No matter your age and regardless of your niche or business model, if you are to be successful at online marketing, you must focus on list building.
Direct Marketing Association research shows that a smart email marketing plan delivers $43 for every $1 spent. To take advantage of this powerful marketing tool, list building beginners should practice the following 7 top tips.
1 – Make Your Opt-In Freebie Valuable, and Worth Paying For
In return for an email list, you are going to be giving away something. Make sure that your opt-in bribe is something that people would happily pay for, then give it away for free. This will raise your conversions, improve your level of integrity in the eyes of your subscribers, and make your list members anxious to open every email you send.
2 – Use a Reliable Email Autoresponder Service
AWeber, GetResponse and MailChimp are well-known and respected email autoresponder services. Stick with one of those 3 (or another experienced and popular provider) to make the process as comfortable for you and your subscribers as possible.
3 – Remove All Distractions From Your Squeeze Page
Your landing page, also called a squeeze page, needs to provide traffic with just one of 2 choices – opt into your email list or leave. You need to remove any side columns, headers, footers and everything else on the page. Your capture page needs to have nothing more than your opt-in form and text.
4 – Just Ask For an Email Address
Remove all of the fields in your opt-in box requirements except the email address. This has been proven time and again to increase conversions. The more hoops you ask a potential subscriber to jump through to claim your opt-in bribe, the greater the chance that person will leave without joining your list.
5 – Attract the Right Subscribers
Successful list builders have a laser targeted focus, not a broad one. You are not trying to get everyone on the Internet onto your list. What you are looking for are those people in a very specific niche market that have some problem that you can solve.
For example, your email marketing efforts will be much easier and more successful if you target single mom’s over 40 trying to start a profitable online business for the first time, rather than targeting anyone that wants to build an Internet business.
6 – Start Now
List building may intimidate you. Learning how to use your autoresponder service may seem difficult at first. You may be putting off creating an opt-in freebie to exchange for email addresses. Many seasoned and wealthy Internet marketers say the number one mistake they made with their online business was not building a list right away. Start today, not tomorrow, and your list building efforts will be rewarded much more quickly.
7 – Don’t Start Selling Right Away
I know you want to start making money from your list. However, your first 2 or 3 emails should all be quality content only, no sales pitches. Follow-up your opt-in bribe with a “Thank You” email that surprises your subscribers with another high-quality and free piece of content. Follow that email up with at least 1 or 2 more problem-solving, solution producing emails. Only then should you start thinking about trying to make a sales pitch.
