As the story goes, a Mississippi tug boat company had one key question they asked prospective captains. The owner of the company would ask, “How many times have you gone aground?”

If the person said, “Never”. he knew he was a liar and would dismiss the prospective captain on the spot. Given the twisty nature of the Mississippi and its constantly shifting sand bars, every barge captain has “touched” bottom more than once.

The same is true in marketing your small business. Everyone has made a mistake or two or three. Recently I made yet another one myself. I don’t look forward to making mistakes but each time I discover one, it gives me a chance to make my marketing even better.

The culprit in my case was my new subscriber autoresponder series. It had been working well to convert recent subscribers to clients but I was intent on increasing my conversion rates, so one day I fiddled with the copy of each of the messages in the series.

It would have been a good idea, but some days not every neuron is firing and by mistake I pasted two messages in the series together into one. The top of the message started with Dear so and so, then at the end it started again with Dear so and so, etc.

Of course I didn’t notice this mistake for a couple of weeks because it just goes out automatically each time someone signs up for my marketing newsletter, something that happens almost 500 times per week.

What I did notice was that more people than usual were unsubscribing from the marketing ezine. Hmm! This prompted me to review the individual messages and correct the error. In the process I found a couple more ways to increase my conversion rates and sales.

If you haven’t done so already, sign up and take a look at the autoresponder series. I can’t share the exact numbers with you but let’s say I’ve doubled sales in the last couple of weeks.

Here’s the link to the site’s free marketing stuff page
Free Marketing Resources
and the direct link to sign up for free marketing guide and the autoresponder series
Get the Free Marketing Guide
– Charlie Cook