Adequacy Is The Enemy of Excellence in Marketing
February 25, 2008 by Big Jason
Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments.com summed up what I have been saying for years to quite a few people in the make money online niche (IM). It was during the live email marketing certification course in miami as part of the email summit by marketingsherpa. He exclaimed:
The context was basically don't be satisified with your success and always look to improve. People have been asking me who else from the im community is here and are surprised when I say the same as the previous two years, NOBODY. Well, Early to Rise is here if that counts. I'm still trying to find them. Hard to tell who they are. All these little people look alike. 
Anyways, I have been telling certain individuals from time to time where they are missing out on things when it comes to email marketing among other things. The standard response is "well, i'm pretty successful with what i'm currently doing." If I discuss what a guru is leaving on the table, I'm typically met with the same response and how great they are without doing my suggestions. My response is always "great, now what if you or they could do even more just by making a few changes?"
Here is a picture of Dr. Flint, myself and researcher Jimmy Ellis after I took the final exam.
This brings up an important point. Im'ers typically don't want to hear what MarketingSherpa/MarketingExperiments has to say because they deal with so many corporations and big businesses. Turns out that several researchers with MarketingExperiments are closet affiliate marketers and have actually done research in the make money online market. Regardless of that, I always ask these skeptics "Don't corporations want to:
- get people to opt in
- get emails delivered
- get emails opened
- get as many clickthroughs
- get as many people to convert on landing pages
dan kennedy considers people who run around saying "Not my business" idiots. You are missing out by not looking what other markets are doing and testing yourself.
I anxiously waited to find out the results of the certification. Here is Dr. Flint and I celebrating my passing score of 96%. I think I was checking email when I should have been paying attention, and that caused me to miss 1 question. Bad Jason, Bad!!!!!
By taking the certification, you learn the following:
- How to improve the email capture rate on your website
- How to use incentives to improve conversion to email capture
- How to write effective subject lines
- Best practices for from Addresses
- Effective Email formats
- How to write effective email copy
- Deliverability best practices
- Optimal send times
- Optimal email frequency
- How to use email for Basket and Order recovery
I emailed my list to let them know what I was up to, and Alex Torres of Sonic Wave Audio emails me back and says he lives by the event hotel. He and his lovely wife Mia took me out to South Beach, and we had a blast.
Turns out the hotel I ended up staying at since the event hotel couldn't accomodate my entire stay is in the worst part of Miami. Check out this video when Alex was taking me back.
Here is a pic of us. Click on it to see a larger version.
First day of the Email Summit was pretty awesome considering the certification and going to South Beach for the first time. Two people from MarketingExperiments want to talk to me about the technique I used to increase someone’s webinar registrations by over 50% and how MarketingExperiments can do the same or even better. I met the new president of MarketingSherpa, and he immediately asked if they could interview me. MarketingExperiments, MarketingSherpa, ExactTarget, Habeas and tons of others commented on my blog. Hopefully day 2 is just as good or better!
A lot of the friends from past summits were not there this time, but I had the pleasure of meeiting new friends. Subscribe to my blog to get updates and pics from the rest of the summit.
ttys,
big jason
P.S. i have to go find Bill McClosky of the Email Insider. he emailed me last night and says we should talk business. go figure!
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Big Jason,
Thanks for coming to the conference and talking with Aaron and I at our booth. We had a great time and it was nice to see some of the IM community there (I’m considering you “some” since well… your about 3 avg size people). From our conversations and what I saw on some of your pages, your doing a lot of the right things. If you ever want any input or possible test ideas… just shoot me a line.
Keep on testing…
Jimmy
hey jimmy,
this is my third year, so thank you for finally showing up.
great meeting and talking with you, aaron and the rest of the little people from marketingexperiments.com
yeah, me, myself and I were there from the im community. hopefully more next year.
thanks for the offer. i’ll let you know and will do.
ttys
big jason