How Free Reports Help Grow Your Email Marketing List

They say 'the money's in the list' and 'they' are dead right. That's because a marketing list can be used to generate orders and commissions from list members right from the first day those people join your list and sometimes for many years to come.

A marketing list is simply a list of addresses, offline they usually comprise street addresses, while for Internet marketers it's usually email addresses they're keen to acquire to grow sales of their own products as well as other people's products they're marketing on commission.

There are many ways to grow a marketing list perhaps best of all being to offer a free report to encourage people to sign up to the list and agree to receive further emails in future until - if ever - they choose to unsubscribe.

But there's more to a free report than just getting people to join your marketing list. A free report can, for example, be used to:

* Promote sales of your own and other people's products inside the free report. This often happens, for example, where people on your marketing list get a free report about some special subject, such as learning how to grow a mailing list, which not only provides good information to help them grow a list but also introduces them to email marketing software that earns a commission for you every time one of your list members buys the software or signs up to a special email delivery company.

* Generate regular emails to develop trust between you and your list members and make previously skeptical members more likely to buy whatever products you recommend now and in future. So rather than give your free report as a PDF download, for example, you break it up into a series of shorter pieces which are delivered by email on a regular basis to people on your marketing list and always include an invitation to purchase whatever products or services you recommend.

* Get people onto your marketing list - and keep them there! That's because a great many people signing up for a free report are likely to leave your list immediately they have your free report. You can avoid this by getting people to stay on your list and give them plenty of time to buy your recommended goods and services for years to come. You do it by mentioning at the very beginning of your report that free updates will be available at regular intervals along with numerous other free reports to benefit people on your marketing list.

* Make your free report go viral and thereby attract more people to join your list or buy your recommended goods and services from inside your report.

But to make all of those ideas work and get people to stay on your marketing list, your report must contain genuinely valuable information and not worthless fluff or flannel. That's because poor quality reports create a poor impression of you and your products, neither of which is conducive to selling to your marketing list members in future.

Find out all you need to know about growing your own profitable list and making money from it for years to come. Visit: http://www.avrilharper.com/freestuff.html