Simple List Building Tips for Serious Marketers - A Common Sense Approach (Part 2)

In my last article, I revealed my first 6 list building tips for serious marketers.  

You can grab that here.  

Let's continue with the final tips, plus a Bonus!

7.   Lead with value   

One of the biggest mistakes I see new marketers make is that they only send an email to their list when they want to sell them something.  WRONG!  

You need to build trust and the fastest way to do this is to let your list members know that THEY come first and you come second.  Your aim is to help them first and yourself much later.

What do I mean? 

Think of your relationship with your email list members as a bank account.  You must make deposits into that account before you can make any withdrawals.   By deposits, I mean providing your list with information that will help them. 

Letting them know of free webinars or other free training is a great way to make deposits into your trust account.   For example, as a member of MLSP I have the ability to invite my list to their free weekly training webinars. 

 It's a win-win.  

I don't have to actually do the trainings, and my list wins because they get training for free that can help them in their business.  My trust level goes up each time I give to my list without asking in anything in return.  

8.  Get your list used to opening your emails

Your success as an email marketer will depend in part on how many people actually open your email. 

Writing compelling headlines is one way to improve your open rate. But in the beginning, you want to actually condition your new list member to open your emails. 

You can do this by emailing often during the first week after they subscribe.

I strongly suggest you develop an email series to send during that critical first week.

While the content of your series should be of interest to your reader, it doesn't need to be amazing (although it doesn't hurt, either!)  :-)

A series on "your biggest mistakes starting out" or "5 things I wish I knew when I first started" are great ideas for an email series. If you have knowledge of a specific marketing tool or skill, this can also be the subject of your short email series.

The important thing  is to get people used to receiving and opening emails from you, right from the start..

9.  Follow the 80/20 rule  

In general, spend 80% of your emails providing value and building trust, and 20% of your emails asking your list to do something, like take a trial or buy a product.  

In fact, I would say that 90/10 is a better split, especially when first starting out.  

10.  Don't forget to ask for the sale  

You'd be surprised how many experienced marketers get so focused on providing value to their lists that they neglect to ask for the sale when the time is right.    

I'm not sure if this is because they feel guilty asking or what, but the bottom line as a marketer is that you need to make money. 

It shouldn't come first, but you need to ask.  

11.  Build separate lists  

When you add someone to your list from social media, a person who already knows you, this list member is far different than a person who comes on to your list from an ad on the Internet.  

This person doesn't know you from a stranger on the street, and you need to work harder to establish trust in these cases.   

I believe it's good practice to keep more than one list, two at the minimum -- one for social media who already know you and one for other forms of marketing like PPC or solo ads, where people don't know you upfront.  

This is easily done within your email management account.  In this way, you can spend more time developing trust with your second list than you would need to with people who already know you.  

Remember, your list are made up of PEOPLE who come to you from  different sources with different needs. 

• Treat them well and you will experience unimaginable gains.
• Treat them badly and your list will turn to dust.

• Treat them well by putting their needs before your own.  Give them what  they need before you think of lining your pockets.
• Treat them badly -- by sending them pitch after pitch to buy something -- and they'll either unsubscribe or worse, make you irrelevant by not even bothering to open your emails.

Bonus List Building Tip!

Just for reading this far, I've saved the best for last.   This is a killer bonus list building tip given to me by my colleague Diane Hochman.   It's so simple, yet brilliant:

Instead of passing out business cards or brochures when you meet someone, ask if it would be okay if you send them your email newsletter with information they'll find useful.   Collect their email address, and now you're one step closer to email marketing bliss.

Want More Tips Like This?   

If you like what you've read, consider grabbing a spot on my list.  

When I learn something new, you learn something new... and I learn something new almost daily.  

Great way to leverage your time, don't you think?  

Simply send a blank email to bobclarke@aweber.com and you're good to go.