6 Keys to Effective List Building

By:Sean Mize

One of the most important things you can do online is build your own, personal list of contacts. If you build that correctly, and build a strong relationship with them, one that contains a lot of trust, that list can really be gold mine to you on down the road.

We read so much online about how to sell more, and how to make our sales pages convert, etc, but the one thing I think is missing is good, effective information on how to build a solid list. Once you have a solid list, conversion rates aren’t really as important. You subscribers can purchase when they need your product, in their own time; you aren’t feeling pressure to get every dollar out of every visitor, because you know you can reach them again in the future.

So how do you build a quality list?

1) First you must determine your niche market. What are you promoting? Golf clubs, dog training manuals, deep-sea fishing equipment? Once you have determined your target market, you can begin to think about the best ways to send that type of targeted traffic to your site. Yahoo Overture and Google Adsense are both effective methods of sending targeted traffic to your site. Writing targeted articles and send the readers to your site is also an effective method of sending targeted traffic to your site.

2) Second, you must have a place for that traffic to go to sign up for your list when they get to your site. I prefer a squeeze page. A squeeze page is basically a web page that is optimized for collecting a visitor’s name and email address. I will usually offer some highly-valued free gift for subscribing.

3) Third, you must begin to develop a relationship with your new subscribers. Think of them as real people, not just anonymous internet names. They are real people. Write real, personal emails to your subscribers. Write as though you were writing a friend. The key here is that you want to develop a long-term relationship with your leads so they will be open to receiving communication from you for a long time to come.

4) Fourth, you must offer your list strong, useful information. They must feel like, that by opening your emails week after week, they are receiving real value. No one likes to read junk, and if you are sending them filler copy, you are sending them junk mail. Eventually, they will stop reading your emails, and certainly stop visiting your web site.

5) Fifth, once you have developed a relationship with your subscribers, then begin to recommend some of your favorite products to them. Be choosy about what you decide to promote. The products should be valuable, usable, and worth more than the sales price for them. If you create your own product, the same thing holds. Build value into everything you create, and be sure you give them everything you promise in the sales script.

6) Sixth, continue to send useful information to your list, even after you begin to send recommendations for products. Continue to nourish the relationship you developed in the first place. They must continue to see you as the expert, the one who has the answers.

Now you have it. Follow each of these steps, and you will find your list will grow on a daily basis, and you will have a productive, profitable list.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article keywords: list building, email list building, email list, email campaign

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

To subscribe to a free Ecourse on list building, click here:List Building Secrets

Sean Mize is a successful offline and online entrepreneur and marketer, and is currently writing his third book online.

Top Email Articles
1). Selling Yourself with Your Article Promotion By : Adrian Lawrence Selling Yourself with Your Article Promotion
2). email-automatic-responder By : Corey Morehouse What is a email automatic responder? If you run an online business or send a large amount of e-mail periodically you may have found if being a very tedious task. Email automatic responders called "autoresponders" eliminate this task completely. Well almost :) Email automatic responders allow you to followup automatically with any prospect or lead automatically.
3). Email Marketing is Still Hot for Small Business By : W. Dave Free How do you communicate with your customers? We all know that there's getting to be more and more online activity. How much? According to the Pew Research Center: The proportion of Americans online on a typical day grew from 36% of the entire adult population in January 2002 to 44% in December 2005. The number of adults who said they logged on at least once a day from home rose from 27% of American adults in January 2002 to 35% in late 2005.
4). Navigate More Website Activity Through Email Newsletters To Visitors By : Anton Cheranev When you own a business website, you may find if helpful to have a weekly or monthly newsletter full of useful information about your products. Newsletters can be a great way to navigate more website activity your way. Emailing weekly or monthly newsletters can be the best way to update or remind past visitors of your services or products. Extending special offers in those newsletters can generate more website traffic, purchases of services or products and possible referrals from the visitor’s friends and family.
5). Name Squeeze Pages – What Are They and Why Do You Need Them? By : Jason DeVelvis There are many terms that are used in the Internet marketing world. Some are confusing, and some are simple. Some are simple but made to sound confusing. Name squeeze is a relatively new term, but it’s a technique that has been around for quite some time.
6). Diamonds in the Spam By : Virginia Bola, PsyD There are those who turn apoplectic at the receipt of unsolicited commercial email, commonly dubbed spam. These are the same people who receive hundreds of bulk letters addressed to "Occupant" without batting an eye. Getting rid of unwanted mail means sorting through the stack to pull out the important pieces and then dumping the remainder in the trash bin.
7). Email Marketing and Opt In List Building: On Keeping Online Businesses Profitable By : Jeremiah Patton Since the advent of the information technology, the Internet had been a valuable commodity to most people. Here, they find ways on how to earn more money even without having to spend more capital on building a business.
8). Email Marketing: Affordable Internet Marketing Technique By : David Riewe Email marketing is labeled as a killer method when it comes to effective low-cost Internet marketing endeavors. This is because it is the most widely-used and has the best reputation in bringing targeted traffic to websites. It is used to stay in touch with your customers or prospective customers, send out invitations, or make special offers. It's as easy as writing an e-mail that may be in a form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and sending that to as many targeted recipients as possible.
9). 5 Surefire Tips for Effective Email Marketing By : Rob Burko Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.
10). Opt-In List Building Is A Provable Success By : Shon Christopher There has been a lot of talk about the reality of success regarding opt-in lists. Due to this talk there have been many marketers partaking in surveys conducted to ensure that website promotion through opt-in list building is not just internet hype. The results obtained in these surveys have clearly shown that opt-in list building is still the hottest marketing tool for website promotion.

