Relationship Marketing

In the past, I’ve run some sneaky “experiments”.

More precisely.

I deliberately wouldn’t send an email at the “usual” time I send them.

Why?

Well, I once heard Josh Spector, who runs a 40,000+ email list called For The Interested, mention in an interview a little tactic to see whether you really have “fans” on your list.

Or if it’s just a bunch of readers who don’t really care much about you.

The tactic?

Don’t send an email for a day—or send one a lot later than you normally would.

Then just wait and see whether people will message you asking about your missing email. If you do get one or more of these questions, then you’re doing it right (remember, if one person asks something, a hundred are thinking it).

So that’s what I did once in a while.

And lo and behold.

I usually receive a few such questions (obviously not from the same people because they already know this happens).

But doing so shows you the power of daily email and building that relationship.

That said.

If you’d like to learn how to build a relationship with your reader by writing simple, yet entertaining, daily emails that just so happen to get you paid in the meantime as well…

Well then look no further than my flagship course Email Valhalla.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/

For reasons beyond my understanding, some people don’t like to hear this.

But it needs to be said: The more emails you write, the more money you’ll make. It really is that simple.

There’s no secret trick, no special method, no crazy life hack.

You email more, you earn more.

You have to realize that most people, especially when they’re new to a market, will subscribe to a bunch of different newsletters and email lists.

Almost nobody stands out from the get-go (and that’s ok).

But now imagine that, after they subscribed to a whole bunch of email lists, out of everyone, you’re the only one sending daily emails—something that could very well be the case, since most people don’t bother.

In that case one of two things will happen:

1) They get annoyed and bored of your emails and unsubscribe. This is a good thing because they would never buy anything worthwhile from you, anyway. They don’t see the value in what you’re giving them, so they would never spend a dime on any of your products. It’s good to rid yourself of these people and only keep the people who understand the value of what you offer.

2) They see your name 7x as much as all the other people and build a relationship with you that’s 10–20 times stronger because you’re the only one who’s putting in the constant effort to show up and check in on them. You’re giving value and entertaining them day-in, day-out.

Already they’re much more likely to buy from you than from anyone else.

On top of that, eventually—and this happens to everyone—they get tired of getting so many emails from all these different people, and they’ll unsubscribe to most of the email lists they’ve subscribed to. But because you’ve spent so much time building a relationship with them, you’re one of the few that they’ll keep reading daily—if not the only one.

At that time you don’t have any competition anymore and you win simply because you showed up every single day.

On top of those examples. You’ll be the person who improves the fastest (you’re getting more practice in after all).

Not only that, you’ll also be seen as the one and only true expert—even a leader. While everyone claims to be the expert. Only you’ve put in the work to prove it.

So start emailing daily today.

And if you’re not sure where to start, then check out my flagship course Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/

You may (or may not) have noticed that I didn’t write an email yesterday.

That was intentional.

See, I wanted to test something.

More specifically.

I wanted to test how healthy and developed my relationship and close connection is to my readers. It turns out, it’s quite healthy.

Today, I woke up to a handful of people pointing out that they didn’t receive an email yesterday and they wanted to see if something went wrong (either on my end or theirs).

While a handful of people doesn’t sound like a lot, you must remember: if one person asks it, dozens more are thinking it.

So that’s an easy way to confirm whether I’m taking up “mental real estate” in people’s heads—and apparently, I am.

If you’ve got a medium where you’re keeping constant connection with your audience, then try this “experiment” out yourself. See whether people notice if you stopped tweeting, posting, emailing, podcasting, or whatever else you might do, just for one day.

The results may very well surprise you and you might learn something new about the routine-like relationship you have with your audience.

As one long-time reader once told me (paraphrased), “Your emails are like getting up to have a quick chat with a friendly co-worker at the water cooler”.

And that’s a good place to be.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn more how you can build a deep relationship powered by constant connection with your audience, especially when it comes to email, then I suggest you check out Email Valhalla.

Click here to find out more: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Many tales are told about the Roman emperor Nero.

Such as the story of how Nero supposedly set fire to his own majestic imperial capital. A fire that we to this day refer to as the Great Fire of Rome, which occurred on the night of July 19, AD 64.

