How to Get 90% of the People You Email to Click Through to Your Product

Chris Anderson is fed up with being marketed to, as is David Meerman Scott.

I've been marketing for the last month now and getting something like a 90% clickthrough rate to my website. How? Great minds think alike: by doing the exact same things that David lists on his site:

1. Find out about your target.
2A. Be interesting to them and comment on their work.
2B. Or write something interesting to them that's not about your work.

In my case, I've been all 2A. I'm contacting people in my field and simply leaving comments on their posts, their work, or their forums with a linkback to my new company's site. My comments are anything from "nice post" to asking a specific question about what they've done.

The site is relevant to the people I'm contacting, and around 90% of the time they click on the link to find out who I am or what it is. Simple as that. Don't forget that the link's title is also something that might interest them, and I'm not even trying to sell it; they just want to know. Plenty of them do more than just click. They ask me for more information or want to sign up to my newsletter or beta test my product.

This is damn slow; only a dozen or so people reached per day. But it doesn't matter. Because if just a few of these people become my customers, I expect them to use the product and start spreading the word. Why?

That's really rule 0 of the above process: have something great to sell.

Yehuda