The Power and Potency of Email Marketing and Why the Money REALLY IS in the List

'The List' is the prized possession of many offline sellers, on the high street, or working by mail order and direct mail, with contacts gleaned from newspaper advertising, for example, or by renting other firms' mailing lists.

Increasingly, however, the most profitable lists are grown online, on eBay for instance, or Squidoo, where overheads are low for gathering names and subsequently targeting hundreds of thousands or even millions of potential buyers literally in seconds.

As online sellers, working on eBay, for example, or promoting affiliate products through ClickBank or other Internet marketplace, our main aim should be to get as many people as possible onto our list to hopefully buy from us today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future.

In most cases this is best done by offering a free report or newsletter followed by regular emails offering advice and information designed to grow loyalty between buyer and seller. Once trust grows between seller and list member the former introduces emails inviting list members to purchase various 'appropriate' products and services.

I say 'appropriate' because the incentive to get people to sign up to your list must be related to whatever goods and services you want those people to buy.

So if you're promoting books about making money on eBay, you'd probably offer a newsletter about making money on eBay or a report providing similar information.

Or you might advertise free reports about Forex Trading, for example, or dog training, then later promote ClickBank and other affiliate products on those same subjects.

Hopefully you would not offer a newsletter or free report about getting married in Hawaii to people seeking advice for getting rid of stains from a hand-woven carpet, and you probably wouldn't promote a newsletter about coping with bereavement to people seeking treatment for alcohol addiction.

Importantly, it isn't just buyers you can add to your list, although a spenders' only list is usually most profitable and the only one many marketers will contemplate.

What is essential is that you think very hard about why you are growing a list and what your end objective is for monetizing that list.

Avril Harper offers a range of free reports showing how to grow and make money from an email marketing list which you'll find at http://www.avrilharper.com/freestuff.html