List Building

Building a list is an essential core part of email marketing online. Without a list, you can't build a relationship with your customers. You won't know who has made purchases from you, or whether they will ever want to buy from you again.

This article covers several list-building methods that you can undertake in your online business.

When building a list, it's important to have a quality data management solution to hold your prospect's information, and to email from. Most shopping cart applications include these items, and so do autoresponder programs.

You can install these programs on your own server by making a one-time payment, or you can use an online solution that usually attracts a monthly fee. Either way, if you want to be successful, managing this data manually is a timely option, and not cost-effective in the long-run.

Once you have a data management program in place, you can generate the form code for new prospects to opt-in, or give permission, for you to email them. Normally, when a prospect is opting in to a list, they will expect to receive something of interest immediately. This could be a free report, a bonus for subscribing, a newsletter, or an ebook/information product.

The best place to insert an opt-in form is on the right hand side of the first fold of any web page. This is where the eye naturally goes when reading. Opt-in boxes need to stand out, offer something of value to your site visitor, and display a link to a privacy policy.

Once your new prospect opts-in to your list, they should immediately receive an email with further information. Then you can have a series of pre-written emails ready to send to your prospect at pre-defined intervals.

The beauty of list building in this way is that you can send a one-off broadcast to your list at any time. These are particularly good for special offers, follow-up enquiries, unexpected bonuses, questionnaires, newsletters, and the like.

There are many online marketing tools available today to assist you in list building. Following are 4 methods you can consider using:

1. Popups: These can be configured to pop-up when a visitor arrives at your site, when they leave your site, or to pop-under the page. You can include your opt-in form in the pop-up with a bonus offer of interest to your targeted niche audience.

2. Co-registration: You can signup to co-reg programs or create joint ventures with similar web site owners where your opt-in form is displayed after their prospects signup to their list. Then they can choose to signup to your list if they wish, and vice versa.

3. Footer ads: These are graphical ads that display from the bottom of a web page that include an opt-in form to be filled out by the site visitor. Filling out the form doesn't interfere with the original web page that the prospect is viewing.

4. List directory: You can add your list to a directory that is categorized into different targeted areas. When people search through the directory for your niche, your site will display, and they will have the option to opt-in to your list.

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