Why Begin List Building and How Do I Start?

When people are new to Internet marketing, they often get started in the wrong direction. Sometimes, it’s the promises made of untold wealth and freedom that catches them and they wind up in a dead-end program where only the founders make any real cash. Or, they get caught up in the hours of clicking it takes to advertise on traffic exchanges which for the most part, aren’t very effective. But it’s hard to break away from the excitement and from what you’ve been told. So, if you’re one of those Internet marketing people, it’s time you realized the most important part of any Internet marketing business. If you want to succeed, build an email opt-in list.

Building a list is the most important job any Internet marketing person has. Without a list, you’re just another random person out there trying to sell something. People are sure you’re out to cheat them, and it’s hard to sell anything at all. People don’t know you, and if they can’t trust you, you won’t make much money.

You can’t ignore list building, and it should have been your first priority when you moved into the Internet marketing world. But many of us put it off and don’t give it the attention we should. We are short sighted and want immediate profits by selling, when all along an email address is a commodity more valuable than one sale, because with it you can make multiple sales to the same person.

Now that you realize the importance of having a list, the first step after deciding your niche is to buy a domain name. It should be a name that’s easy to remember and that fits your niche. For example, if you’re selling natural perfumes, your domain should have “natural perfumes” in the domain title if possible.

Then, you need a web hosting account. If you’re serious about your Internet marketing business, it’s going to grow and you’re going to need to add more than one domain to your account. So, get an account that has mySQL database availability. That will be important when it’s time to start a blog or add an affiliate program. Look into the future when choosing your hosting account, and also look for reliability. You need your website to be up 99.9% of the time.

Your next step is to get an autoresponder service. The main concern here is deliverability. Will your email arrive at its destination? With spam filters in effect today, if you don’t have a great autoresponder, your email marketing efforts won’t be very effective.

After all of this is in place, you’ll need to build your first squeeze page. But don’t worry. It’s nothing more than a few bullet points, which provide the benefits of your offer, and and opt-in form, which you get from your autoresponder service. Images of yourself or of something you’re giving away in exchange for getting people’s names and email addresses work well, too. When you’re done with this step, you upload the squeeze page, and you’re ready to build your list.

Significant Internet marketing success rests on the size and responsiveness of your list. You need to gather a group of people who know and trust you, and who are grateful for the knowledge you can give them about your niche. When they get a recommendation from you, they’re more likely to follow it. If you follow through with the steps above, you’ll have your list growing in no time. All you have to do is concentrate on sending some traffic to your page. Then, get ready for your Internet marketing to start growing by leaps and bounds.

Email Marketing: Building Rapport through an ASK Campaign

Before you even start list building and email marketing, one great tip is to set up an ASK campaign to find out what the list wants. Focus on asking and getting answers to 100 questions about whatever your interest is.

If you do this, you will be way ahead of the game and in a far better position than most marketers because you will know exactly what your market wants. When you are in that position, it makes it easy to write emails, write copy, and provide content for your list, because you know exactly what it wants.

It might seem odd, but it might be a good idea to hold off on collecting people’s names and email address in order to focus on getting as many answers to as many questions as you can within a shorter period of time. In the long run, the amount of insight that you gain into the mind of your market will more than make up for the few names that you didn’t get on your list while getting your 100 answers.

Use the answers you get from your questions to write bullet points on sales copy, headlines, and other things on your squeeze page. You now have a true window into the mind of your prospect, because with an ASK campaign, you don’t have to rely on guess work and assumptions.

If you want to use paid advertising for your ASK campaign, start by asking what they want. Then on your thank-you page you can then offer the opportunity to join your list.

Another technique is to offer a free e-course or free report on the squeeze page to get the prospect to opt-in. Then, the Thank you page say something along the lines of: “Thanks for subscribing. You’ll be getting your first lesson soon. In the meantime, what is you single biggest question about ____ topic.”

This process will help you to begin building a relationship with your niche. Then, while you are developing content based on the answers to the questions in the ASK campaign, you can also recommend products that are worthwhile to your list.

If you want to skyrocket your Internet success and income, you should take seriously the job of building a bond and rapport with your list. That is done by having personality, offering valuable content, and being trustworthy in your product recommendation. If you do those things, you will be able to make much more money in the long run, and your list will benefit much more from your email marketing as well.

At the end of the day, the ASK campaign all about selling your list what they want, as opposed to selling them what you want to sell them – which is what most people do. Don’t be like most people. Set yourself apart from the crowd.

