List Building

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EVERY successful Internet Business owns a list of prospects and customers. If YOU don't have a list, NOW is the time to learn how to build one. If you do have a list, then you are aware of the reasons for building it, and should be concentrating on building your list numbers.

The standard figure used in internet marketing is that each member of your list equals an income of $1 per month, so a list of 10,000 for example, could produce an income of $10,000 per month. 

The responsiveness of lists varies greatly, and for numeroud reasons. We're not going into those specifics here, but we'll look at how list building originated, why YOU should build your list, and the best tools to help you do so.

List Building Basics:

Since trading began on earth, successful business owners have kept lists of buyers of their products and services, and people interested in their products or services. When the postal system was intoduced, astute marketers realised that they could repeatedly send their their sales letters to customers and prospects alike, numerous times.

They found that people who had bought their products or services once, were very likely to buy them, or related products and services, again and again, multiplying sales and profits. This lead to the notion of "lifetime customer value" as a metric. They also found that by offering free or low cost information to their prospects, then following up with profit making offers, they could turn a profit - The mail order industry was born.

The ultimate asset of the direct mail marketer was their list. If someone in that business lost everything but retained that list, they would soon be running a rofitable business again  

Mail Order, or Direct Response Advertising is the precursor of internet advertising, and was the basis for the systems that many of the internets' early adopters used.

Ad copy is absolutely critical, and small changes can make vast differences. Changing ONE WORD in a headline for example can improve, or reduce response rates by factors of 10 or more.

So back in the day, even though these successful marketers owned lists (or could rent them) which provided an income, they were never really sure how effective their new adverts would be. They used to "split test" a mailer of perhaps 5000 peices to see which variation of an ad brought the best response, then roll out a full mailing, once they knew the results.

When the internet came along, it brought something called email with it. Most email accounts developed the ability to auto respond to an incoming email, if the option to do so was selected by the user. the primary function for this functionallity was to send an auto response "out of office" or on vacation reply to incoming emails, when the user was indesposed. 

Some bright spark, possibly John Reese, figured out that if you could capture the email address of a person who was interested in your product, and then send them a series of automated email messages at timed intervals, you could dominate your market. 

It had long been know by direct response advertisers that it took more than one piece of direct mail to secure a purchase. They would send up to seven or more mailings to THE SAME PERSON, each attempting to subtly induce the prospect to part with their cash. Some people would buy in response to the first mailer, some to the second, and some to the ninth.

John reasoned that he ought to be able to create an online system that replicated this process, but using email rather than conventional mail. His creation, or derivatives of it, became known as the sequential autoresponder.

How do Autoresponders work?

Using Aweber a form is created and some website code obtained to add to your web page. The result is usually something like the forn that you see below, which enables you to sign up to receive ny newsletter - take the hint (:

As an inducement to part with your name and email address, somethingis is usually offered in exchange.  

Once your email address is in the system, the autoresponder sends an email asking you to confirm your subscription. This is to prevent other people maliciously signing you up to lists, and to provide evidence to the autoresponder service that you are not a spammer, in the event of a spam complaint.

Clicking a link in the confirmation email confirms that you wish to subscribe, and triggers email message number one to be sent out. This message will thank the subscriber for subscribing, introduce the list owner and their services, and let the subscriber know that they will receive further emails. By law, they will also include contact details for the list owner, as well as a means to unsubscibe from the list if desired.

Once in this system, the subscriber will contine to automatically receive follow up emails at pre-determined intervals, until they purchase something (when they are usually mover to a "buyer list") or, they unsubscribe. Sometimes the sequence of emails will consist of around seven messages, often they will be up to 50 or more.   

You can find details of my recommended autoresponder service here

You can details of an alternative service below. I've used both, and they both work well, but I prefer Aweber