weight loss programs or make money online or whatever that particular keyword is. Even if you’re number one, even if you’ve paid all that money to Google to be up at the top of the page and your list building is the single most important first listing on Google, you’re still surrounded by nine other people. You’re still surrounded by nine other people who are betting on that same word.

Facebook’s targeting has just been fantastically lately. You run an ad on Facebook for a particular niche, for a particular group or particular market. Other people are also advertising to that market as well. On Facebook, it’s not quite as bad as you only have 3 or 4 other people next to you.

Jonathan Mizel

The situation is getting bad for marketers because people have been trained to click. Take the Google for example. People don’t just enter in their keywords and then click on your link. They click on everybody’s link because they want to find out what everybody has got to offer.

If it’s a weight loss program and there are nine advertisers, they’re going to look all those advertisers. Frankly, some of them might be better than you.

Jonathan Mizel

What I like email mostly for is this one to one communication. It’s a “me to you” process.

I agree. Email has had a lot of issues in terms of deliverability and spam and people check it on multiple devices and they still never get your messages. It’s driving people crazy. It’s only because list building not done well.

I have a friend named Andre Chaperon.

Jonathan Mizel

I would encourage people to listen to all of Andre’s stuff. We’ve been doing list building and growing email relationships for about 20 years now. I’ve always used a particular process and I like my process. It’s good. It’s based on volume. It’s based on connecting with people.

But Andre came in and did a number on me when I read his book, Autoresponder Madness. I’ve gotten all his courses.

Andre explains how and why to build a relationship with customers and to do it in such a way that those customers respond to you.

Jonathan Mizel

One of the things that he talks about and we noticed this too is that rarely when you do an email blast, you get emails back from people. We’re not talking about the ones that say, “Take me off your list,” and things like that. It’s where you create a conversation so well that is so connected with your audience that they respond back and tell you a little story about your story or how that affected them.

So people who are having problems with email are simply not doing email well. They’re doing the same blast they’ve always had. “Hey! Want to make money on the internet? Click here now!” “The easiest way to lose weight, just take the magic pill! Click here now!”

I don’t want to say that stuff doesn’t work anymore because you still get it. Certainly, people are making money with it but that’s more of a one shot approach.

Jonathan Mizel

I realized a long time ago that with email, you have an audience. Stop thinking about traffic as traffic or your list as a list and start thinking about it as an audience. This is a group of people who care enough about you that they’ve given you their name and email and they want to connect with you.

A lot of people are afraid to connect. They are afraid to go deep. They’re afraid to give links to resources other than on their own site or talk about something or confess some foible or problem. But the fact is that’s why people subscribe to your list.

Jonathan Mizel

When email doesn’t work, it’s usually because it’s just that spammy old email.

Jonathan Mizel

We learned a trick from Andre which is numbering your sequence. This is such a great story and big testament for Andre.

When you get our first email, we’ve got a lot of sequences but the newer ones, I’ll say Email 1 and parenthesis after the subject line. That’s not an internal thing for us. That’s for the receiver. That’s for the person on the list building.

Jonathan Mizel

What happened is that people will send us emails and they’re like, “Hey, I never got number 7,” or “Number 9 didn’t come through,” or “Number 9 came through after 10. I don’t know if it’s something wrong with my email.”

When you’re doing it correctly and you create this a Soap Opera Sequence, which is what Andre calls it, we’ll just say connective emails.

Jonathan Mizel

That’s right. Andre has usually two-four open loops per email. It’s interesting. I’ve never thought of the numbering as being a loop but of course, that’s exactly what it is because people want to consume things in order.

Marketers have this idea that “They’re not interested in that,” or “If I send that out, they might unsubscribe.” The one thing we always got was “I can’t be myself because I have to appeal to everybody.”

We’re talking about iPhones vs. Androids. I used to say the world is divided up into two groups. There are fanboys and haters. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have fanboys unless some people are going to hate you. You don’t want the haters.

