Posted by This is the first in a new series of articles written especially for beginners, which fully describes exactly how to go about starting to build a list of email subscribers from scratch.
Part One: Getting Started: The Tools You Need
‘List building’ as it’s often called within Internet marketing circles is all about connecting with your target audience by offering them high quality information in exchange for their name and email address details.
Once a customer is a confirmed subscriber to your list, you can begin sending promotional based follow up emails in balance with relevant and useful content based on your overall market.
Internet marketers (like you!) collect leads using a combination of squeeze pages and opt-in forms. These forms are generated by your autoresponder provider and are embedded into the HTML code of your squeeze page template.
Each time a visitor to your squeeze page enters in their name and email address, they are added to your e-mailing list database, and become an active subscriber of your email newsletter.
List building helps faciliate the process of converting prospects into active paying customers, since once your prospect has been added to our mailing list, you are able to develop a relationship with them, that will encourage sales as well as repeat sales (which will make up the larger majority of your Internet marketing income).
In order to begin building a profitable email marketing campaign however, you will need to make sure that you have all of the tools that are required, including:
1) Professional Autoresponder Account
With autoresponder services like www.GetResponse.com and www.Aweber.com, you are able to set up an unlimited number of mailing lists, each one featuring customised code that serves as your opt-in box. By segmenting your lists, you will be able to tailor your emails so that they directly communicate with targeted groups of subscribers who are interested in specific information or topics.
2) Squeeze Page
A squeeze page houses your opt-in form and provides a place for your contacts to find you, evaluate what you are offering and make the decision to become an active subscriber of your list.
A squeeze page is very similar to a salespage in terms of its primary function is to pull in customers and motivate them to take action, in this case, subscribe to your list.
That call of action is essential in creating high preformance squeeze pages, and you must place emphasis on ensuring that your visitors are directed to fill in the opt-in form, otherwise they will not be added to your list.
You need to clearly direct visitors to enter in their name and email address as well as instruct them to confirm their request to join your list (if you are using double opt-in).
One thing to keep in mind when developing your squeeze page is that it should motivate visitors in the same way that a traditional sales page should, however, the actual structure of your squeeze page will be very different.
With sales pages, they are typically designed to offer as much information about a particular product or service as possible, since the main focus is on transforming a visitor into a paying customer.
However, with a squeeze page, you aren’t asking your visitor to make a decision to purchase or commit to anything other than to subscribe to your mailing list where they are rewarded with a free product.
Keeping this offer or giveaway in mind, when you develop a squeeze page, you need to have a strong focus on your market, and design your offer around an existing problem, need or question.
To come up with the best incentive offer possible, you’ll need to thoroughly evaluate your market, as well as competing offers so that you can create a relevant product that is in demand and likely to capture attention from your target audience.
Squeeze pages should be designed to offer a clear navigation system, basic structure and template and a compelling offer.
To summarize, your list building funnel consists of three major parts:
1: Squeeze Page With Opt-In Form
2: Compelling High Quality Offer or Incentive
3: Follow Up Emails And Broadcasts
We will discuss the anatomy of a successful squeeze page in an upcoming article, so that you can begin to develop your own.
3) The Giveaway (Incentive)
Your giveaway is essentially, the most important element on your squeeze page.
If your offer doesn’t motivate visitors into subscribing, all of your marketing efforts will be lost. This means that you need your offer to be of interest to the majority of your target market, rather than to a small group of subscribers. The higher the quality of your giveaway as well as the more relevant your offer is to your market, the easier it will be to recruit new subscribers.
There are many different ways to ensure that the product you are giving away is of a high-perceived value by your subscriber base and likely to be successful in converting new subscribers.
To start, consider the different types of products that are being successfully sold in online marketplaces and create a shorter version of a hot selling product, and offer it for free to anyone who subscribes to your list.
If competitors are successful in selling a similar product and you are giving away a high quality product based on the same topic, imagine just how easy it will be to recruit visitors and subscribers to your site.
And better yet, what better way to begin building a relationship with an active subscriber base than by offering them something of equal value with no strings (or price tag) attached!
You could offer:
- Free Reports
- Free Ebooks (full length of leaked chapters)
- Free Tutorial Guides
- Video Tutorials
- Free or Trial Access To a Membership Program
- Free Booklet with “Top Tips”
- Free Weekly Newsletter Subscription
- Free templates or graphics
- Free Audio Interviews, Lessons, Tutorials
The key to creating a successful giveaway product is in its overall relevancy and existing demand. You want to make sure that your target audience is actively searching for similar information, and that it is being sold successfully in the marketplace. If you do that, you will have little difficulty building a massive list of targeted prospects who will be eager to receive your emails and broadcasts.
If you plan to promote an ebook or e-course of some kind, a very powerful method of building a massive mailing list while generating new business for your product is by offering a leaked chapter of your info product.
By offering this free chapter, you are able to provide new subscribers with a sample of the quality of your work, as well as generate buzz around your upcoming product launch.
If your product is well written, you will find it exceptionally easy to build a subscriber base of people who will likely purchase the full length version when it launches.
This is also a savvy method of creating a viral campaign for your upcoming launch as people pass around the ‘leaked chapter’ to everyone they know.
If you are interested in outsourcing your project to experienced freelancers, you can easily find a trustworthy professional from the following freelance marketplaces:
http://www.Guru.com
http://www.Elance.com
http://www.Scriptlance.com
Just make sure to provide your freelancer with a clear outline of what your project entails and be sure to follow up by requesting updates and reviewing the content as its created.
You want to be available to your freelancer in the event they have questions about the project or need a bit of guidance. Consider signing up for a free Skype account at http://www.Skype.com and adding your freelancer to your contact list.
You could also consider using private label rights material to create your initial giveaway product.
You want to be careful doing this however, as it’s important that you begin building a solid relationship with your subscriber base from the very beginning. This means that the product you give away will ultimately represent your quality and overall brand.
If you do decide to use private label content, make sure that you spend time revising the material so that it blends well with your own personal style.
You want people to begin to recognise your brand, and become familiar with your work, so taking a few minutes to tweak and update the content will help to develop a product that is exclusively yours.
Here are a few PLR sources worth considering:
http://www.PLRGrab.com
http://www.ContentGrab.com
Okay, That’s it for this article, in the next articles in this series we will look at the elements that make up a good squeeze page. That will help you to build your list.
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