Yet it’s likely that almost none of it is true.

That’s the premise of one of the books I picked up up a year ago while paying a visit to the Gallo-Roman Museum.

I don’t exactly remember who mentioned it, but I once came across a rule somewhere mentioning the benefits of forcing yourself to buy at least one book every time you enter a bookshop. It doesn’t matter which book. Just one. The first one that catches your eye.

You’ll learn lots of cool stuff you wouldn’t have otherwise.

It so happened that the museum had a bookshop. And so I had to get myself a book. I couldn’t decide between 2, so I just bought both of them.

Trajan by Nicholas Jackson and Rome is Burning by Anthony A. Barrett.

Both are fascinating reads and I’d recommend them to everyone slightly interested in history or the Roman Empire.

But back to Nero.

He’s commonly been called a tyrant who ruled with ruthless impulsiveness. Yet, for most of his rule, he was, in fact, liked by the general populace of Rome.

The people loved him. He did good things. He entertained the people. He often took part in plays and would sing together with the other performers.

Nero was a liked and popular emperor.

Yet his popularity plummeted after the fire because of all the rumors. Rumors of how he started the fire. Rumors of his lack of leadership and correct behavior. Some rumors stated he himself started the fire, others stated he could be seen singing on his balcony while Rome stood burning for 6 days straight.

Whatever the case was, he didn’t rule—or even live—much longer after that.

Was Nero to blame for all of this? Did he deserve it? Was he actually insane and tyrannical? Was his popularity and gentleness before nothing more than a facade?

We will never know.

But one thing we do know is this: he could’ve used some lessons on personal branding.

You see. Being the emperor of Rome or building your own brand isn’t all that different. There’s a huge importance in maintaining a strong and likable image, building a strong connection with your ‘audience’, and even building your own world to ensure you’re unreplaceable and effectively ‘cancel-proof’.

Perhaps, if Nero knew what we know today, his people would have continued loving him, regardless of whether he caused the Great Fire and executed his family members.

Clearly Nero didn’t succeed in doing so. But that doesn’t mean you can’t succeed either.

And in my humble, yet accurate and proven opinion, there’s no better way to build a good relationship with your readers than by staying in constant connection with them through frequent emails.

You can’t even come close to understanding how powerful this constant connection is until you’ve experienced it yourself.

And if you’d like some pointers on how to get started the right way, while getting paid and building your creative business alongside it, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Have you ever watched a movie or an episode of something that included a fight scene, yet found it extremely boring to watch?

I know I have.

One of the best well-known (and modern) examples I can give is the latest John Wick film. Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved the series. It’s a great movie, with top-tier moments, and I very much enjoyed watching it… but not because of the fighting/shooting scenes. Those scenes simply took too long and there were too many of them.

If you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen all of them.

More.

Even Chris Claremont, the famous comic book writer who single-handedly took it upon himself to take X-Men, one of Marvel’s worst-performing titles back then which nobody cared about, and was on the brink of cancellation, to one of the most recognized, well-known, and best-performing comic book series of all time, resulting in tons of storylines, dozens of media adaptions, hundreds of toy lines, video games, and so, so much more, once told an interviewer, “To me, the fights are bullshit”.

Yes, the creator of one of the most successful action-packed comic book series of all time thought the fights were bullshit. All he cared about were the emotional relationships between the characters, how they interacted with the world, and the consequences these emotions had.

And so it goes in almost every other form of fiction as well.

A good fight is nothing else but an opportunity to further the plot or the emotional relationship between characters, developing them as people in the process.

That’s also why the lightsaber fights in the Star Wars prequels are often criticized as being lackluster and much worse than the original trilogy, even though the prequels had better choreography with much more flashy moves and a more dramatic and exciting setting… but they didn’t carry the same emotional baggage as the original trilogy did, nor did they further the plot most of the time.

So the fights, were in fact, bullshit.

Even more.

This isn’t just about fiction.

It perfectly applies to business as well—with one slight difference. This time it’s not “the fights are bullshit” but instead, “the value is bullshit”.

Just as any beginner fiction writer makes the mistake of thinking the fights are the end-all-be-all, so does the beginner marketer make the mistake of thinking the value is all that matters.

