How to Build a Huge Email List
If you want long term success for your online business, you’ll need to start building a huge, responsive email list right away
An email list consist of people who have willingly gave you their contact info in exchange for what you have to offer. If you bought an email database from someone for a couple of bucks and sent out an email to them, that’s spamming. A list that you build must know who you are, why you are contacting them, and most importantly they should be able to choose if they want to hear from you again or not.
One of the biggest doubts in your mind right now may be how to start building an email list with a limited budget and time? Well, here are three proven methods that help you build your list fast and profit for your subscribers over and over again.
1) Offer Something for Free
If you have a blog and you’re already writing great content, that’s a great start. However, just putting up a link to your RSS feed or FeedBurner optin form and hoping that people will subscribe to get your latest blog posts is not enough. laid back strategy used to work a few years ago, but it doesn’t pay to be passive right now with so many blogs around competing for attention.
So what do you offer for free? That’s the good question.
The most common method is to create some sort of free report and offer that in exchange for someone’s opt-in. However, there are many other easier ways. If you have a product, offer a trial version or basic version of it for free, in exchange for an optin. With our LinkTrackr.com website for example, we offer a trial version of out link cloaking software and gets us the subscriber, even if he does not upgrade to the full version.
How about giving out a demo of your software, but asking for the optin first. You can always experiment with other ideas that are related to what you’re doing with your website or blog. Just think about what your subscribers want, and create an opportunity for them to optin by creating something that they would be willing to optin to.
2) Create Landing Pages
Whether you’re advertising with Google AdWords or not, you need to create landing pages. A regular blog layout has way too many distractions and links to click on. It’s simply not very good at increasing your optin rate.
By effectively using landing pages, you can double or triple your email optin conversion rate and start getting much more subscribers. On the landing page, give a brief description of what the reader can get. You should keep the text simple and include a lot of bullet point. Place an option form on strategic locations on the page and make sure you require email confirmation or you’ll end up with a lot of fake email addresses.
3) Use a Good Autoresponder Software
Building a list without investing in a good autoresponder or email marketing software is a big mistake. Once someone has optin in, you need to follow up with them at least five to seven times at moderate intervals before they become accustomed to getting email from you.
Of course, some people will unsubscribe during the follow-ups, but you can ignore that. It’s better to have some people opt out than to cease communicating with your list. If you stop contacting them for six months, the list is as good as dead.
You should not however follow-up only to try and sell them more products and services. It should continue the interaction from the moment they opted in to your list. You should focus on turning new subscribers into lifelong fans and customers, not on squeezing every last drop of profit from them. You need to understand that the lifetime value of a single person in your list is much more important than the size of the list itself.
