I almost titled this:

I Love John Chow (But He’s Doing This Wrong—and How You Can Do Better)

John Chow has been very successful online. No question his blog is a tremendous resource and you should be reading it.

Having said that…John has lots to learn about email active marketing.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m not picking on John. As I have mentioned before, active marketing is not a common skill among today’s bloggers. He’s very good at passive marketing (earning $25K+ per month), but like most bloggers, he could make far more using active marketing. Here’s one example.

Recently John made the wise decision to switch from another list management company to Aweber—the list provider I have used for the last five years or so.

I did the same. In 2001 for a variety of reasons I chose a different list provider. By 2003 it became obvious my list provider was not delivering a high percentage of my mail. By that time Aweber was showing itself to be the tops in delivery as well as in service and features.

I knew I needed to move my 60,000 opt-in list to Aweber. Just like John.

When the dust settled I had learned a great deal about how to import an existing email list to Aweber. John, despite his business savvy, is making some mistakes. Let’s see what we can learn from John’s move and how we can do better ourselves.

He started out strong, sending everyone on his OLD list provider this email:

Dear subscriber,

John Chow dot Com is changing list managers. We have moved our newsletter mailing services to Aweber Communications.

In order for you to continue to receive the newsletter you will need to confirm your email address again. In the next few days, you’ll be getting an email from Aweber asking you to reconfirm your subscription. If you wish to continue receiving updates from John Chow dot Com, just click the confirmation link that will come with that email. If you do not wish to receive anymore mailings, then do nothing. This will be the only email you’ll get.

Thank you for your continued support.

John Chow
www.johnchow.com

This is good. Tell your current subscribers they will have to re-verify their subscription in order to get updates on the NEW list.

Here is the email I received a couple days later, asking me to confirm my email address:

John Chow dot Com is now using Aweber to handle its newsletter
list. In order for Aweber to add you to our list, they require you
to confirm that you are a John Chow dot Com newsletter subscriber.

———————————————————–
CONFIRM BY VISITING THE LINK BELOW:

http://www.aweber.com/z/c/?rzbz3c7hb2q0xhausua2hp2db2tty03a2g==2534

Click the link above to give us permission to send you
information. It’s fast and easy! If you cannot click the
full URL above, please copy and paste it into your web
browser.

———————————————————–
If you do not want to subscribe, simply ignore this message.

Thank You,
AWeber Support

John Chow,Inc. 19-7060 Bridge Street, Richmond, BC V6Y 2S7, CANADA

Request generated by:
IP: 24.83.121.128
Date: February 25, 2008 08:01 EST

Though his high profile will likely make this a moderately successful move, he would likely improve his results by 50% or more by making/doing this better. Here’s how he could/still can improve his results:

Provide a mystery free incentive for updating their email address with Aweber—even better if the freebie has a time sensitive portion

John could offer free access to a live web or teleseminar (it’s free to put one on and the recording can serve as a free download in the future.) At the very least he could have put together a PDF of his top posts or a summary of his top 10 tips—that kind of thing will induce many people to re-verify.

John could have mentioned his free give-away in both his PRE-email (the first email sent) as well as in his VERIFICATION email from Aweber

John may not yet know this (since he is new to Aweber), but he has control over the top and bottom text in the verification email. He chose to not use that to his full advantage.

John could have asked for you to verify your email address with Aweber “as a favor to him”

Just asking people do “do you a favor” will always increase your response—even if you offer no incentive. And who doesn’t want to do the famous John Chow a favor?

John could continue to publish to BOTH LISTS over a period of time

Since the cost of email is negligible, he could post to both lists. At the top of the soon-to-be-deleted list he could place a reminder to verify or they will STOP GETTING EMAILS FROM JOHN ON [DATE].

This allows a continuous stream of high value messages to remind the reader he isn’t going to get any more of this high value information if they don’t take action now. Combined with a subscribe incentive, this is a huge motivator.

Send a Follow-Up Message to the old List AFTER Sending the Verification Email

John could dramatically increase his response if he would just send an immediate follow-up email to the old list saying “I just sent you a verification email from Aweber…you need to go verify your email subscription…”

Now I am not trying to pick on John Chow. Trust me, anyone who has been successful online knows far more he COULD be doing if he chose. John’s great, and I’m confident he doesn’t think he’s perfect. (Well, at least most of the time.) But if you are trying to import your own existing list to Aweber, use these tips and you will be far more successful.