New Email Articles
1). What Are The Effective Ways of Selling an Ebook, and How Do I Do It? By : Dennis Leem What are the effective ways of selling an ebook? Now that you have your ebook written you have an information product that you hope will make you rich. Or, at the very least make you a few extra dollars. Here are a few different ways you can do it.
2). How Comments Attract Search Engine Indexing & Traffic By : William McRea All bloggers want readers to post comments. Why? Comments offer the blog both social and SEO benefits. Comments increase the percentage of text on the page. They increase the keywords, and hopefully, include a keyword anchored link to a webpage or blog with the same content and keywords.
3). Easy Email Marketing Tips By : Ruth Brown Learn some easy email marketing tips to drive traffic to your website.
4). Your Basic Email Marketing Tips! By : Terry Tay Learn what should do and what should not do when writing you email.
5). The Significance and Benefits of Email Marketing By : Justin Brown There is no dismissing the fact that e-mail, also known as electronic mail, is an indispensable medium of marketing on the internet. Internet as whole has a wide marketing area because of the fact that it is available high and wide throughout the world. This makes it accessible to almost every country and eventually to the people in those countries.
6). What Is So Great About An Email Follow Up? By : George Royal If you are in business, any kind of business then it is important for you to learn how to make the customers and clients happy. The first rule of doing this is to make them feel listened to and appreciated and the easiest way to do that is to use an email follow up every tie you get a message form one of them. This can be done in one of a couple different ways, it does not matter which one you choose as long as you do choose one kind of email follow up.
7). Direct Mail – Not What it Used to Be By : Joy Gendusa The number of businesses using direct mail marketing now compared to how many used this medium 10 to 15 years ago is staggeringly higher. More and more marketers understand its effectiveness and are on the bandwagon - especially Mortgage Brokers. Years back the novelty of receiving an advertisement in your mailbox was such that any direct mail pieces were not only looked at but mulled over.
8). How To Use Autoresponders To Increase Your Sales By : Ken Hill Using autoresponders will help you to close more sales through consistent and effective follow up of your visitors. With your autoresponders you'll be able to: - Educate your visitors about your product - Share the benefits of purchasing your product - Increase your credibility - Build up your visitors' trust in you - Continue to keep your marketing message on your visitors' minds so that when your visitors are ready to purchase from you, they will.
9). Email Miscommunication is Too Easy! By : Kelly J. Watkins, MBA We misinterpret, filter, or change 70% to 90% of what we hear. Communicating messages clearly, and in a format that the receiver will understand, is difficult. It’s easy to miscommunicate. By watching which words you choose, your message will be more clearly communicated. Cause Why does all this confusion occur? One of the many reasons is that people suffer from information overload.
10). Copywriting in Your Email Campaign By : Chet Holcomb Want to double or triple the number of new leads and customers you generate each month with your emails? Try focusing your Email campaign with copywriting techniques. Copywriting in Emails is the art of using attractively written content focusing around a service or product to sell. A tool used to tempt the reader by making the items for sale seem attractive, desirable and at the same time beneficial.