Jonathan Mizel

We’re not talking about specifically going out and getting a group of people that don’t like you. We’re specifically talking about going out and getting a group that do like you.

Jonathan Mizel

It is.

I’ve created a lot of characters in emails with pen names. But I don’t care if it’s a 31 year old single woman living in a big city. That 31 year old single woman living in a big city still has my voice. It’s strange.

Jonathan Mizel

It’s not about being authentic. It’s about not being afraid to be authentic. You certainly want to watch your image.

If you’re a chauvinistic person or if you’re a little arrogant or egotistical, then maybe that’s what you should put in there. I don’t know if I would invent chauvinistic in my personality to do that.

But if you are a little of something that people would either love or hate.

I just saw something on Facebook, a big Paleo guy and some hippie girl. She said, “I’m a hippie vegan girl and I love you even though if you’re a big bodybuilding meat-eater.”

What’s interesting is that sometimes the fan boys and the haters are not even who you think. Sometimes, the haters might even be like one of your good friend, someone who knows you, a drinking buddy or something and they’re like, “I don’t like your emails”.

Jonathan Mizel

Meanwhile, you could be a big Paleo meat-eater and the hippie vegan chic likes you because you’re speaking from your heart. You’re saying what you want. It’s about speaking your heart.

Authenticity is a tough one because it’s a buzzword now. So people are trying to find their authentic self and quite often they make this fake authentic self to put out there based on what Gary Halbert says or some Dan Kennedy or somebody that has a strong personality.

Jonathan Mizel

I think the most important thing with list building is connection. Figure out who you want in your audience and speak to that person.

Like I said, the haters will rise up on their own completely and so will the fans. Those fans are the people who love you. I’m going to throw a little teaser out there. There’s a great article. You guys have probably read it. It’s called 1000 True Fans. Have you ever heard of that?

Jonathan Mizel

It’s a great article. You can Google it. It’s basically for artists. The whole idea is if you’re an artist, like a musician, or a painter, or a photographer, or graphic designer, and you make art, and this applies absolutely to business as well.

Jonathan Mizel

You’d think you need to have a job so you can pay for your art but all you need is a thousand true fans who give you a hundred dollars a year. Either you’re doing shows in the club or selling CDs or T-shirts or what-not, it’s kind of a small micro cosmic way of looking at the fans vs. the haters.

It helped me realize it’s the same thing for marketers. We don’t need a lot of people. I can’t remember who it was. Maybe it was Gary Halbert or some great marketer who said, “Give me a list of 500 people who love me, know me, trust me and I’ll be able to eat the rest of my life.”

You can say 5,000 or 50,000 or whatever makes your comfortable. Based on your selling, how many customers you need, there’s the metric stuff. That’s the connective tissue between you and your audience.

Jonathan Mizel

That’s great. One of the things we see people doing in all marketplace is they get obsessed with something. Their obsession currently is list building.

People are always asking, “How do I build my list? How can I do list building?” That’s not the right question. The list building or the traffic is the byproduct of something else. Let’s talk about what that something else is.

Jonathan Mizel

I don’t care what you do, what you sell, what niche you’re in, whether you sell a product or service, where you’re located, whether you’re targeting pet shops in Belgium, or whether you’re architects in New York City, somebody already has your list.

If you’re in a big niche, probably a lot of “somebody’s” have your list. If you’re on a big, giant, scalable niche like health or self-help, or even business opportunity, or weight loss, a lot of “somebody’s” have your list.

Instead of thinking “Where do I get traffic? How do I build my list?” the real question should be, “Who has my traffic? And how do I get that traffic from them?”

Jonathan Mizel

There’s a lot of ways to get traffic.

There’s a great story I tell during some of our webinars. I was at a seminar and it’s profound that people don’t get even after they hear it.

We were at a seminar in Maui which is just where I live. We’re down at the beach. We’re with a bunch of health marketers. I was with this group of people.

