15 Email Marketing & List Building Tips
Building a list can be a profitable benefit for most any business regardless of whether you are promoting other peoples products, your own products or even your own offline business. It can be much more cost effective than standard paid methods of advertising and is an excellent way to present yourself with credibility which can help build a loyal customer base and increase your businesses profits.
The goal of effective email marketing is to build a responsive, targeted opted-in list of subscribers. Once you have a list filled with subscribers that look to you as an expert in your field and trust you and the information you provide, it is only natural they should also trust your product or service recommendations.
Everybody tells you to “build a list”, “the money’s in the list”, but often times they leave out the step by step actions you should take to build a qualified, successful list so today we’re filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Here are some important list building tips that can help you get started building a list or further enhance your current list building efforts.
1. You must provide unique, relevant and useful information. While you may get plenty of people signing up to your list, if you don’t follow this tip, they will quickly unsubscribe. By offering useful information they will want to receive, they will look forward to receive your emails.
2. Add opt-in forms to every page. These are the doorways to your newsletters. The more you have and the more visible they are, the better the odds that people will subscribe. Maximize visibility by placing in your websites hotspots. If you’re unsure of where these are, you can go by Googles recommendations for adsense placement.
3. Make your opt-in forms user friendly. The more information you request, the fewer people that will subscribe. For most list building purposes, a subscribers name and email address will be sufficient.
4. Have a privacy policy. It’s important to let your subscribers know exactly what they can expect from being subscribed to your list. This will go a long ways on cutting down on spam reports. Let your potential subscribers know how frequently they can expect to receive your newsletters, what kind of information they can expect, how they can unsubscribe at any time and whether or not you will be sharing their information with 3rd parties (I would suggest not to share). If you don’t already have a privacy policy for this… privacy policy templates
5. Show potential subscribers a sample newsletter. This is a great way to let people see in advance what kind of emails they can expect to receive and if it meets the criteria of #1, you should expect an immediate increase in subscribers.
6. Create an archive of previous newsletters. This helps create web content for the search engines which can help bring in even more targeted traffic if you use basic keyword research in seo optimization when writing. Don’t forget to add an opt-in box on each page.
7. JV with other publishers. Once you build your list to a respectable level you can look for other newsletters which compliment yours. Be sure and sign up to their lists yourself first and make sure it is something you would be comfortable recommending to your readers and that you are in compliance with your privacy policy. After you are certain that it is a good source for your readers, contact the other list owner and explain why you feel your lists compliment each other and why each of your readers could benefit from an introduction and recommendation by the other. This is a point where both parties can really start growing their lists exponentially.
8. Give away valuable bonuses. Valuable doesn’t have to mean expensive. You can create these yourself or outsource them at Rent-A-Coder or other job outsourcing board. A gift is a great way to get someone to join your list but by sprinkling a few freebies throughout the year and letting them know well in advance what upcoming freebies are in the works is a great way to keep them on your lists.
9. Ask for referrals. After many years in the rent-to-own industry, one method that brought in more business than practially all the others combined was simply treating the customers well, building loyalty and asking then to recommend us to a friend. Your list of subscribers is no different. Provide great information, the occassional freebie, build trust and loyalty and ask them to recommend their friends to your newsletter link.
10. Offer republishing rights. Webmasters are always in search of great content so allow them to republish your newsletters as long as they are not modified in any way. Article directories have been doing this for a while now to get more exposure and there’s no reason for it not to work for your quality newsletters as well.
11. Include a sign up link in all of your newsletters. You may be thinking why since they are already signed up but asking your readers to forward your newsletter to a friend and providing a sign up link can bring in some extra subscribers plus it’s important if you are allowing others to republish.
12. Build a squeeze page. You already have your opt-in forms on every page but using a squeeze page can be a very powerful tool. It’s basically a miniture sales letter vs a small opt-in form where you have an opportunity to really let people know about the free gift you are offering and what kind of information they can expect. You can even use ppc advertising like Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN to drive targeted traffic to it. Use a tool like WordTracker to pinpoint the most cost effective keywords to target.
13. Add a testimonial. While this has been mainly reserved for sales pages, adding a testimonial or two from someone who has appreciated receiving your newsletter can add valuable social proof. Written testimonials are good, audio along with a picture is better, a video testimonial is best. Don’t be afraid to perodically let your list know that you would appreciate any feedback, good or bad and when you receive praise, contact that person back to ask for their permission to use it.
14. Blog, blog, blog. This is a great medium for staying in touch and personal with your subscribers. Some email marketers actually use blogs as their archives and posts as their newsletters and when mailing their list, they write just enough to get them interested in clicking through to their blog. I would recommend sending the entire newsletter and just republishing on your blog if that’s how you choose to archive because every unnecessarily required click will lose a percentage of readers.
15. Get out there and socialize. You can post on other blogs, join related community forums, tweet your newsletter headlines and basically use all other forms of social networking to help yourself stand out as an expert in your field and get people wanting to subscribe for more. Don’t be spammy but post thoughtful, helpful information and make yourself available to all who seek your help and they will flock to you and become loyal subscribers.
Unofficial Tip #16 – Use a trusted autoresponder service like Getresponse.
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