Making money by giving something away is quite counter intuitive; however, many key truths in life are (I’m looking at you, chinese finger-traps). I think this is especially true in email marketing because the focus is so much more about building relationships rather than the immediate sale.

In email marketing, the people on your list have already done you a favor by signing up for it, and on top of that, they feel like they’ve gone out of their way by reading the subject line and opening your email. So what do they get out of all of that?

If all they get is you asking even more from them (buy this, register for that) expect your engagement and response rates to be disappointing. If you give them some great content, something that is useful for them, you can naturally expect your engagement rates to be high and grow steadily.

If you’re not giving something away, you’re leaving money on the table.

In my business we’re happy to give away some of our best pearls of wisdom right from the get go. Even if a client doesn’t end up working with us, they remember that we helped them and it’s far more likely that they will come back to us down the road. They’ll remember the “nice guy” a lot longer than the “salesman.”

The same goes for basically any business. The ice cream shop lets you have free samples, bloggers give away professional advice on basically every topic under the sun, even drug dealers realize this very important aspect of building business. Giving away your product can be one of the most effective ways of building your business.

“I don’t believe it” You say? That’s fine, it’s still true though, because of this one fact: It’s far easier to leverage strong relationships into a bottom line than anything else. And little else builds strong relationships like giving something away and not asking for anything in return. Your only other option is what essentially amounts to “yelling louder” and nobody likes being yelled at.

The short story: If you’re not giving something away, you’re leaving money on the table.