How / Why Use List Building in Online Marketing
Article Outlining Strategies for Building and Leveraging Email Lists
May 30, 2009
An email list is simply a collection of email addresses that are organized into a list that can be emailed with the same marketing message from an email application. While anyone can buy a list of email addresses (having first checked that they were obtained lawfully and ethically), building a list has special advantages:
- Each prospect has volunteered to be there;
- Prospects are targeted to the marketers niche;
- Every person on the list has trust with the list owner.
These three factors together make the list much more responsive – that is, the chances of one of the prospects converting to become a customer is much higher than with a so-called bulk email list. The power lies in the way that the list has been built, and how it is marketed to.
A Short Tutorial in List Building
There are many, many ways to build a list. Almost every week, most online marketers receive an offer of a new, more effective, list building strategy, online service, or opt-in programme. They all offer the same thing – the capacity to build an email list with no effort, faster than ever before.
The trouble with these offers is that they all build the same kind of list – one that the marketer doesn't really own. It will be less responsive, because, almost invariably, the people on the list are there because they want access to everyone else.
The result is that they ignore the marketing messages, whilst posting their own.
List building requires a modicum of hard work. It requires planning, careful thought, and will take time. Three of the best strategies to get people onto a list are:
- Offer a free product for signing up;
- Generate a free newsletter or ezine on a regular basis;
- Add existing customers to an announcement list.
Of the above, the two most powerful will be the first and the last. Why? Because people falling into one of those categories already has a high level of trust with the marketer. Particularly those in the last category : they have actually spent money with the list owner, and will do so again.
Marketing to the Email List
The reason for having the list is to send offers to it in the hope that the list will respond by making a purchase. Affiliate marketers, for example, might offer a free report, in exchange for an email address, and then send in “Recommended Products” to the list, in return for a slice of the profit.
Once one of the prospects responds to an offer, it is key that this is noted somewhere. Marketers such as Ben Settle and Michael Senoff often actually recommend that the list is segmented into those who have spent money with the list owner, and those who have not.
The former get free offers, with the occasional product offer, the latter get the product recommendations. It is a strategy that leverages the power of free to convert prospects on the list into customers – the lifeblood of any business enterprise.
There is more about the Marketing Funnel here, which links together the email list and the overall marketing strategy to help generate dynamic sales figures.
