As the internet is evolving, we tend to see lots of "Sign Up for Our Newsletter", "Grab a Coupon by Entering your eMail address", etc. These tactics are known as list building. This is used for email marketing. E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund raising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.
List Building is a form of marketing where you need to capture your readers attention to voluntarily give you their email address and any other necessary information. You do not want to just scour the internet for email address and send out emails to that particular list. The reason for this would be considered spam.
Spam refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. This means most users will not even look at your email. Spam is happening everyday and every minute while we surf the internet. We can not stop it. But you can capture potential prospects.
Why would someone join your list?
The only reason someone would give up their email address and name is if they are receiving something beneficial in return. For example: a free report, coupon, training, newsletter training, etc. The list can go on. But you also need to think what will differentiate you from others. What are you providing that someone else is already doing and maybe at a better pace/style? You need to create uniqueness as to why you want the user to provide you their email.
The internet these days is getting bigger and more complex. User are hesitant to provide their email address to someone they do not know. There are even users that have multiple email addresses for specific occasions. For example as myself, I have several email addresses; one is strictly for family, business, paypal, opt-in lists, etc. Only certain emails I will only look at on a day to day basis as well. So you will need to think "Why Would I Join my List?"
Let's get into list building basics.
List building is a very simple but time consuming effort. You need to think of a problem, give them a reason why, and think of the future. These to me are the 3 critical or core of email marketing and list building. As you can see I have several reports that I have created and provide to users. These reports are informative at either the time of the release or for future and present use.
Why users like FREE.
I think the word itself is very important, FREE. Free just entices the mind by itself or joined with another. I tend to create a different atmosphere with the word FREE. I do not use it by itself but in association with other words to create a more enticed environment as to why it is free and its benefits.
We are always searching the internet for FREE " ". It can be wallpapers, music, services, programs, etc. We are in an age where we want everything free, even money. We just are lazy to do research and we want it now. Free brings the mind at ease since we do not have to spend anything or sacrifice anything, but in list building we need the user to sacrifice their email address.
OnlineHustlers recommends a pre page sign up, this is also known as a Squeeze Page. He simply states:
A pre page form is when your main website redirects them to a page with just the sign up form and information about the free report. I leave a link at the bottom that will let them enter the main page if they wish not to receive the free report.
If you see all my reports, they are all on squeeze pages. They are intended to collect email addresses and provide the user with beneficial information once they sign up. The squeeze page provides minimal information on what the reader will receive once they sign-up, trying not to provide too much information or too little.
The squeeze page is a great tactic when trying to grab a user's attention and letting them voluntarily provide us with their email address.
Email marketing in general is a very simple concept, but is very hard to establish a relationship and study. List building is very simple as well but hard to figure out what to setup in order to grab the user.
Your email marketing campaigns success depends on the quality of emails you send out as well as to the quality of the list of email addresses which receive your promotional emails. If you want to get the maximum benefits from your email marketing campaign you need to build a very carefully worked out email list. The list can be very impressive if it contains the email addresses of those people who are included in your target market. If not, the length of your email addresses list will not be able to help your email marketing campaign. Still, a long list of email addresses is very important for the success of your email marketing campaign.
When you create your list you need to keep in mind 3 things or concepts:
- Customer Trust
- Product which users NEED
- Attempting to Make Friends with Other Opt-Ins
Making friends with others that already have a great Opt-In list is very beneficial. This especially holds true if it's someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people who have the experience in opt-in list building and experience is still the best teacher. While there are countless articles and e-books available on the subject of opt-in list building online, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust.
Using others to attract users to your free report is very beneficial it cuts out the hard work of grabbing miscellaneous users. It is an incentive to the user or reader to download your report.
Giving out free reports needs to be very unique. As you can see from my reports, there is not one out there that is just like mine. Each of the reports are also written by me and not by an elancer, giving its uniqueness.
A blog on list building writes:
You may be giving away a free report, if you’re list building with your niche in mind. How does the report solve your potential list member’s problem? Let’s say your niche is gardening, for instance. Perhaps the report is about how you can keep deer from eating your plants. What’s your unique angle on this? Don’t give too much away, of course, but you might write something like: “Report proves that you can keep deer happy and away from your plants, without bother.†There. The plants are intact, the deer are happy, and you won’t have to go to much trouble to keep things that way. That’s your value proposition. Sign up free and learn… Your unique value proposition should probably be your headline.
You probably seen so many FREE eBooks out there, and the internet is saturated with it. By providing UNIQUE reports or ebooks (I prefer reports) you can grab the attention of a user more. Seeing that the vast internet does not have your report or is saturated with your report means you are ahead of other marketers, possibly even the gurus!
It is important for any and every online business to have a list for success in the internet. It may not always be successful for everyone to have the perfect list.
