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Chapter 4: How to Build Your "Targeted" E-Mail Lists |
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You know how important your list is to you and your business. And, since this chapter is on building lists, it is obviously a very important chapter for you to understand and put to full use. How you use the techniques in this chapter will determine the quality of your e-mail list. The quality of your list will determine the success or failure of your business. Onwards... With just a little bit of creativity, you will realize that there are literally hundreds of ways to building your e-mail lists. Some ways are better than others in that they are more efficient, easy, and cost-effective than the others. This chapter will discuss the techniques that have produced the best results for me. Some of the techniques may seem obvious, but they are sometimes overlooked by most businesses and online marketers. My advice to you is to use them all, or as many as you can. If there are other sources of building lists that you have either heard of or have used effectively in the past, feel free to use them if you choose to do so. However, realize that what I've listed here are the best ways, in my experience, to building valuable "targeted" lists quickly. I use these techniques myself and they have produced the best results for me out of all the techniques that I've tried. That's what I'm offering you - a system that works! After all, that is why you bought this manual, isn't it? Here then are the methods that work best for me, listed in order of importance:
Unless your business is very new, you probably have a list of people that have done business with you in the past - your customers. The names and addresses of these customers will create the best list you'll ever own. As I explained earlier under the "old ways of doing business," most businesses forget about their customers after the customers have bought from them "once." These business are making a huge mistake. You should never abandon your "existing" customers. Why is your customer list the best list? Think about it. You have to spend time and money to find new customers. You have to then build the trust needed for them to make that initial purchase from you. Each customer costs you time and money to find. You shouldn't let this investment of your time & money go to waste. If you have made the purchase a good experience for these customers, they are willing to buy from you again and again. They are waiting to buy from you again. In fact, they are itchng to buy from you again. Let me illustrate this with a personal experience: A few years ago, I received a catalog in the mail from a company that specialized in selling CD-ROMs on "hard-to-find" subjects. They had some very interesting products - I bought 2 CDs right away. Then, assuming that I would now be on their "customer list," I threw the catalog away. I was expecting to receive their latest catalogs in the mail since I was a "buying" customer who bought their products just a few days after I received the initial catalog. I patiently waited to hear from them again, anxious to see what new products they had to offer. To this day, I have not received another catalog from them. I was very disappointed with myself for throwing the catalog away so quickly. This company made a huge mistake by not trying to sell to me again because I was itching to buy more of their products. They spent a lot of money to find me by sending out 1000's of catalogs by regular mail. After that, all they had to do was keep sending me new offers and I would probably have kept buying from them. A lot of companies make this mistake. They abandon their best list after investing a lot of money in it. Listen...it's easy to sell to your existing customers again and again because you have their trust. They feel comfortable buying from since they have done it before and you didn't rip them off. They feel they can trust you. It's also dirt cheap to sell to existing customers. All you have to do is keep providing them with quality products at fair prices and they will keep buying from you. As long as you're honest with them and provide good customer service, they will buy from you again and again. If you are not allowing these customers to make repeat purchases from you, you are wasting your advertising dollars. If you haven't been compiling a list of your customers so far, start back-tracking through your records. Find these names and e-mail addresses now! This is your best list! Don't throw your best list away. If you do not have the e-mail addresses of your customers yet, you need to get it from them. Here's the best way to do it: The next time you send them a mailer or a flyer, offer them something for free if they respond to you by e-mail. This "free" item can be a valuable report, a gift certificate, anything that will get them to send you an e-mail. Anything that will get them to give you their e-mail address! For example, if you're selling fishing rods, offer them a free report that will show them how to be better fishermen. I'm sure you can create some sort of free report that is unique to your business. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. A simple report containing a few helpful tips will do. A report of this kind will be fairly easy for you to put together since you are "in the business." However, this report will still hold a high-perceived value for your customers since they're "not" in the business. They don't know as much about the business as you do. There are more of your customers online than you'd believe. Those who are not online yet will be there soon. So get their e-mail addresses. Trust me, it will be the best move you'll ever make for your business, and for your profits! Then, start making use of this list right away! If you don't have a new product, create one right away! If you're not able to do this quickly, find a product someone else owns and make a deal with the owner. Put your best list to use. You'll be amazed at how quickly and easily you can start making a profit! If you are a brand new business and don't yet have any customers, you can use the rest of the techniques given below to start building your "prospect" list.
