Internet Marketing Discounts: How To NOT Market Like Nine Inch Nails (And Why)

When you start a new email marketing campaign, you may want to invite subscribers from previous lists to subscribe. That can be perfectly okay.

Or it can be a disaster. Cross-promotion is a bit like a minefield: you have to step carefully.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has impressed us in the past with his fan-focused, grassroots, defy-The-Man marketing. But when his campaign recently invited subscribers to a new list, someone wasn't watching their feet carefully enough.

To keep yourself on solid ground when cross-promoting your lists, you'll need this guide. Follow it, and the only explosion you'll see will be the size of your list.

Your Guide to Cross-Promotion

We recently got this email from Nine Inch Nails. When we clicked the call to action, this is what we saw:

In some ways, this process is handled well. In other ways, not so much. Here's what to take away for your own cross-promotions - and what to leave behind.

Do explain how the new campaign relates to the old. The NIN email explains how Reznor is involved with The Social Network, so readers understand why they're being approached as potential subscribers.

Don't send to an old list. We've been signed up since 2008, but haven't actually received an email before this. Sending out of the blue like this is a no-no for three reasons:

Old lists contain a surplus of zombie addresses. That's going to depress the sender's deliverability.
People who never got a message might not remember signing up and report this as spam.
If messages were sent before we joined, faithful readers are still getting this request out of nowhere. They may resent the request after a long period of silence.

If you haven't sent to subscribers in awhile, but you'd still like to send them the invite, try these techniques to reactivate them.

Do explain what your new campaign is for. Present enough information in your email to intrigue readers, then when they click through to the landing page, explain the rest.

No one's going to sign up for your campaign if they don't understand what it is. Curiosity won't make people compromise their inbox, so it's on you to make your offer clear.

Don't hedge about the fact that you are asking them to subscribe to other emails. You'll only benefit from setting correct expectations. This email promises a free download. The strings attached aren't evident until the landing page.

And that could be forgivable if the wording here wasn't so chaotic and unexplained. Sign up to what? Will I start getting emails from signing up here? Are they going to flood my inbox?

Do consider offering an incentive - something you'll trade for their email address. This can win over the fence-sitters. Plus, it's always nice to say "thank you" for subscribing.

You'll want to avoid people signing up, collecting their promised prize, and immediately unsubscribing. So approach this carefully, and keep the value of your newsletter itself high!