Spoiler alert: is doesn’t.

In fact, it’s probably not even in the top 10 of things that matter. What matters more is the relationship you have with your reader/viewer/listener/customer, the relationship they have with your offers, the mindset (inherently different than pure “how-to value”) you bring, the motivation you give, the opportunity to think differently, the feeling of being understood, the community to be a part of, and the “World” you welcome them in with open arms (as well as the barriers you put up to keep the people you don’t want as far away from your world as you possibly can).

So the next time someone comes to you, shouting “Provide more value!!”, probably expecting you to give it all away for free as well, then know…

They don’t know what they’re talking about and you’re simply better than them.

As to how to get even better yourself and learn how to actually write content that gets you sales and keeps people reading every day (without resorting to “giving more value”), then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I rewatched Logan—the Wolverine movie—a few days ago.

And while this isn’t the first time I realized it, it made me think about how much your current state of mind or current interests and curiosities shape the way you look at everything you see and hear.

Here’s what I mean.

The movie revolves around Wolverine—an otherwise insane mutant whose abilities include having razor-sharp claws he can extend and retract out of his knuckles at will as well as super-human regeneration, aka, everything he gets wounded, it’ll heal almost immediately—making him virtually unkillable.

But that’s not what we see in Logan.

No in the film we learn that the Adamantium—the metal that’s fused with his skeleton and what his claws are made from—inside his body has been poisoning him, making it so he’s slower, weaker, slowly dying, and only barely regenerates.

What does this have to do with anything?

See, this time around while watching, my mind immediately went “oh wow, that’s a great marketing lesson”.

Let me explain.

When building a business, if done right, you can make it so you can steal Wolverine’s power of super-human regeneration, or in business terms, you can survive, recover from, potentially even thrive, from everything that happens to you if you’ve got your foundations right (such as building a great relationship with your customers, backing up your list, and making sure you stay in constant contact through email).

But, and this is a big but.

You can still get sick, your business can still deteriorate and lose its powers…

When the disease finds itself on the inside.

If you’re making mistakes, if you’re messing things up, if you don’t understand your business fundamentals or your vital marketing principles, then your business doesn’t stand a chance.

So there.

A lesson from the man, the myth, the legend, Logan, The Wolverine, himself.

Anyway.

One of the best ways I know, according to my biased, but experienced and more-than-qualified self, is through my flagship course Email Valhalla.

Click this link for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/

Nor do I even try to sell any of my products (let alone even mention them).

Here’s why:

See, my reasoning is twofold.

First, I simply can’t be bothered.

Yes I’m certain I could earn more money, sign more clients, and sell more products if I were to mention and actively sell on my timeline.

But I don’t enjoy doing so.

And seeing as how ‘enjoyment’ is one of my 3 main business pillars, alongside simplicity and freedom, that should already be reason enough.

But still.

The second reason, and a more “reasonable” answer for some perhaps, is that this is my way of giving something back to everyone on my list.

I’m intentionally limiting the people who have access to my products, services, promotions, and bonuses to those on my email list.

Yes obviously I’m creating content, writing emails, offering services, and coming up with valuable products because I want to get paid.

I need to eat after all.

But I’m not desperate to get paid—there’s a true superpower in taking the approach of “no matter whether you buy my stuff or not, I’m eating steak either way”.

I don’t just accept anyone and everyone as a customer. I just simply don’t allow just about anyone to give me money.

I’m very selective about that.

I can count more clients I refused to work with than I can the ones I did.

That doesn’t bother me.

Maybe you’re calling me crazy right now (and you know, maybe I am, who knows?) But still, I’d call you inexperienced in the way of dealing with clients. You have no idea how enjoyable it is to work with good clients and how absolutely awful and outright painful it is to work with your average Joe.

In a sense, you could say I’m not trying to build a business.

I’m building a lifestyle—one that’s enjoyable at all times.

And that requires extreme filtering.

If you’re not filtering (heavily) in your business, I can all but guarantee you’re not enjoying it.

So, let me ask you.

What sort of filters do you have in place in your business?

And if you’d like to learn how you can run a successful business while limiting the number of people who even get the chance to buy from you, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla.

Click here to see what I’m talking about: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla