Do you have an email list?
List building is an integral part of any online business. Just as how brick and mortar businesses keep record of their previous customers, the online entrepreneur has to collect the information of his visitors so that he can contact them again later on.
Are you ready to build a highly profitable list in your online business?
What is a list, exactly?
Basically, it’s short for email marketing list or email autoresponder list. These emails are the contact information of visitors who come to your site who are looking for specific information on your niche topic.
In order to build a list, you will need to have an email autoresponder set up. The two most common autoresponders in the market are:
-Get response (www.getresponse.com)
-Aweber (www.aweber.com)
It is compulsory for anyone who wishes to start an online business to get an autoresponder account. This will be used to manage your subscribers and mass email your list with offers and information of interest.
Fortunately, these autoresponders come in different packages for big and small entrepreneurs, so choose your desired package wisely.
Once you have an autoresponder account set up, you’ll have to set up a business system for collecting leads or subscribers, which I will detail in The basics of list building.
One of the most common question asked by new online marketers is:
“Do I Have To Build A List?”
The truth is, there are many ways to make money online. Some make money through blogging, which involves getting readers hooked onto your blog content and wanting to come back everyday to read new stuff. While others dabble with e-commerce or drop-shipping.
However, if you are in the business of information marketing, it is highly recommended that you build an email list.
Why is that?
With an email list, not only can you continuously build rapport with your subscribers, you can also offer them products of interest. Traffic that comes and is not captured is a waste. People are looking for specific information and they will leave forever once they have found out. However, if you manage to capture their emails, you can continue to provide value and turn them into your loyal customers or followers.
One more good reason – With an email autoresponder, you can automate emails so that new subscribers will automatically be funneled through a series of emails which will lead to a sale eventually. Can you say passive income?
So how do you start building a list, exactly?
You will first need to set up your list funnel. It typically consists of 3 components:
Landing page or Squeeze Page
Free Gift or “Bribe”
Opt in box
The
landing page is a simple one page website which consists of a
headline, sub headline, pitch & benefits and call to action. See It Live Here
The headline has to be eye-catching and bolded to immediately get your reader’s attention. The sub headline will reinforce the message of the headline.
The purpose of the page is to “bribe” a visitor to enter his name and email in exchange for a free gift. This could be an e-book, e-course or weekly newsletter.
The benefits are meant to explain what the reader would get from this free gift and to improve sign up rates.
Finally, in the call to action, you inform the reader that they must enter their name and email to get the free gift.
The place where the reader enters his contact information is known as the “opt in box”, which can be obtained from to email autoresponder host website. Autoresponders like Getresponse offer easy customizations for opt-in boxes to make boxes suit your site layout easier.
Alternatively, you can choose to put your opt in box in your blog or website to collect subscribers. The choice is entirely yours but landing pages often have higher opt in rates because visitors only have less choices – Opt in or don’t as compared to blogs.
Voila! You’ve just set up your list building system!
A word about Traffic:
Now that you’ve set up for list building funnel, the next important part of building a huge email list is traffic generation.
You see, list building is pretty much a math game. The more people you send to your website or landing page, the more probability someone would opt into your list to get your free gift. Now that we’ve agreed on that, let’s have a look at some nifty traffic generation techniques
First up we have article submission.
This is the bread and butter of drawing traffic. By submitting articles to article directories such as EzineArticles (www.ezinearticles.com) and GoArticles (www.goarticles.com), you can draw a steady stream of readers into your website.
You can also consider starting a blog to gain readership. Post articles of value related to your niche and at the end of blog posts, link to your landing page, offering them a free gift as a kind gesture for following your blog. If you are good at SEO, you can draw massive organic search traffic to your blog or landing page as well.
Google advertising is difficult for landing pages, and it won’t get approved easily. Here’s a better way – use Facebook advertising to get followers to “Like” your fan page. The fan page can serve as a platform for your followers to interact and from there the possibilities are endless. You can either send them to your opt in page or put an opt in box on your fan page if you are web programming savvy.
Here’s another way to draw traffic fast.
Post interesting YouTube videos on topics related to your niche. Make it as interesting as possible for it to go viral.
In the description of your videos, provide a brief description and include a link to your landing page to download a free gift such as an e-book. That way, you can leverage on the power of word of mouth to reach out to a wider target audience.
The key is, pick one traffic generation technique, get good at it and move on to the next one. That way, in no time you’ll be swimming in a sea of subscribers!
Do you want to build your list at lightning speed?
If you are on a shoestring budget, organically building your list from free traffic methods are the way to go.
However, if you have some spare cash or have set a marketing budget for yourself, consider speeding up your list building process by leveraging on systems, which will help you grow it faster.
That is the only way you can truly bring your business to the next level. Here’s a few great ideas for speeding up your list building process.
-Consider buying leads from reputable sources.
Places like GetResponse sell qualified leads which are automatically opted into your autoresponder and if you have a good email series to funnel them through, you can definitely turn them into your long term customers.
-Pay for solo mailings.
Consider paying other marketers a fee to mail your landing page to their list. It can save you hundreds of hours trying to get subscribers the normal way.
-Outsource traffic generation.
Higher ghostwriters to blog for you and draw traffic to your landing page. This option can be cheaper than you think.
-Adopt the 80/20 principle.
Also known as the Pareto’s Principle, it states that 80% of our results spur from 20% of our efforts and 20% of our results from 80% of the effort. Thus, identify which 20% of the effort is helping you grow your list fast and put in more steam into that. Eliminate the useless stuff!
Remember, if you think big, so will the size of your list be. If you think small, the same goes for your list size.
Final Thoughts
The ability of your list to make money is not just determined by size, but also by the quality of your subscribers. It is therefore important that you nurture and treat your list well.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, the same way having a huge list doesn’t happen in an instant. However, if you diligently practice these list building methods, it is 100% that you will be bringing in streams of hot subscribers into your email list.
The best way for success in list building is by eliminating what fails to work and trying new stuff to see what really works.
Once you have found what works best for your business, replicate and multiply your efforts and in no time, you’ve built yourself a solid business empire streaming with thousands of followers.
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