First 7 Email List Building Secrets
I hope that you had a great weekend. I did! On Saturday, my wife and I went to see the band Vaya Con Dios play live in Vilnius, in my home country of Lithuania. They put on a fantastic show! On Sunday we took our little daughter to the ballet, to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She really enjoyed it, but was worn out on the way home.
Well, here we are at the start of a new week – I have lots of work for you to do! I hope you are already well on your way to building a comprehensive mailing list by compiling the email addresses of the visitors to your new website. Remember, all this hard work is going to start paying off soon.
This week I will be sending you 35 Internet marketing lessons (that's 7 lessons per day) on how to build your list quickly. Remember, we have already learned about two useful list-building techniques: posting at forums and writing articles.
A quick side note: some of my e-mail lessons will be rather lengthy, so you might want to save them to your computer or print them out so that you can refer back to them in the future.
Let's get started. Here are first 7 lessons, all about the secrets to building an effective mailing list:
List Building Secret #1 - Make Your Content Relevant. Your subscribers have signed up to your newsletter for a reason, so be sure to stick to the point. This will increase the satisfaction of your subscribers, and ensure they recommend your newsletter to their friends.
It is of the utmost importance that you do your research before putting pen to paper (or your fingertips to the keyboard!). Find out what your subscribers want to know, and then learn all you can about that topic. You will quickly lose your readers' trust if they find you don't know what you're talking about.
Many online publishers fail because they don't produce the content that their subscribers want to read. Put the extra effort in to find well-written, relevant content.
A useful tip to find out what your subscribers want to read about is to just ask them. Just send out an email asking your readers what topics they would like you to cover. Also sign up for other ezines in your market to see what they are writing about too.
List Building Secret #2 - Add More Subscription Boxes To Your Website. Sounds simple enough, but few people actually do it. If you have a 100 page website, you should have 100 newsletter subscription boxes on your website.
You can integrate a subscribe box just about anywhere in a website. You could add one just before an article starts, in the middle of the text, or even at the end.
As long as you have high quality content on your website, you shouldn't have a problem getting people to subscribe to your newsletter – but you can make it a lot easier for them to sign up by placing your subscription boxes prominently.
List Building Secret #3 - Offer An Irresistible Bonus Or Gift. Offering freebies can sometimes be problematic, but it can work really well if done properly.
Why do I have a problem with it? Well, I really want subscribers to sign up for my newsletter because they want to read what I have to say and not simply because they want whatever freebie I'm offering.
But the best way to use freebies is to offer your potential subscriber something really unique. Try to create something yourself, rather than simply offering something that is available at a hundred other websites. It should be something that makes you stand out, and that reminds your subscriber how great your newsletter is.
Do you know what makes a fantastic sign-up bonus? Back issues of your newsletter!
List Building Secret #4 - Use Free Viral Ebooks To Get New Subscribers. Want to get thousands of new subscribers for your ezine without spending a cent on advertising? Or maybe you've tried all the methods listed above but still want more?
Viral marketing is the way to go!
Writing viral books is nothing new, but it's still a great way to get your newsletter noticed.
There are a few methods you can use to create viral ebooks.
You can either offer them as a free product, or charge for them, giving people reprint rights so that they in turn can give your product away while making some money in the process.
I prefer the reprint route. The key to using viral ebooks successfully is to write another when the momentum of the first wears out. Use the same style each time, and remember to give your newsletter subscription form a high profile position in each. Your aim is not to make money from the book, but to use it as a vehicle to find more subscribers for your newsletter.
To get your book into the hands of as many potential subscribers as possible, find as many publishers in your area as you can, and let them know about your ebook. Give them a mailing promotion to use and tell them they can have the book for free and that they can either sell the book, or the book and the reprint rights to their customers.
This is easy money for them and more subscribers for you!
Doing audio interviews with experts in your field is also a great way to get more subscribers. I'm not going to cover the details of audio production, but interviewing experts over the phone and recording it on mp3 will get your newsletter splashed all over the Internet, to sites that might not have been reached by Internet marketing alone.
Internet marketing techniques can be used to great effect in niche markets. What might seem familiar in Internet marketing can be highly innovative when used in a niche market, helping you to get noticed.
