Why You Need to Make List Building Your Number One Business Priority
Back in the early days of the Internet, marketing to your email list was the easiest way to drive engagement while selling your products and services. Email marketing was effective 10 years ago as well, and even as recently as 5 years ago.
Today, despite the massive changes the World Wide Web has seen, email marketing still delivers the greatest return on investment of any marketing efforts you can make.
This is why you absolutely must be prioritizing list building is a part of your business. The people on your email list or newsletter have told you it is okay to market to them. They are practical begging you to provide them with solutions and answers to the problems and challenges in their life, and they are happy to pay you money in return.
However, you have to do this the right way.
This means providing real value. It also means remembering that your email list is a collection of real people with real problems, and they are looking to you for help.
So when you prioritize building your email list, you help others as well as yourself.
That list is yours. If you change businesses or encounter some technical problem which shuts down your website, you can keep in touch with your valuable list simply by sending an email.
Why is that important? In 2015 more than 2 out of 3 web surfers chose email as their preferred way for you to get in touch with them. This is just more proof that effectively serving your audience, and growing your business, means making building your list a top priority.
Is Your Opt-In Freebie Enticing Enough?
Would you opt into your own list?
In other words, is your freebie or opt in bribe valuable enough for someone to trade their email address for it? Unfortunately, this is one of the most common mistakes email marketers make – not making it worthwhile for people to subscribe.
Think about your audience, your marketplace. What are the struggles they are having on a day-to-day basis? The people in your niche lay awake at night worrying about problems and issues that they want to resolve. What are those issues? What are those problems?
That is what you should be considering when you create a freebie report or download to build your list.
You have probably seen the research that says the average web surfer is greeted by hundreds, and in some cases even thousands, of marketing messages each day. That means your free gift has to cut through all that clutter and stop that web surfer dead in his or her tracks.
Don’t worry, this does not mean writing a 50 page e-book or making a 20 video presentation. You’re not focusing on quantity here but rather extremely high quality.
A simple 1 page checklist that solves problems, answers questions and is easy to consume can be a lifesaver to the people in your marketplace. A short 2 or 3 page report recommending the tools and resources you use to run a successful online business can provide a lot of value as well.
Just make sure that your free download, PDF or video is worthwhile to the people in your market. When it is, you will build your email list quickly, driving engagement and building strong relationships. That is building your email list the right way.
Is Your Email Marketing Targeting the Right Subscribers?
The best fishermen don’t cast a wide net.
They target one particular type of fish. They learn the mating and feeding patterns of that fish. They know when to fish, where to fish, what type of bait to use, and accordingly, they drastically improve the amount of fish they catch.
That is what you need to do in your email list building efforts.
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.
This is the way that you target the “right” people to build your list. When you focus your efforts on a group of people with those problems and concerns that you know how to solve, you build a powerful symbiotic relationship with your audience. You benefit because they benefit from your knowledge.
That is why your opt-in bribe should deliver extreme value, but also be targeted to a very specific prospect. 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.
Don’t make the mistake of throwing a wide net.
Target a smaller, focused audience in a field you know a lot about. It is easier for you to solve the problems of your marketplace if this is your approach. It also builds real relationships, as you can identify with the people on your list. That makes your email subscribers more loyal, your ability to solve their problems simpler, and sales automatic.
Make Things Easy for Them
In this series you are learning some of the mistakes you should avoid when building your email list. Believe it or not, a lot of marketers work very hard and long on building their lists, but they miss out on one important point – making it simple and obvious to subscribe!
You may think that this is not a problem for you. Still, why not try the following experiment? Ask some friends or family members to check out your website or squeeze page. Tell them to be very honest with you in critiquing the email newsletter sign-up process.
You may find that actually subscribing to your list is not straightforward.
Are you asking for too much information? Is your call to action hidden in too much text? Do you ask people to “Sign up to Our Newsletter” instead of saying “Get Your Free Gift Here”?
If you remember back in the first email in this series, you learned how important it is to prioritize list building in your daily marketing efforts. All of that hard work can be for naught if you don’t make it obvious about how someone subscribes to your newsletter.
In short, tell them exactly what to do, and exactly what they will get when they subscribe. Do so in a clear and obvious manner. Make your opt-in box or form big and easy to spot.
One great way to make it crystal clear how to subscribe to your list is to provide multiple opportunities. You should not just have one small list building call to action at the end of every one of your blog posts. Plug-ins make it easy to offer header and footer opt in boxes, pop-ups, text links and other multiple calls to action on each page of your website.
This guarantees your audience has a chance at receiving the value rich, problem-solving opt-in freebie you created. This makes them happy because of a problem you solve with your opt-in bribe, while also building a strong relationship.
The Perfect Sales to Value Email Marketing Ratio
Do your list subscribers cringe when they see you have sent another email? If so, it is probably because you are “selling” too much, and not providing enough free value. It is easy for this to happen, since your primary goal is probably to make a profit with your business.
However, the opposite also happens. That’s right, you may not be selling frequently enough! If you are scared to send promotional emails, the bottom line is you are not serving your list properly.
Don’t believe me? Check this out.
In 2008 Pat Flynn was marketing an online course. He did all his selling on his website, in a laid-back manner. He began building a list (way too late, according to him) but never marketed to that list through emails. He did offer tons of value time and again, but never try to sell anything in his emails.
Eventually, he began receiving emails from his list members, begging him to give them a buying opportunity through email. He now promotes through his lists, and has built a multibillion-dollar online business as a product developer, published author and podcast.
A long list of successful and well-known Internet marketers have told the same story about their businesses.
The lesson here? Find that perfect ratio between providing free value and selling in your emails, and don’t be scared to introduce your list to valuable, high quality promotions.
Your audience definitely wants you to give them valuable, free information in your emails. There is no doubt about it. However, when you solve problems for your marketplace, they want to give back in some way.
This is known as the Law of Reciprocity. If you constantly give value without providing your list members a way to “pay you back” by offering them a high value buying proposition, you are doing them, and yourself, a disservice.