All these health marketers are sitting around the table and were all having a beer. I asked one guy next to me “What do you sell?” He said, “I sell weight loss products.” I said, “Oh, what do you sell?” He said, “Pills, weight loss, diet pills, things like that mostly to women like in the 40, 50, 60 range.” And I’m like, “Oh, what do you sell?” Next guy went around the table.

Jonathan Mizel

Every single person sold weight loss products. Every single person sold them to women. Every person was a competitor.  What I realized was these guys were all friends.

I asked the guy next to me. I said, “Why do you like these guys? I would think that you would hate them.” He said, “Oh! Well, this is where I get my traffic.” I said, “You get your traffic from these guys?” and he said, “Yeah.” I said, “How do you get traffic from him when he’s a competitor?” and he said, “Well, he buys traffic and he runs list and he does all kinds of stuff. Then, he mails his sequence, 5, 10, 15, follow-ups. But after that, only in the best situation, like 95% don’t buy.”

“If you’re the very best marketer in the world, 95% won’t buy. If you’re an average marketer, 98% won’t buy. So he’s got this big list and so I give him my offer and then he mails my offer. Maybe his list resonates my offer better. Maybe they like my landing page. Maybe they opt in to my squeeze page. Maybe they’ll like my picture or my price or my benefits or whatever.”

Jonathan Mizel

That was a big one for me and for a lot of other people to wrap their head around. That all these guys who are arch competitors come to Maui and spend all this time together and have created a mastermind of people who compete with one another.

Jonathan Mizel

Okay.

Let’s go back to our group. In this case the group also is about the same thing.

Jonathan Mizel

If there’s not a list mastermind in your niche, start it. Be the person that controls all the people that have all the traffic. Even if you don’t have traffic or have your own list, you can go to people and say, “I’m putting together a list. I’m putting together a mastermind,” and pick a niche; in the pet store, in the real estate, in the internet marketing, in the health space. “I’m putting together a mastermind,” and no one’s going to ask you.

We’re going to basically find people in our niche and we’re going to mail from one another. We’re going to support one another with list building. It doesn’t take anything to do that. You can do that on it Facebook.

Jonathan Mizel

You can even just start a Facebook group and start inviting. Start the weight loss marketers association on Facebook. Get the Facebook page, which costs zero. Then invite everybody in the weight loss space and say “We’re going to talk about promoting weight loss stuff.”

You’re right. The guy who set up that group is brilliant. Not only do all those people now know one another, help each other and mail for one another but they gave credit to that guy who set it up. He has some of those first dibs on that group because he is the one who started it.

Jonathan Mizel

The very first thing that I do is I make sure that I have an offer.

Let’s say I have a weight loss offer and I’m going to approach someone in the weight loss space. I’m pretty experienced in weight loss. I kind of know what the weight loss space is all about. If you don’t know about this in your niche, you should find out these things.

You should go to Google and you should find out what the prevailing rate for clicks are. If Google says there are 2 bucks, then there are 2 bucks. If Google says there are 45-50 cents, then there’s 45-50 cents.

Now, start looking at brokers. There are a lot of brokers in the email space and find out when they sell clicks, what do they charge for clicks? If brokers on the weight loss space are all charging 70-80 cents, then that’s what a click is worth. That’s what you should be willing to pay. That’s the metric that you should use as a starting point.

With a little basic knowledge and research about what things are worth, the first thing I always ask myself before I contact that guy is do I have something for him? Am I selling the exact same product?

Jonathan Mizel

If I’m selling the exact same product, the exact same pill, the exact same configuration; 250 milligrams, twice a day, 60 in a bottle, sold for 49 bucks, probably he’s not going to mail for me because he’s not just a direct competitor, he’s a real arch competitor.

He might mail for you after he has mailed his list 5, 10, 15 times but maybe he won’t. I usually don’t approach people that have the same exact product.

Like if I’m selling garcinia cambogia as an example. I might look for someone selling green coffee bean. And I might look for someone selling a probiotic. Or i might look for somebody selling something in the weight loss space that has done list building well.

