List Building 101

Building an email list can be the difference between making just enough to get by on and earning 6 to 7 figures a year. 

It’s critical not only for making the first product sale but most importantly for the backend. This is what you sell to your customer after the first sale. This is an area that many marketers completely overlook.

The backend can make all the difference to your business success. 

First of all, the average customer will only buy from you after you make contact with them 5-7 times. Very rarely will somebody buy on the first “touch.”

If you don’t get their contact information the first time they visit, you’ve almost certainly lost them forever. However, if you get their email address you can continue marketing to them, and you can very often turn a prospect into a customer. 

But that’s not even the most important part of a list. 

Very often you will do nothing more than break even on the front end. The KEY is having a powerful backend that makes up for it. This could be either in the form of up-sells or cross-sells, and could be your own product or someone else’s from a joint venture.

I would strongly recommend you segment your list - the first with those who haven’t bought from you and the second with those who have. This helps you make offers specifically for them. When done right, well over 50% of your profits may be coming from the backend. 

Aim for quality over quantity. In other words, don’t just go for a list of 1000s of people. A responsive list is the most important factor. 

Wouldn’t you rather have a list of 200 hungry prospects than 30,000 unresponsive prospects? I thought so. Getting targeted prospects to your list is key to your success. 

So how do you achieve that? First you have to know who your prospect is. This will determine who you go after. 

Make sure you know the age, gender, where they live, average income, interests, etc. If you don’t know exactly who your prospects are, you won’t be able to craft your sales letter and emails exactly to their needs.

I would strongly recommend you have an email opt-in form on every page of your site. Especially on your homepage. 

How do you increase the percentage of signups for your newsletter?

You need to give them a compelling reason to join. Consider testing an opt-in page. This will weed out the “tire kickers” from the serious prospects. 

Some profitable marketers have two or three opt-ins before they even let people see the sales letter. This ensure that they have the email address of every single hot prospect, whereas just putting it in the sales letter might let a few slip through the cracks.

Remember, your main goal is to get your visitor on your email list not to make the sale the first time they visit. Again, this is because it takes most people at least 5-7 contacts before they will buy.

Therefore I would recommend testing having an opt in page versus a regular sales letter to see which converts the most visitors into subscribers. 

How do you test this?

Split test this first in Adwords. Once you’ve come up with a winner, then focus on getting the better performing one ranked. Hopefully this has enlightened you on how to make money with list building.