List building is one of the pillars of any online business and despite what others may try to lead you to believe, it’s actually a really straight forward and simple process.
In this article I’m going to outline for you the 5 main elements of list building, strategies to grow your list, tools that will help you immensely with this task and ultimately how to make money with your list. We are after all building a business here right?
What Is List Building?
Let’s start with the basics for those that are brand spanking new. Building a list is the simple process of collecting the contact information of as many of the visitors who visit your website properties. The reality is that the majority of people who visit your website properties and leave your website, will most likely never visit your site again.
So the challenge then becomes to get as many of these visitors to “opt-in”, to give you, at the very least, their email address, so that you can then directly communicate and follow up with them, and bring them back to your website, to your offers, promotions, and products.
The 5 Main Elements of List Building
To keep this simple I’ve broken the art and science of building your email list into the 5 main elements to ensure your efforts are successful.
- The offer
- The Opt In Form
- Traffic
- Retention
- Monetization
Let’s dig in to each of these elements one by one.
1. The Offer
Sometimes referred to as your “lead magnet” or your “bribe”, this is what you will offer in exchange for the visitors contact information. The offer can be an ebook, an email course, a video, a video series, a recorded training, an audio recording, a webinar, a worksheet, a pdf, it really doesn’t matter how you choose to deliver the offer, the most important thing is that your offer is really good!
What is really good? Glad you asked.
A really good offer would be something of real value, something that you would feel good charging money for it. Think about your free opt-in offer as any other product that you would create and sell – except your going to give it away for free!
A really good offer is a high value solution and speaks directly to your visitor regarding a very specific and critical problem, challenge or obstacle that your visitor is most likely facing. Try to be as specific as you can when choosing a problem, and always choose a problem with the highest stakes.
If your visitor leaves your website without opting in after seeing your offer, your goal is to make it so irresistible that he will be up at night, wondering what it was he missed out on. Seriously! That should be your goal. That’s how GOOD it should be!
2. The Opt-In Form
This can be tricky, but your goal is to find a balance between non-obtrusive but unavoidable. You will have to determine to which side you prefer to lean to based on your niche, your target market, your goals, your brand and your own personality. For me personally, I’m not too concerned about the few people I may offend because I have clearly designed my websites to make money. That’s my business, that’s what I teach, so it makes sense for my brand and my market.
The opt-in form needs to be eye-catching and highly professional. This does not mean you need to spend big money on designers, it just means it should be clean, focused and professional looking.
The writing, or copy, on the form needs to very clear and to the point. Every word should have a purpose. If in doubt, use fewer words, but say exactly what it is you are offering, what they will get, how they will get it, and what they need to do to get it.
The most important thing on your visitors mind when faced with the proposition of giving up their contact information on some website is “what’s in it for me?” The better you can answer this critical question on your visitor’s mind, the higher your conversion rate will be.
Some marketers will tell you that you must have a squeeze page (opt in page, capture page, landing page) to build a list. Not true. I love using capture pages, and have since I first started online very effectively, but you will have to decide for yourself if you really need one right away. It depends on where your website traffic is coming from, what your offer is, your brand and your target market. If you are marketing heavily on Facebook, you would most likely focus on creating a highly effective FanPage Tab with an opt-in form.
If you are using a blog, which I highly recommend, you should have an opt in form in as many places as possible, without being overly obtrusive of course. I like having a prominent form above the fold on my main website home page, plus a sidebar form on every page, an opt in form after each post, a pop up form, and even a slide up or drop down form.
3. Traffic
Pretty obvious really, since without website traffic you can’t have any opt-ins on your list. When it comes to traffic the more the better of course, however its important you focus on highly targeted, relevant and diverse website traffic.
I cover all of my favorite list building and traffic strategies in my article Top 10 List Building Strategies so I’ll just focus on my favorites here.
4. Retention
You’ve got traffic and your list is growing! Yay! Congratulate yourself because you earned, but, we’re not quite finished just yet. Getting prospects on your list is only the first step in the game. Once we have someone on our list our goal now becomes to engage with them, keep their attention, and develop trust, rapport and relationship.
This is where the majority of marketers simply drop the ball. The old saying that “the money is in the list” is actually not very accurate.
“The Money is in Your Relationship With Your List”.
The reality is that people will only buy from those they know, like and trust, and if they’ve just opted in to your list, chances are they don’t really know who you are or what you can do for them.
Here’s a few tips on how to increase the responsiveness of your list
Give Value: Your job now becomes to blow them away with incredible value. Put your prospect first, get in their mind, and give them what they really want and need.
Solve Problems: The problem / solution formula is the simplest and most effective method for building trust, and increasing responsiveness and conversions. If you can solve the problems of your prospect you are instantly elevated to authority status!