If you don't have customers of your own yet, this technique is the next best thing. It is one of the quickest ways to find targeted customers, make some money, and build your list in the process. Here's how it works: You form a "joint venture" with another business that sells a product "related" to your product. Let's say that you're selling fishing rods. An example of a business that sells products "related" to yours would be one that sells fishing lures, or a business that sells bait. A business that sells exactly what you're selling, fishing rods, will not be a good choice since you'd be in direct competition with each other. Do you think that the customers of the lure store or bait store would be interested in your fishing rods? There is a great chance that they would be. What you need to do is approach the owner of the lure store and offer him a portion of the profits from every fishing rod that he can sell to "his" customer list. If the owner of the lure business has customers that trust him and like doing business with him, you will do very well with his customer list. All he has to do is send your e-mail sales message out to his customer list. By doing so, there is a very good chance that his customers will buy your rods since the owner of the list is "endorsing" it for you. That's instant credibility that you can't buy anywhere. And that's what makes this method work so well. As soon as the lure customers buy your rods, they now become your customers too. You can immediately add all these names and addresses of the new customers to your "new" customer list. You would then go to a store that sells 'bait' and do the same thing. Then, go to the one that sells 'fishing lines' and do the same thing. Get the idea? Before you know it, you will have a decent-sized customer list of your own! Pretty cool, isn't it? As I said, this is one of the quickest ways to build a good customer list. And it doesn't cost you much. Remember, don't go to another "fishing rod" business owner since you'd be in direct competion with that business and the joint venture will not be a very good idea. You want to work with businesses that are related to yours in some way, not exactly the same as yours. This "joint venture" technique works very well and many online businesses are using it to easily and quickly acquire fresh new customers. Share your profits generously with the businesses that you're doing joint ventures with. Don't be too concerned about giving more than 50% of your profits to them if you need to. Keep in mind that you only have to do this once with each business. In return, you get to sell to "their" trusted customer base that they have spent money to build. The large portion of your profits that you give away on the first sale will be considered small potatoes compared to what you get in return - instant new customers! You can sell to these customers again and again and make a lot more profit. So, give generously to your "joint venture" partners.
If you have an existing website, this next technique is one that you must use on your website. The technique is very simple: Place a "form" or a simple "e-mail link" on your website with a short message that tells visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. In return you offer them something for free. A free report will work just as well here. Here's why it is very important that you do this right now. You are probably spending time and money to promote your site so people can visit your site. But, most of your new visitors will not buy from you on their first visit. Also, most of them will probably never visit your site again. (New websites are being added to the Internet at such an amazing rate that it's difficult for people to keep up with them, let alone visit the same site twice.) Therefore, you lose most of these prospects forever. Most of your marketing efforts and dollars spent on classifieds, banner trades, search engines, etc. goes down the drain. (It's the "old" way of doing business.) But, if you ask these visitors to join your mailing list by offering them something for free in return, you can now use this mailing list to keep in touch with these visitors. You don't lose touch with them completely. If you are familiar with forms or know someone who is, you can easily put a simple form towards the end of you web page. Here's an example of what one would look like:
when you join our mailing list. If you don't want to be bothered with forms just yet, you can place an 'e-mail link' with a similar message:
Just send an e-mail to: morefish@mypond.com
If you're not familiar with autoresponders, you need to learn about them! They are excellent marketing tools and great time savers. I have a free report on my website that explains what autoresponders do and why you should make use of them now! Once you collect the e-mail addresses of prospects from your autoresponder or your inbox, add them to your "prospect" list immediately. Then, you can send them updates, news, and of course, product offers. Very simple...very easy...and VERY effective!
If you're only using "offline advertising" so far and don't do much online advertising yet, you can still get e-mail addresses from prospects and customers. Use whichever offline advertising that is working well for you (direct mail, classified ads, radio, tv, etc.,) and start including your "free e-mail report" offer in these advertisements. Get those e-mail addresses from your prospects! You can also place your e-mail and website address on business cards, letterheads, voicemail, as well as any form of advertising or promotion medium that you are using. Encourage prospects to contact you via e-mail. Offer them a "free" item when they do. You have to give them a good reason to contact you via e-mail. And nothing works better than the word "free." Everyone loves free stuff. Keep in mind that you're getting all these e-mail addresses with the prospects' permission. Therefore, you can send them e-mail updates, news and offers without getting it trouble or being accused of spamming. Since you're paying for offline advertising anyway, using this technique gives you more bang for your buck. You get the valuable email addresses from prospects without any additional work since your free report is automatically sent to them via an e-mail autoresponder.
This is a great marketing technique you can use to pull in a lot of inquiries and sales without spending a single penny. Press release marketing is an absolutely free way to build your business very quickly. You can use the same technique as before to get the e-mail addresses. At the end of your press release, offer your readers something for "free" if they respond to you via e-mail.
