List Building Explained – How to Build a List

Building a large list doesn’t happen overnight but can be achieved if you work on it consistently. It’s a never-ending process that reaps many benefits. Once you’ve built a large list of subscribers will be able to generate instant sales, do market research and participate in joint ventures with other marketers in your niche.

Let’s look at the requirements needed to build a list

• Sequential autoresponder

This refers to web-based software that stores contact information in an online database and sends out e-mails at prescheduled times.

• Squeeze page

This is a web page containing your opt in form, a free offer and several bullet points outlining the benefits of receiving your offer. It’s called a squeeze page because there are no other links on the page. This prevents your visitor from getting distracted and directs them to only take one action… subscribe to your opt in form.

• Free offer

No one will subscribe to your list if you don’t bribe them with a free offer. This motivates them to take action immediately. Your offer could include a report, video, audio or software.

• Single or Double opt in

Double opt is when a visitor submits your opt in form and is immediately redirected to another web page which thanks them for filling out the form and asks them to check their e-mail to confirm their subscription. After they have confirmed their subscription by clicking on the link in their e-mail they receive another email confirming they have successfully subscribed.

Single opt in means a potential subscriber doesn’t have to take the extra step of confirming their e-mail address. Even though this may build your list faster it can easily be abused with people using fake e-mail addresses. This means you won’t know if you have real people on your list. It’s better to stick with double opt in.

Traffic generation

There are both free and paid methods to build a list. Paid methods generally work faster than free ones because you are substituting money for time.

Free Traffic

• Article marketing

Write a series of 400 to 500 word articles and submit them to the top article directories and ezine publishers in your niche. At the bottom of each article include a link to your squeeze page. Often ezine publishers and website owners will publish your article in their ezine or on their website thus generating traffic to your squeeze page.

• Search engine optimization

Create content that targets a specific keyword or keyword phrase which receives lots of visitors each month from the search engines. Include your keyword in the meta-tags, title tags, headlines, sub headlines, content, file names and links on your web page. If your web page gains high rankings it will attract a lot of traffic from the search engines. You can either place your opt in form on this page or redirect the traffic it receives to your squeeze page.

• Social marketing

Redirect traffic from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter to your squeeze page. Even though you may get a lot followers, these social marketing properties don’t belong to you and could easily change their rules. It’s better to get them on your e-mail list which you control.

Paid Traffic

• Google AdWords

These are the ads you see displayed on the right side of Google’s pages. It enables you to be positioned on the first page of Google immediately. Open up a Google AdWords account and create 2 ads to see which ad works best. Place a link to your squeeze page at the end of each ad. You can control how much you wish to pay-per-click and how much to spend each day. Keep testing your ads to improve the click through rate to your squeeze page.

• Solo ads

Ezine and newsletter publishers offer solo ads to be sent to their subscribers for a fee. This results in generating immediate traffic to your squeeze page. Find an ezine publisher in your niche who has a large list of subscribers and purchase a solo ad. If you can afford it run the ad several times as people need to see an ad several times before they take action.

There are hundreds of other ways to generate traffic to your squeeze page but if you implement any or all of the above methods you’ll be well on your way to building a large list.