Perry’s books and courses are basically how I picked up Adwords and Online Marketing, so I was more than stoked to be part of the first 4 Man Intensive that wasn’t held in his home in Chicago. This was also the first 4 Man Intensive where Perry made  room 4 observers. And I flew to Hong Kong to spend a weekend with Perry and the rest of the international crew.

What is the ’4 Man Intensive’?

Held over two full days, the 4 Man Intensive is essentially a ‘grilling session’ for 4 business owners and 4 ‘observers’.

Each of the business owners voluntarily place themselves under the ‘hot seat for half a day each where every aspect of their online and offline sales funnel is pulled apart and torn to shreds.

Expertly led by renowned Internet Marketing expert and Adwords guru, Perry Marshall, business owners invariably walk away with strategies, tips and advice that can potentially 2x (if not more) their business.

The attendees were:

• A German who designs and manufactures electronics in Thailand
• An Australian who runs a specialized Shipping Business
• A Japanese marketing consultant
• An American in Barcelona, who is a seminar promoter and info-marketer who sells in three different niches

The observers were:

• Myself, a german who is doing Internet Marketing for an Australian Non profit
• An Irishman, based in Thailand, and ex-’4 Man Intensive’ participant
• A Scotsman, based in Thailand, who is advisor to International Aid & Development agencies
• a London born Asian Australian,  Google Adwords Consultant

For starters it was a blast to go to Hong Kong and explore the city, but I enjoyed meeting with amazing people even more. It is unreal how much creativity is out there and what kind of business people have built.

Each day we looked at 2 different businesses and how they can be improved. One of the attendees wanted to start Online Marketing to build his business, but at the end he decided it would be better for him to focus on some other strategies. It was pretty amazing to see an Internet Marketer giving that sort of advice.

I also liked Perry’s perspective on things, the insights he gained about people, businesses and structures by asking the right questions. And to keep asking and rephrasing the questions until he helped people process why they actually came here. So often people have preconceived ideas of what they should do, that they can’t see what they need to do to see change.

All in all it was a great weekend that gave me insights into a lot of businesses, and I hope that I can incorporate some of that into what I do now.

I decided to change it up a bit and play around with Mailchimp a bit more. To be honest I was getting a bit bored by the user interface vertical response is offering. And Mailchimp is just a lot more fun to use.

What I knew for a while, that the open rate with Mailchimp is a bit lower than with VR proofed to be true.

I sent out an email to 205 people, and had 39 bounces to start with. From the remaining 166 emails I had 67 opens (40.4%) and 99 people “didn’t open” the email at all. (I know that this stat only works when people have a setting turned on that lets their mail client download emails. If they don’t the email appears to be unopened).

So what I did is I sent out another email to the same 205 contacts asking if anyone didn’t get it. Instead of people telling me they didn’t get my email, which is fair enough, I did get 6 people responding that they did get the first email, even though on the report it showed that they didn’t open it which brings my opens up to 73.

So really the reports work to a certain degree. My guess is that you can bring down the 48% unopened emails to maybe 20%, or even more.

It is hard to proof really, but just a good reminder that even though reports are helpful, they are not really that reliable…

…but I guess we knew that all along.