When those people who have requested your "free report" receive it, offer to send the report to their friends or family members who they think may find the report of interest. When a friend or family member gets referred to you, send them a note letting them know that the requester (include the name) has asked you to send a free report to them that they may find of interest. Also, ask them to reply to your message letting you know that they have received and accepted the message. When they inform you of receiving and accepting your message, they are fairly open to receiving receiving messages from you in the future. You can add these people to your list. If they don't reply to your initial message, do not add them to your list. They are probably not interested in receiving further messages from you. I use a similar technique with my free newsletter and it works very well for me. Word of mouth works well with any business. Plus, it doesn't cost you anything.
Guard your list with your life since it is the most vaulable asset of your entire business. As long as you have your mailing list, you can find a product and build your business very quickly. With this list, you will be able to pull in order after order in just a matter of days. You can make a lot of money with a good list if you use it effectively. You should save copies of all the e-mail requests that you receive when people join your list. If by rare chance someone forgets that he has willingly joined your list and demands to see proof of this, you can very easily show him a copy of his initial e-mail request. This will probably never happen to you but it doesn't hurt to be prepared for any such incidents.
List Rentals If picked "very" carefully, rented lists can work well for you. However, there is always a possibility that you will get a "bad" list. The e-mail list rental business is still very new. There is no way of knowing where the list broker is getting the e-mail addresses from. While there may be some honest list brokers who will build their own targeted lists, there are many others who will simply "grab" e-mail addresses off the Internet at "random." There is no way of knowing which list broker is honest and which one is not. There is no way of knowing whether the list you rented is targeted or simply picked at random. If you end up with a 'random' list, the recipients of this list will not be happy when they receive your e-mail. You should also know that they will not complain to the list broker's ISP; They have no clue who the list broker is. They will complain to "your" ISP since you're the person sending the "spam" mail. This will get you in a lot of trouble. Personally, I am not comfortable with renting lists of any kind from others. If you decide to rent an e-mail list from a broker, you should be aware of the "potential" consequences. You have no way of knowing how this list was built.
There are some web site owners who use special techniques and software programs to capture the e-mail addresses of everyone that visits their site. They use these e-mail addresses to build their mailing lists and then mail their advertisements to these lists. They believe that since visitors to their site are somewhat targeted, it is okay to capture their e-mail addresses and send commercial mail to them. I don't quite agree with that analogy. Yes, it's true that e-mail addresses captured in this fashion can be somewhat 'targeted' since the visitors were interested in what that site had to offer. However, since these visitors are not "aware" that their addresses are being captured, and since they have not given the website owner "permission" to capture their addresses, this is "not" a very safe list to mail to. If you use this technique to capture e-mail addresses, be aware that the recipients of this list will not know who you are and could very easily complain to your ISP about your unsolicited mail. Some of the recipients will also consider the capturing of their e-mail addresses as an invasion of their privacy. This can get you in more trouble.
E-mail harvesting software programs are designed to "capture" e-mail addresses off the Internet. They can pull addresses from websites, classifieds ads, search engine listings, and even newsgroup postings. If you're using such a software to build your mailing list, you are definitely dancing on a mine field. This type of list is "not" targeted since the e-mail addresses are picked at random, and is very dangerous to mail to.
You have probably seen ads, or received e-mail solicitations for CDs that contain millions of e-mail addresses. Stay away from them! These e-mail addresses are usually picked at random. They are just as bad, if not worse, as the addresses that are pulled using e-mail harvesting software.
Newsgroups are like private online communities. The people that frequent them are there for specific reasons and don't necessarily enjoy receiving commercial e-mail from strangers. Mailing to these people are about as dangerous as mailing to those CD-ROM lists. Don't grab email addresses from newsgroups and don't mail to these addresses.
Here's the basic rule: If a person has not given you permission to send e-mail to him, is not aware that he is on your mailing list, or has not willingly joined your mailing list, you should not mail to him. Again, the best list is the list that you build yourself. Yes, it takes a little more time & effort to build your own list. But the trouble it will save you and the repeated profits it will bring in for you is definitely worth it. In the next chapter, I will reveal how to send messages out to your list so you don't get in any trouble and don't make anyone angry. You will learn what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. These are the lessons that most people learn the hard way, sometimes at the cost of losing their entire business before it ever makes any profit. You are very fortunate that you are learning how to not make those lethal mistakes that others have made, and not pay the price they have paid. So, let's take a quick break if you need to, get a refill of your favorite beverage and let's get to it . . .
The next chapter: Chapter 5: How to Send Commercial E-mail Responsibly |
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