Be Personable: Be real, be honest, just be you. The more you can let your prospects see who you really are the more rapport and trust you can build. Now you will have to find your balance as to how personal you want to get depending on your brand and your industry of course.
Use Video: Video is an incredibly powerful tool to engage your audience, to connect, build rapport, establish trust and powerfully communicate your message. Record videos for your blog, or video channel and share them with your list.
Be Consistent: Consistency is the “little-know” secret of the most successful marketers. It matters less how many times per week you decide to send emails to your list rather that you send your emails on a consistent basis.
Do Cool Things: Be creative, relevant, and spontaneous. Shoot a video from your car (or any odd place) if you get a sudden inspiration to communicate with your list. Host an impromptu webinar. Perform a livestream broadcast. Have a sale. Do a special birthday promotion for your cat. Get creative, and have fun with this. The idea is to surprise your list (while staying relevant) and generate some curiosity, fun and interest. Remember people love to be entertained. Have fun with this.
Think of your list as your best friends: Talk to your list like you would to your friends. Really care for them and what they are going through. This approach will open up your communication with them, bring them closer to you, and will quickly deepen your relationship. Your prospects will look to you for advice, will appreciate you, and respect your opinions and recommendations.
You don’t need a BIG list. In fact, get that idea completely out of your head. The number of people on your list is completely irrelevant. The only number that matters is the number of people that open your emails and engage with you on a regular basis. The ONLY way to increase that number is to ENGAGE THEM.
5. Monetization
Now that we have begun to develop trust, build rapport and grow our relationship with our list, we will now be able to sell stuff to our prospects and create a mutually beneficial exchange of value. That is what selling should really be about. You now provide value to your prospects in the form of affiliate recommendations, your own products, info products and or services in exchange for their money.
If you are just starting out and you do not have any of your own products to sell, you can simply begin by recommending other people’s products and/or services. When selecting what you will recommend make sure the product or service is highly valuable and relevant to what your prospects want and need. I personally will only recommend something that I personally have used or that has come to me from a very trusted source who has personally used it. Your reputation is on the line, and people will hold your recommendations against you if they feel like they were duped by you. Always treat your prospects with respect; as if they were your best friend.
List building really is a straightforward process. Don’t complicate it and get overwhelmed. Just follow the steps one at a time, and complete them each in order. List building is one of the central pillars of your online business, so give it the focused attention and creativity that it deserves.
To help you with your list building efforts I’ll end by sharing with you my recommendations and favorite list building tools and resources.
Email Auto responder:
1. Your going to need a reliable email auto responder service with excellent deliverability rates. My #1 recommendation for an easy-to-use yet extremely reliable and powerful auto responder service is Aweber. I have personally used Aweber for the last 5 years for various websites, I’ve recommended it to thousands of online marketers, and I will continue to recommend it as my favorite service.
2. If you want a complete CRM, sales and follow up solution, to handle not only email communication but advanced follow up, list segmenting, affiliate system, shopping cart, and contact manager, look no further than InfusionSoft. I have been absolutely blown away with everything this system is capable of and it keeps getting better and better. Infusionsoft has been trusted by thousands of the top marketers, and online entrepreneurs for years and you will clearly see why.
Blog Plugins:
1. You need opt in forms on your blog, and I recommend several of them. Don’t rely on just your one sidebar form, its not enough. Give your visitors multiple chances to opt-in, and remind them everywhere they go. Check out WPSubscribers plugin for your wordpress blog. I’ve been very happy with it and it’s a bargain for the price and has a ton of features compared to similar plugins.
2. I came across the ViperBar plugin recently and added it to my blog. I like the look of this opt in form at the very top of my blog, its very effective, easy to set up and free. You can’t beat that.
Site Design
1. If you want to create squeeze pages, sales pages, and more, the easiest, most powerful (and popular) solution is the OptimizePress wordpress plugin. It allows you to create visually appealing professional websites, without any html or coding knowledge. It’s used by thousands of top marketers and online entrepreneurs so you can be sure it is the best solution in the market at this time. Watch the video here to understand the simplicity and power of this tool.
Design:
1. You may want to hire the services of a pro designer to make your opt-in forms, and websites look good. I recommend it. If you are on a serious budget, try www.fivrr.com where you can find people to do almost anything for you (including design work) for just $5! Yep, you read that right. A word of warning you don’t get unlimited revisions for $5 bucks, so you won’t always be 100% satisfied with the first design. But you can find some incredibly talented people on this site, that can do great work for you for just…. $5 bucks!
2. www.elance.com is still my favorite site for finding talented people from all over the world to do work for me, whether its website or graphic design, writing, coding, or marketing.
It’s time to get to work.
If you are just getting started, take it slow, and stick to the game plan. If you already have a list growing, then go back through the article and find the areas you can improve in.
Leave me your comments, and any other ideas, suggestions and tips that have worked well for you in building your list! We’d love to hear it!
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