Jonathan Mizel

You got to remember, everyone that has a big list wants to make money with it. And if they have one or two or three products, they can only mail those products so often.

So the only way they’re going to make money is by letting their list go out to a broker. In which case it’s going to get hoard out and God only knows what’s going to get mailed to it and what the response is or to find someone, whom you actually know or you’ve been studying for a while and you know that they sell a solid product. You’ve seen their growth. You subscribe to their email list and see what they mail out, what kind of offers they send out, what kind of affiliate offers, what kind of third party offers.

Jonathan Mizel

Now, we know this guy has a list. We know he sells something similar but not an exact thing. We know weight loss clicks are worth about 60 cents. Maybe more, maybe less but that’s about the prevailing rate. We know we have a product that we think his list might bite at. Now, we approach him and we say “We’d like you to mail for us and we’d like to pay you on a commission.”

This is very different. A lot of people say “Oh! That’s how you get affiliates.” I don’t want you to think about getting affiliates. That’s part of the whole danger of “Oh, I need affiliates,” “I need to build my list,” “I need to get traffic.” Stop thinking that way. That’s not the way to think. Think in terms of real coopetition, real working with people.

Jonathan Mizel

You say “Will you sell this garcinia? I have this green coffee bean. They’re similar. They’re not exactly the same. They sell for a similar price. Will you mail my offer to your list and I’ll pay you whatever I have to pay you.”

Now, people freak out and they’re like “Oh, my God! You want everything!” Well, listen. There’re a lot of deals where I will pay someone a 100% commission. That’s right! I’ll give all the money, every penny. The reason that I do that is because they are giving me their list!

Jonathan Mizel

You say “Will you sell this garcinia? I have this green coffee bean. They’re similar. They’re not exactly the same. They sell for a similar price. Will you mail my offer to your list and I’ll pay you whatever I have to pay you.”

Now, people freak out and they’re like “Oh, my God! You want everything!” Well, listen. There’re a lot of deals where I will pay someone a 100% commission. That’s right! I’ll give all the money, every penny. The reason that I do that is because they are giving me their list!

Jonathan Mizel

Let’s say you got a 20% opt-in rate and they send you 2000 clicks. And those clicks come in and you’re going to get 400 Opt-ins. And you’re going to maybe get 20 – 30 sales. Give them all that money. Give them a 100% of the cash if you have to.

I mean, sometimes they’ll be like “I’ll do it for you for a percentage.” Let them open the conversation and see whether they are even open to it. But if they want more money than you want to pay them, I will usually go up to 100% because that guy has now given me 20 buyers and 400 opt-ins.

Jonathan Mizel

Those 400 opt-ins can be now run through my sequence, my Andre Chaperon style follow up sequence create a connection with them and I don’t have to pay any commission on that or maybe I do. Dealing with people who has done list building is all a negotiation.

The process on the “We” is is to overpay on the front end because people, generally in business like money and they’d rather have more money.

There’s that old study about where they give the kid a marshmallow and they say “I’m going to come back in 5 minutes and if the marshmallow is still on the table, I’m going to give you two marshmallows.” You guys heard about that study?

Jonathan Mizel

It’s delaying gratification. I learned many years ago that I’d rather have two marshmallows. And God! Can we wait 20 minutes and I get four marshmallows?

Jonathan Mizel

Of course!

Jonathan Mizel

That’s right! Sometimes I’ll give them both marshmallows.

Jonathan Mizel

That’s exactly right!

JVZoo is a great example. We did an offer with them a few years ago. I think it was the end of 2013. It was breathtaking because we paid between 80% and 100% I believe. We started at 80 and then we have like a weekend where we paid 100. And then we brought it back to 80. We did like a couple of bonus things and we had all these people give us just a ton of traffic.

Jonathan Mizel

I remember Preston was working with me. She said “How much did you make?” and I said “Well, not much, maybe 500 bucks or 1000 bucks. We had a few people coming through without affiliate links and it was number one on JVZoo for a while. I made a little bit of money.”

