List Building Secrets

It’s often said the money is in the list. And the bigger the list the more money you make.

But that’s only partly true — and here’s why.

In fact it is the quality of the list that decides how much money you make. Some of my biggest and best conversion rates and sales for thousands of dollars have been made to a tiny, but top quality, list. In fact, so good are the customers on that list some of them have sent me gifts, even after paying me thousands of dollars for my products.It is an unerring natural law that quality and quantity tend to be inversely proportionate. So, given the choice, I’ll gladly take a tiny list of good quality every time!

So how do you set about getting a good quality list from scratch?

Once you have generated a flow of quality traffic to your web site, you need to retain as much of that as possible by capturing the names of quality visitors. There are several ways you can do this.

Most popular are pop-ups, which visitors hate and webmasters love — simply because they do tend to work.

Increasingly popular is the squeeze page, where you literally squeeze the visitor’s name and e-mail address out of them, before you allow them to see the web site. How effective these two methods are depends on how intriguing your copy writing and bullet points, to convince visitors to fill in the name capture form, are. Depending on how your visitor has reached your site (clicking an AdWords, reading an article, search engine result or recommendation) you could achieve conversion rates ranging from 20% to, perhaps, double that figure.

But how would you like to achieve consistently more conversions — and high quality conversions, at that?

All you need do is provide some content for the visitor to read before you demand their name and address. That way you don’t violate the first rule of marketing (don’t annoy your prospective customer). In addition, you also prove your worth, by letting them see the sort of information you are going to provide. This is far better than a headline — no matter how throat grabbing — and a list of bullet points, no matter how compelling. After all, that is self-praise, which will always have a lower credibility rating than letting them see for themselves how good you are.

Here’s a further benefit with this method. If the visitor subscribes to your list, after they have sampled the goods somewhat, it means they are more likely to be a match for what you have to offer. The closer the match, the more you’re likely turn a prospect into a customer. You don’t want people on your list who aren’t likely to ever become customers. Quality wins over quantity every time.

But the highest quality list in the world is only as good as your last mailing. Don’t imagine for one moment all the prospects on your list are so enamored with you and your web site they are sitting in front of their computers studiously deleting every e-mail that does not bear your name. You know, from your own experience, just how much you are assailed with e-mail offers from every quarter. So your task is to keep your name in the forefront of your prospect’s mind.

You want to strive to position yourself as the supplier of choice. Just as you might automatically think of Coca Cola or Bud, when you are thirsty, you want them to immediately think of you, when they have a problem in your area of expertise.

For this reason, you should be e-mailing your list at least once a week — and initially far more frequent than that. If they first subscribed for a course, you may be e-mailing them initially on a daily basis. That’s a good start. Thereafter once a week should be the target, which is why a regular newsletter is so valuable. Always remember we humans need to repeat something 21 times to form a neural pathway in our brains that creates a habit.

Once you have a built up a quality list by these methods, don’t destroy your reputation by selling something in every e-mail or offering rubbish. Give plenty of free stuff and only offer something for sale about every fourth e-mail. Even then, only offer your own products or affiliate products you have personal experience of using or from someone of whom you have a high regard.

You can also make your contacts far more personal, if you occasionally mail your list by snail mail. Send them a free dvd or cd, because that’s a sure way to get the package opened, even if they don’t recognize your return address.

Once you have your list, guard it with your life, because it is the list — a quality list properly nurtured — that will provide your amazing lifestyle. Isn’t that something worth working hard at?

Copyright 2006 Paul Hooper-Kelly and www.InternetMarketingMagician.com