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Oh look – something shiny! Unsubscribe to revolutionize your business.

Posted on 10. Jun, 2011 by Beki Dunmire in Marketing

I love optin offers.  They’re like crack to me.  If someone is offering something of value for free, you can bet they’re going to get my name and email address.  It’s just that simple.  And that’s the whole point of the optin offer so they’re doing something right.

But here’s where the problem comes in.  Finding a lot of good information for free can be an invisible trap into the world of information overload and complete inaction for those who are not aware this danger exists.  Luckily there are a few simple steps these unfortunates can take to free themselves of this stopping point and get back on the road to success.

1. Be selective – It’s one thing to pick up a free ebook or video series that you instantly learn from and implement but too many times it seems that marketers get into a collection game.  It doesn’t really matter how much instruction you have in your inbox if you don’t have the time to actually learn from it and put it to good use.  It’s not like a video game where just bumping your head on a box a few times sends your points score through the roof (although, how cool would that be??).

It’s better to be more selective with who you choose to learn from.  Pick someone (or a couple someones – not 37) that consistently produces content that is relevant and useful to you. Unsubscribe from everybody else.  Bringing the number of incoming emails down will help you really be able to use what those people are sharing instead of simply thinking the info could be useful from reading the subject line of the email.  If you insist on keeping subscriptions to everybody and their mother just to make sure you don’t miss anything, set up your email to automatically funnel all but the 1 or 2 most important subscriptions into subfolders to go through at a later time.  This will help you avoid wasting valuable productive time by reading things that only remotely relate to your business.

2. Re-evaluate often – If you haven’t read an email from someone this past month, maybe it’s time to consider whether you really need to be receiving their emails.  If you haven’t found something useful and implemented it in the past 2 weeks, perhaps it’s better redirected into a subfolder for later viewing.  Keep what is helping your business grow at the top of your viewing priority and get to everything else later.  If it’s not helping you, it’s hurting you.

3. Focus! – Pick one or two methods to try, give them enough time to work, then continue or try something else. If you’re trying to implement the latest tip or trick from several different people each day, it’s too much.  You’re spread so thin that it will be really hard to get anything to really work the way it should.  Many leaders have the inside information on what works, however, most of the information works best when applied consistently with focus.  This is really an industry where being a jack of all trades and master of none is a surefire way to fail.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love optin offers but you really need to focus on what is helping and ignore all the rest in order to get the best results for your business.  In reality, it’s better for the people sending you the emails too.  I know I prefer to share information with people who are really interested rather than people who signed up just for the optin offer.

What are some things you do to avoid information overwhelm? Let me know what you think below.

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