Discover Four List Marketing Advantages that Demolish Any Excuse for Not List Building Today

With list marketing, you can do things that just aren’t possible if you aren’t engaged in list building and marketing. Your Internet business success will be greatly enhanced if you focus on list marketing and make it a central part of your business. Read on for four key advantages that make a list centered business model superior to other business models on the Internet.

One key advantage of list marketing is that you can offer the same product to people multiple times to increase your conversion percentage. If you only have a simple web page up, once the visitor leaves, you have lost the sale. The truth is that most buyers don’t buy on the first exposure, but rather usually the sale doesn’t occur until someone is exposed to a product at least 3 or 4 times at a minimum, often more times than that. That is the benefit of an email list. You have control over how much exposure a subscriber gets to the product you are promoting.

Second, instant web site traffic is one of the most powerful aspects of list marketing. The fastest way to send traffic to a page is to send an email to your list. If you have a list with thousands of people, you can literally get thousands of people to visit the web page of your choice in a matter of a few hours. And the best part is it’s free. So if there is a promotion that is ending in a few minutes, or in an hour, there is no better way to send traffic than through your email list.

Third, you can also pre-sell or warm up your list and increase the chances of conversion. If you have a product of yours or an affiliate product that you want to promote, you can send a series of messages introducing the appeal of what you want to offer without overtly selling. You also can build anticipation for it. When the product is finally released, it will be much easier to convince subscribers to buy it, because they are already anticipating it. This is very easy to do through list marketing.

And fourth, no more leaving money on the table – maximize the amount of money you can make. Traffic is expensive, so once you have it, make the most of it. To get people to your web page, you either exert time and effort or money. Wouldn’t it make sense to only have to try to work once to get a customer for life? That is what building a list does. Once you get email addresses, you don’t have write articles or use pay per click or other traffic techniques for customers anymore, because you now have them in your funnel. Save yourself the effort and get the customers’ email address on their first visit, then you don’t have to use any traffic techniques for that customer.

8 Tips for Writing Effective Email Copy

Learning to write effective email copy is essential to your list building success. While you want to provide your subscribers with valuable information and resources, at the end of the day, the purpose of a list is to profit from it. And if you can’t write email copy effectively, you won’t be selling anything.

To get on the path to writing effective email copy, here are 8 tips.

Personalize

It helps to use the customer’s name in the email and sometimes in the subject line (don’t overdo it though). When a person sees their name, they feel more of a personal connection and will be more likely to be responsive to your email.

Write the Way You Speak

Use easy to understand English when writing email copy. It’s nice if you have a big vocabulary, but don’t try to impress your subscribers with it. Write the way you would talk to an old friend. Try to be as friendly and as personable as you can when you write.

Write Passionate Emails

You can’t see your customer when you write emails, so be sure to put some extra feeling in email copy. Be enthusiastic. You want to catch the attention of the reader and stay as far from boring them as possible.

Write to One Person

Imagine the ideal prospect and write your email to that person. No matter how many people are reading your messages, each person who reads them reads them as one individual. Writing as if you are writing to one person will increase the impact of the message on each individual.

Keep it Short Buddy

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs can be as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.

Don’t be Wordy

Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make sure it flows. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.

Use Action Verbs

Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.

Use Compelling Subheadings

Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.

3 Keys to Success with Email List Marketing

If you want to learn about email list marketing, this post will offer a few helpful tips. Using a combination of trust, specials, and short reports will quickly lead you down the path of success. Now I’ll cover each point in bit more detail.

Gain Their Trust

One thing you have to do is gain the trust of your subscribers. If your subscribers don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. The way to gain their trust is to give them valuable information. Don’t try to sell them something every chance you get. You actually have to make an effort to refer them to valuable content. And when you do recommend products, be honest. In the long run, your honesty will pay off because people like to buy from people they trust.

Offer Them Specials

Offer specials to your subscribers. When you give people special treatment and go out of your way to please them, they feel indebted to you and they like you more. When you list feels they owe you and when they like you, they will be more likely to buy. Also, a discount obviously makes your product less expensive, so that will increase the number of buyers. And the feeling of being in a special club helps as well, so be sure to mention that the discount is only for list members. And most importantly, make sure you mean it.

Create Short Reports

Another way to use email list marketing effectively is to create short reports to sell to your list. This is a little used method that gives you a taste of product creation without having to commit too much. You can create a short 15-20 page report and sell it your list for $10, or whatever price you think is appropriate. You can create a product a month this way pretty easily. As your list grows, this will be an easy way to make quick money. Once you have a number of reports completed, you can also offer a package deal to get them all for a significantly discounted price.

Next Page »