Creating audio pieces isn't difficult at all, and finding the right equipment and experts is a piece of cake too.
Do you know how I find experts in any field almost instantly?
Well, most of the FAQ pages at FAQS.Org include details of the writer - these guys are clearly knowledgeable in their various fields, and so make great experts to interview.
Contact them using the details given at FAQs.org, and explain how useful their knowledge would be to your subscribers. Most of them will do this for you without charging you a cent, especially if you are outside the marketing field.
Then contact your new publishers friends and let them know that you have some great mp3s for them to share with their lists – for free!
Make a special section on your website for the download link, and be sure to place a subscription sign-up link nearby. Make sure that your visitors don't have to sign up before listening. You will be surprised at just how many people will sign up AFTER they listen to your mp3s!
List Building Secret #5 - Use Pop-Up Windows. Pop-up windows are an effective way to get subscribers, especially in niche markets.
Creating pop-ups on your website is as easy as pie. There are, however, a few different type of pop-up windows you can use, including the window that pops up as you exit a website and the window that pops up on entry, when you first visit a website.
Personally, I prefer the exit pop-up. This means that when someone leaves a page on your website, they get a pop-up window asking them to subscribe to your newsletter. This way, they have already seen what you have to offer, and are more likely to sign up.
We all know that pop-ups can get annoying after a while, so be sure to use one that allows you to tell whether a visitor has seen your pop-up already, so you won't alienate potential subscribers by bombarding them with the same message over and over again.
You can find this sort of pop-up scripts at...
http://www.nowsell.com/pop-ups/exit-popup-scripts.html
Or if you'd prefer a piece of software to do it for you, check out
http://www.dynamic-popup-generator.com/gindex.htm
List Building Secret #6 - Use Name Squeeze Pages. Name Squeeze has been a big buzzword lately and it's something people have been beating to death, but it really does work.
The technique is nothing new; it's just been revamped by a guy called Jonathan Mizel. Good marketing on his part.
The best way to explain what name squeeze is all about is to show you a good example.
http://www.scrapbookingprofits.com
This is a great name squeeze page. Basically, a name squeeze page is a simple subscription form that leads visitors to either a free report or a sales letter.
Sign up for the following name squeeze pages to get a good idea of what to do:
http://www.doubleyourdating.com Notice how these sites have nothing to do with Internet marketing? But each one of them is pulling in tens of thousands of dollars monthly.
Doubleyourdating.com is even making hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly. This technique can really make a difference to your online success.
List Building Secret #7 - Buy Leads With Co-Registration. This is a quick and easy way to get subscribers, but not necessarily the best.
Some marketers swear by it and do achieve great results, while others fail and have to throw out the entire list they bought because it's riddled with fake addresses, spam complaints and freebie seekers.
So what exactly is co-registration?
It basically involves building your list by purchasing an existing list of subscribers from a 3rd party service.
Here's how the famed internet marketer Dr. Ralph Wilson put it...
"Co-registration is a widely-used approach to increase the size of your e-mail lists. Co-registration works this way: after completing a subscription form or upon leaving a website, visitors are invited to subscribe to one or more e-zines. If yours is listed among these and the site gets a substantial amount of traffic, you'll begin to receive a number of subscriptions."
Have a look at the two best co-registration companies to see what it's all about:
http://www.worldwidelists.com You pay a fee to these companies for each subscriber - so every time they supply you with a new lead, you pay them a fee. This is usually around 15 cents to $1 depending on the niche market and whether you choose double opt-in or single opt-in.
Always go for double opt-in if you can.
The best way to make money from these types of subscribers is to first give something away for free. Build trust with your subscribers. Sign them up for a free course, give them some bonus products, such as the ebooks we talked about earlier and most importantly of all - if anyone asks to be removed from your list, just do it!
Refusing to do so, or entering into a discussion with someone who wants out is the quickest way to get your newsletter shut down.
So that's your first 7 lessons on how to build a list. Don't just read them - try to implement the ones that seem the most appropriate for you as soon as you can.
I'll see you tomorrow with the next seven lessons!
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