A list refers to a list of email addresses in the Internet Marketing world. The first thing you should do is to build a list. This will help you to send promotion emails to your list and get buyers for your products you are promoting.
Why build a List?
If you take the example of any store, customers come, they look around to see if there are products they are searching for and may be they buy and then leave. Once they have left, the store has no way of getting in touch with them and may be convincing them to come back again. On the other hand, if the store had their contact details, they could be notified when there are new items in the store or if there are special discounts given to customers on certain products. By doing so, the customer would feel compelled to perhaps come back or could consider doing so.
In the same way if you had a previous list of customers then you could broadcast an email message whenever you have a new product and get potential buyers for your product and make money. The main reason to build and use a list is to establish a firm base of customers to whom you can market your products and offers easily. The other reason is that you can build a relationship and trust between you as an expert and your customers. The next time you promote a product, your customers will be more likely to buy from you without hesitation as they would know you are trustworthy and have a good reputation.
"The money is in the List"
You must have probably heard of this expression as an Internet Marketer. The money is in fact in the list of buyers and not in the list. Many people will subscribe to your list to get a free offer. This is an attractive method to get peoples' names and emails in your list. Let us say that you have 1000 email addresses of visitors in a particular niche. If you are promoting a product in that niche and only 100 of them buys your product, that is 10% conversion rate.
This may be a good thing but think if you could have got 400 of them buying from you. That would mean more money into your bank account with a single email you would have sent in just 5 minutes. So, having a huge list does not mean that all of them will be buyers of your product. This will depend on the target niche and the quality of your product you are promoting and whether it is delivering the promises made in your product and providing a solution to a problem in your niche for which the visitor has come. The conversion rate may be high if you are promoting good quality products of high value and for which the customers are badly in need.
How to build a List?
To be able to build a list, you must have a place where you can gather the name and email address of your visitors. You have to create an opt-in page which is the most common method to build a list. The opt-in page is also commonly called the squeeze page. All the attention on that page has to be focused completely on the singular goal of getting a customer on the list. The best opt-in pages are those that have no 'extras' that may distract from the goal and no advertisements and links should be placed in the opt-in page.
The next thing you should do is drive traffic to the opt-in page. The opt-in page gives the customer a two-way decision: to subscribe or not to subscribe. Remember that the email capture form should always be placed near the top right position of your opt-in page so that your subscriber does not have to scroll down to see it.
Not every visitor of your opt-in page will be ready to give his name and email address. You have to provide a free stuff such as a free gift, a free report, a giveaway product of value or any other free item such as a free video or audio of value so that the visitor is encouraged to subscribe in order to get the material. This technique works very well for capturing name and email addresses of your potential customers. Once you get the name and email of the person, you can send him promotion emails and if the person buys, you make money. In this way you can promote your own product if you already have or if you have created yourself or you can promote somebody else product as an affiliate and get commissions.
Automation
Sending emails to your list with a small number of subscribers may be easy at first. But as the list grows, this becomes a huge and time consuming task. And what about follow-up? You have to follow-up with your subscribers so that you do not give them the impression that they have not been taken care of. To be able to do a proper follow-up and provide good response, you must use an autoresponder service such as Aweber or GetResponse. These services allow you to automate most of the email processing tasks and provide you with facilities for follow-up of your subscribers.
You have to sign up for an autoresponder service and setup your opt-in page using the form code which you have to get it from the autoresponder and put it in your opt-in page. You will also have to set up follow-up email messages that you configure to be sent at certain intervals. In this way, as soon as your subscriber enters his name and email address, he will automatically get his first message delivered in his mailbox all on 'autopilot'. Depending on the setting of the follow-up messages, he will also get the follow-up promotion emails at set intervals of days. The subscriber may become a buyer if he buys from your promotion emails and you make money.
How do you really find out what subscribers want?
You may send a survey to your list to find out really what your subscribers are looking for. You may have a very small number of response but this will give you an insight into the type of people who are on your list. If you can continuously be providing products that answer the needs and desires of your list, you will find that you will be making a lot of sales meaning more money into your bank account. You will also develop your reputation and relationship with your subscribers.
Maintenance and sorting of your list
As your list grows in size, it is going to need some maintenance. One simple thing to keep doing is ensuring 'bouncing' emails are removed from your list. You may encounter "Failure to deliver..." type of response that you get after you send an email. This can be because the mailbox you are sending to is full or it no longer exists. If after a few emails the problem keeps repeating, then you have to remove the email from your list.
A simple step to increase your list responsiveness is to sort subscribers based on their past buying patterns and you may also create separate lists for each niche product you are promoting. In this way, you may send targeted promotional emails to subscribers interested in your niche. You may not want to send health and fitness emails to people interested in dating for example.
Rames Rughoo is a software engineer and information analyst since 1985. He has developed quite a number of software for various companies. Now he is an Internet Marketer for Ramsez Money Makers.
More about List Building at http://www.ramsezweb.com/SuperSignupSystem/
Copyright (c) Rames Rughoo - 2010.
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