If you’re like me, email list management is something you’ve been avoiding. But as I later learned, it isn’t nearly as difficult as I had always imagined. In fact, there’s a definite science to building a quality email list. Once you learn it, optin email marketing is pretty easy.
Email list management starts by building a quality list of customers. In the internet marketing world, we call these “qualified leads.” And it’s the quality of a list that matters, not the quantity. For instance, if I sell golf equipment, then 10 leads who are avid golfers might be worth more than a hundred leads who are, say, general sports enthusiasts.
Once you’ve collected qualified leads, proper email list management is the next step. There are three important aspects to proper email list management.
1. Build Trust
2. Only Promote Quality
3. Maintain the Right Mix
Building Trust
Getting people to sign on to an email list is not always easy these days. We’ve all just about had it up to here with email spam. So you’ve really got to give folks a good reason to give up their email address to you.
Once you’ve got that coveted email, you don’t want to lose it right away. To keep it, you’ve got to start building a relationship sell email list with your new potential customer. Don’t be in a hurry to sell something. Instead, spend some time communicating in a non-threatening way with your new “potential” customer.
One of the best things to do is to give them free stuff. People love free stuff! Email newsletters are good (if they aren’t just product brochures and sales pitches). Special reports, ebooks, tips and advice, and links to articles and websites of interest to your customers are also great ways to show them that you’re trying to help them, and not just trying to get money out of their wallets.
After someone has received some helpful information from you without even asking for it, then they’ll start to see you as a trustworthy, credible resource, which means that they will be much more open to buying something that you recommend.
Only Promote Quality
After you’ve put in your time and effort to build that relationship, it’s time to try and make a sale. The first thing to ensure is that what you’re selling is worth every penny and more! There is no bigger way to waist all that hard relationship-building work than to sell something that lets your customer down.
Never EVER promote junk! If you sell something of dubious value to someone, you can bet they’ll never buy from you again. Word gets around too. So many internet marketers get drawn in with the allure of a quick payoff. Don’t cause irreparable damage to your reputation just to make a quick buck… not if you want to be in business for the long term.
Maintain the Right Mix
I’ve also seen many internet marketers who have worked hard to build their lists, literally kill them overnight. Why? They either got lazy or greedy, or both. DO NOT oversell! Don’t fall into the trap that so many web marketers do… thinking “ok, I’ve got a nice big list now, so all I have to do is send out promotions and money will just keep flowing in.” The biggest way to KILL your list is to do nothing but send them sales pitches.
Effective email list management means:
1. Knowing how frequently to contact you subscribers (once a week? Twice a week? Twice a month?)
2. Maintaining the right mix of free stuff (downloads, tips and useful information) and product promotions.
Ever market and every list is different, and what that “right mix” is for yours will only come through careful experimentation.