And she’s like “How did you do it?” And I said “Oh! I got 25,000 buyers.” She’s like “Oh!” she said “Those guys just gave you the buyers?!” I’m like “Yeah! I know, isn’t that crazy?” Isn’t it crazy that they just gave me their buyers? You’re doing it right when your partner is concerned for you.

We’ve had these a number of times when the partner or the list broker will call you and be like “Are you making any? I mean, I just want to make sure you’re making something.” or “Are you getting anything?” and then, I’ll say “Yeah. I’m getting something. Don’t worry about me, just send the mail.”

Jonathan Mizel

I would say without a doubt, yeah!

In some niches, if you’re selling high-end stuff. Maybe it’s a dollar a month. If it’s some low-end consumer thing but you’re working on buying, maybe it’s a dollar every 6 months to a year.

Every person that comes on your list, you have that great opportunity that we started with. We talked about building that relationship with that person and now, that person is a member of your tribe.

Jonathan Mizel

Someone asked me this “Where did you hear about Andre Chaperon?” and I said “I think I heard about him from Tellman Knudson.” And they said “Where do you hear about Tellman Knudson?” And I said “I think I heard about him from Map Isaac,” and I’m like “I think i might have heard about him from Shaun KC,” you know, we go back and it all starts with Gary Halbert, at least in my world. Real old guys might go back to the original direct male and male older guys.

I give Map Isaac and Tellman Knudson a little credit for those relationships but Andre’s relationship with me stands alone because of what he sends me. And Andre’s turned me onto some other guys and those other guys I now have a relationship with them.

It’s not like a personal relationship, in some cases we’re all marketers and we meet and have a beer. But the relationship that they have with me is almost exclusively through email. They start emailing me. they have a sequence that gets me hooked, that I believed in. Andre had that Frank versus Matt thing.

If you can send out your first email and your prospect is just nodding the whole time “Yup! Thats right.” “Yup! It is hard to lose weight.” “Yup! They are lying to me,” “Yup! It is expensive” “Oh my God. Well, tomorrow I’m going to tell you what the answer.” I’m not cursing email too because he’s going to spam me tomorrow, I’m wondering what the hell is the solution.

Jonathan Mizel

Wow!

Well, it’s been said many times so I’ll give a little explanation which is be the media.

Jonathan Mizel

I just started a brand new business in the health space and we launched it yesterday. We’re using an organic approach and we got 6 customers. Okay! That doesn’t sound very exciting, right? Because six customers. They had given us 25-30 bucks..

The people I’m working with are like “Ugh,” “Wow!” and I said listen. Six people who’ve never heard of us before, they don’t know us, total complete strangers pulled money out of their pocket and gave it to us. And now! They’re on our list building. And now! We have an opportunity to build a deep connection with them.

Jonathan Mizel

We’re not going to get rich off of this six people. We’re not going to build our empire off of those people. But every single person that we connect with, we are going to build that deep relationship with and the list will go from six and today it might hit ten or 15 and in a week or 2 it will be 50 or 100.

I start just like everyone else. I have no advantage. Everyone else out there has the same advantage that I do when they’re starting a new business, when they’re building a new list.

Jonathan Mizel

What I’m looking to do is to create the most biggest, massive connected list of people I possibly can. And then I’ll be the media in that particular space. I’ll be able to mail my own list whenever I need money, launch new products and I’ll also be an integral part of whatever list mastermind I start.

So, build your connections. The reason we look for people with other connections, is so we can get those people to give us those relationships and connections. And we trade those for a little bit of money.

Don’t be afraid to trade a little bit of money in order to build the list of relationships and become your own media source.

Jonathan Mizel

Become the person that other people are looking to do JV. Other people are reaching out to you saying “Hey man! I got a great offer. Can you mail it? And I’ll give you some money.” That’s where you want to be! You want to be in a position where you can pick and choose awesome products and services to basically present to your tribe. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re tribe building without using the word “tribe”.

Jonathan Mizel

Awesome. I’m honored to be on and thank you very much, guys.