On Building A Mailing List...
All the pros and the internet millionaires know that the money
is "In The List." It doesn't matter what your primary product or
service is that you are trying to sell. Even if your business is
offline such as a flea market, kiosk or gift store, you still
should be building an opt-in email list of customers and
prospects. If you are not, then you are losing money... maybe a
LOT of money. You need to be building your own opt-in email
mailing list.
I'm not talking about "Spam" or Unsolicited bulk email. This is
a list of people who have willingly given you their name and
email address and requested that you send them information from
time to time about your products or services.
What if you had 10,000 people on your list? Or even 20,000 that
were interested in your products - you could send out a sales
email offering something you know they are already interested in
- Wow - do you see the potential power here? I know people who
have well over 100,000 people on their opt-in lists. And they
can punch one button and the email goes out to everybody. Sounds
great right? But how do you go about getting that list in the
first place?
I'll show you the tools we use to build our list in a minute,
but first I want you to understand the power that this can give
you - a list like this can be extrememly lucrative. Let me give
you an example:
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you sell dolls
online. Ok? Bear with me here. So you have targeted all the doll
buyers and collectors that you can find and you are marketing to
them. You've done your research and you know what your target
market is looking for and you've created an offer that appeals
to them. And when they come to your website they see a box that
says:
"Free Report Reveals how to tell if your doll collection is
worth a fortune. Enter your name and email address and the
report will be sent instantly to you!"
So if you have properly targeted your market, many of those
people at your website will be very interested in this. They
want to know if they are sitting on a fortune, right?
So they are going to give you their name and email address and
another person is added to your list. (Your autoresponder will
automatically send them the free report right to their email and
add them to your list) More on autoresponders in a minute. How
fast your list grows depends on how attractive your offer is,
how targeted the traffic is that is visitng your website and how
many people you can get to your website.
If your primary business is offline, you should ask all your
customers at the time of check out what their email address is
and if they would like to receive special offers and/or
discounts via email. Also, you could do a drawing and have them
enter the drawing simply by giving you their email and
requesting to be added to your list! You could also create a
sales flier and have it placed throughout the store that tells
them how to get a free report about doll collecting sent to
their email. They take it home, go to your website online and
BAM! they are added to your list. Does this get your brain
thinking? I hope so!
A NOTE ABOUT TARGETING YOUR MARKET: If the people that are at
your website are interested in fishing poles and you are selling
dolls - don't be upset when they leave without buying - they're
not interested! Find people that are already interested in what
you have to offer. If people are not interested in the product
or service you are offering, FIND SOMETHING THEY ARE INTERESTED
IN AND SELL THAT TO THEM! Getting tons of traffic doesn't do you
a bit of good if those people are not interested in what you
have. Give me a little bit of highly targeted traffic over tons
of generic traffic any day!
Power Tip: Don't pick out your product first. Don't make your
mind up that "you are going to sell a specific product." Find a
group of people that need a particular product, or information
or whatever. Then find the product they need - the product they
are looking for, and sell that to them.
Ok, imagine if you sell weight loss products and you have worked
really hard and you now have a list of 15,000 subscribers to
your opt-in email list. Now, lets say you just got your hands on
the latest greatest weight loss product - What do you do with
it? Well, if you haven't been building your own list, you have
to try to market the product somehow... But you've been building
your list of people interested in diet products so you know
exactly what to do - you send out a sales email with this
special offer and then sit back and watch the sales roll in.
That's the dream right? Well it happens all the time. In fact
that is the model for online success. This is not something I
came up with - this is the secret that the people making big
money online use. And if done right, it works - BIG TIME.
List Management
Now, however you decide to manage your list is up to you. There
are a lot of programs and software you can use. But I am going
to show you what I use to manage my list.
First of all, this can all be automated for you. Can you imagine
if you had to send out 1000 emails? 5,000? 15,000? everytime you
wanted to mail your list? This would take you forever. Of course
you don't do it manually - you use a list management system. You
simply create ONE email - then hit the send button and that
email is sent to everyone on you list at the same time! Plus,
you don't have to manually sign them up either, that's automated
too.. you just get them to enter their name and email address in
a form on your website and they are automatically added to your
list!
There are several programs that will do this for you - I have
listed some free ones in the resource section - If you have to
start out with a free one than so be it- that's better than not
doing it at all - but the free ones have ads attached to your
email and you will lose sales as a result - I don't recommend
them.
I've tried a few different list managers and one stands out
above the rest. It's economical and it's the best one I am aware
of. It's called Aweber and it makes managing your email list
easy. I suggest you get your mailing list started right away
because I can pretty much guarantee that your competitors are
already trying to get your customers on THEIR mailing list.
Aweber also has lots of tutorials and helpful hints that make
getting your list up and going a snap.
ONE LAST THOUGHT:
I highly recommend that you offer a free report or some free
information that relates directly to what your customers are
looking for. That will give you the highest chance of adding new
people to your list. For example, if you sell security equipment
and everyone coming to your site is looking for security
equipment - offering a free ebook on how to collect beanie
babies is NOT going to work! Make sure what you offer is
targeted and relevant.