What is With All the Guru Retirement Emails?
Have you heard the one about the guru who said he was retiring? Yes, it’s starting to sound like a joke to many marketers who learn from those who have paved the way for our success.
It seems like it’s the trending thing to do – send out an email that says you’re leaving Internet Marketing, followed by an email that gives a last chance to buy sale, ending with a “let me clarify” email.
Why is this happening? For some, who follow in the footsteps of their competitors, it’s just a case of mimicking others to be part of the same crowd. For the rest, it’s an opportunity to make a large sum of sales right before switching gears into something else.
Growth of your business means you’ll frequently be reassessing your opportunities and pursing things that make you more money, with less effort. Some marketers have speculated that these retiring gurus are just burned out, or have made enough money already.
Make no mistake about it – they don’t believe they can ever make enough money. That’s why they run these last ditch sales and make widespread announcements that they’re going to now be doing something else.
It’s the start of a new phase of branding for them. Some of the gurus are moving away from instructional teaching because the expectations have risen by consumers and they now have to work harder to keep refund rates low and meet the needs of those who purchase their products.
When you have more marketers entering this niche to teach, it cuts away at their income – and more people expect freebies and hand holding than they did five years ago. So if a marketer finds a way to outsource the development of technical tools that help marketers, like a keyword research tool they can sell, it makes sense to cash in on something like that where they retain their reputation as a leader in the IM niche, but not as much is required of them to succeed.
If a favorite guru of yours has announced that he or she is retiring, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s highly unlikely that their leave of absence will be as final as you might believe from the wording of the last email they sent out.
It’s also highly probable that the next trend you’ll see this year is the “I’m coming out of retirement just for this one quick guide because it’s something you must see” trend. And you can laugh when it happens because you’ll have known it was coming all along.
About: Melissa Ingold
Melissa Ingold is the CEO of Internet Marketing Sweetie, and she is a full-time entrepreneur with over 8 years of experience working online. She has built a successful online business through information product marketing, affiliate marketing & management, membership sites, and content marketing. Read More About MelissaFreebies
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Marko
Twitter: markozirkovich
Hi Melissa,
Yeah, it’s really hard to NOT get too cynical about it, isn’t it?
Good call on the “it’s so good, you just have to see this” ploy. Another one could be something like, “I just got bored from sipping Margaritas down in Cancun all the time, so I’m back and here’s my new product – buy, sucker!”
Maybe the best thing to do would be to immediately unsubscribe at the slightest hint of retirement. After all, once retired there shouldn’t be any e-mails coming anymore in the first place – so no risk of a loss, right?
Melissa Ingold
Twitter: imsweetie
Hi Marko,
The whole thing just amuses the heck of me to be honest, lol! But ya, if you’re retired then you don’t need a mailing list anymore right?
Thanks for the comment!
Melissa
Andreas Nurbo
I thought it was because the FTC regulations and that their BS testimonials weren’t usable anymore.
A lot of so called gurus make really crappy products which are ridiculously overpriced so they need made up testimonials.
Melissa Ingold
Twitter: imsweetie
Hi Andreas,
I think in part the new FTC guidelines do play a part in the hoopla, but I also think it seems rather extreme to go into retirement over it, lol!
All they have to do is clean up their testimonials and speak the truth, which is what they should be doing anyway. I mean it’s 2010 for goodness sakes, people are more Internet savvy now than ever before, so hype just doesn’t work like it used to.
So to me, FTC just gave them a way to play on the whole thing and move into the next phase of their business with a bang. Which, because of the way the market is now, they were planning to do anyway. Retirement just gave it a cool spin
Rob Toth
Twitter: robtoth
Hi Melissa,
First kudos as I drafted notes for a report that ties into this just for shits-and-giggles to send to my subscribers.
But to play devil’s advocate for a second… didn’t Alice just do the same thing a month ago?
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in even a degree of doubt against Alice’s reasonings, she’s a terrific individual and an even better marketer…
But to me there IS a bit of logistics in letting your 20k (or 200k or whatever) long time subscriber base know “hey I’m going in a different direction”.
Now… do you also then milk it, why not? These are your loyal fans and readers. It’s basic marketing to create a high value sale for just about any reason (it’s a rainy Tuesday, come for 25% off of our warm soups!)… so why not use this as a terrific sale opp.
The problem I would have is with retiring. That’s of course nonsense. They simply change business models or MAYBE niches. But that’s just symatics.
Anyways… I agree that it’s a trend and I have my own theories as to why (and I speak partly from experience since I also “retired” from software sales biz a year ago, “retired” from MLM 4 years ago and am “retiring” from the biz opp info market in the next 6 months, I’m sure)… but much like Alice and much like any entrepreneur … there’s a maturation period that occurs. Or maybe it’s just boredom… but we hone in our interests, passions and skill sets better.
MLM definitely doesn’t match my personality so I dumped it ages ago. Software sales annoyed me so I dumped it. And the biz opp marketplace (generally speaking) and biz opp info products don’t excite me…
So not to get too far into my own situation but the point is… it need not be some grand evil scheme or FTC rules etc.
This is an ever going cycle in every marketspace. Players come and go. Except in THIS marketspace.. we know their names and since we’re on a convenient email marketing list of theirs, we hear about their exit-strategies.
Anyways… great observation but I’d personally argue (and will do my best to do so in the report I’m writing up for the hell of it), that it’s a cycle and will continue to happen.
And just like Alice Seba, after 6 (??) years of building a strong brand and a massive followership because of her integrity and marketing prowess recently “left” and moved onto bigger things… I wouldn’t be surprised if 3, 4, 6 years from now Melissa Gold does the same thing.
IF that were to happen… would YOU announce it to your blog readers and subscribers? I don’t doubt it. Would you make a sale around it? Maybe not. I know I certainly would.
Rob Toth
RobToth.com
Melissa Ingold
Twitter: imsweetie
Hi Rob,
Yes it’s true that Alice left, she actually stepped down back in mid-August of last year and I took over. And yes, of course you would let your subs know so I get what you’re saying
But honestly, I can’t compare the way Alice left IMS to the way others have and are. First of all, Alice left in a way that’s to be admired. She just didn’t all of the sudden one day send out an email saying, “Hey, I’m retiring so why don’t you buy this. But I’m still keeping my mailing list so I can keep selling you stuff, so in a way I’m not really leaving.”
I mean ya, she put together a package of what she calls her “greatest hits”, but the decision to share it with subscribers and here on the blog was mine alone. She didn’t do it before she left, she was already long gone and asked if I would like to tell readers about it.
So to me, telling your market you’re retiring means you don’t contact them personally anymore, and you sure as heck don’t sell them stuff, lol! But the people who have come out and said they are retiring, in fact aren’t. They’ve still got their mailing list and customer lists, and you can bet they’ll be sending lots of promo emails out for the new things they’re doing, even after they’ve “retired”.
And the whole thing just seems strange to me, because if you’re “retiring” from what you’ve been doing, what gives you the right to keep emailing your lists when what they signed up for, was what you used to do before you “retired”.
I completely agree that it is a cycle for sure. No one is going to spend the rest of their life doing one thing, and that’s normal. But I do think some approaches that are being used to announce a business change have been kinda sneaky, so I don’t agree with that at all.
Thanks for your comments Rob…gotta love hashing something out
Melissa
Alice Seba
LOL…Rob, I thought the same thing when Melissa wrote this. But I decided I’m not a “guru”, so it doesn’t apply to me.
But seriously, I am not really sure about all this retirement as I don’t really follow/subscribe to many lists. I know of one “retirement”, but haven’t followed what’s going on.
With my limited knowledge of the situation, I can only say for myself is that I’m not retiring. I’m just focusing my efforts into another area of teaching and service provision. This site required more work and upkeep than I can provide at this time, so Melissa stepped up and filled the requirement quite nicely.
Like Melissa said, what gets shared with Internet Marketing Sweetie is completely her decision. I’m just lucky and grateful that she wants to share some of the things I’ve been working on.
Melissa Ingold
Twitter: imsweetie
Nope, doesn’t apply to you…in fact, I never even thought of you in this way until Rob said something. Then I was like, oh ya, lol, I guess this post will make some people think “what the heck?” But it’s all good
Nell
Twitter: casualeveryday
I thought the same thing when I read this. Sounded like what Alice did here.
I know it wasn’t aimed at her though.
I’m not on lists anymore. I just follow blogs, so I must have missed guru’s going out of business.
I don’t miss “guru’s” and it really freed up my days when I got off all the lists I used to be on.
:–)
Nell
Melissa Ingold
Twitter: imsweetie
Ya, I don’t think of what Alice did as “retiring”, she just moved onto other things that weren’t related to teaching and working in the IM niche.
I don’t really pay attention to what everyone else is doing, and I’m not on a lot of mailing lists either. But I thought it was kind of amusing to see a “retiring” trend, lol