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List Building
Are You Building An Email List Or A Tribe?
Are You Building An Email List Or A Tribe?
You are using email marketing as part of your business strategy, right? I am sure you are but thought I’d ask because some folks get distracted by the next best thing and tend to neglect using email as part of their marketing strategy and they are seriously missing out.
Let me say this now, email marketing is not going anywhere, and is a simple, effective way to reach and engage your readers, but it must be done correctly to be optimally effective, and hopefully this post will help with the way you approach email marketing and nurturing your list in future.
Now, if you’ve been doing online marketing for any length of time, you’d have heard the line, “The money is in the list” repeated ad nauseam. Yet, it is true. The money is truly in the list, especially if you have a large and responsive one.
But it shouldn’t just be a list of freebie seekers; the real money is in the buyers list, as you know they are much more likely to be serious, take action and see results.
Because of this obsession with list size, thousands of marketers resort to a myriad of methods to grow their list. They focus on the numbers and the size of the list but often fail to realize that quality beats quantity.
It is a fact that there are marketers who have a list of about 10,000 subscribers and are able to generate six figures a month from this list as compared to many other marketers who have 10 times more subscribers but can’t make even half of what those with the smaller list are making.
If You Are Just Building A List And Not A Tribe, You’re Doing It Wrong
The secret to getting the most out of your list is to build a tribe and not a list. You may be wondering, “What’s a tribe… and what’s the difference?”
The difference is that a list is just a group of subscribers who’ve either opted in to get a freebie or they’ve purchased a product of yours and landed on your list. At this stage, the list isn’t too familiar with you, and they don’t really know you well.
If you do not establish a relationship with them and you just keep hitting them with email after email, many will unsubscribe and leave because they do not feel a connection with you. You’re just another marketer to them.
A tribe, however, is loyal. It takes time to nurture a list till it becomes a tribe. You’ll need to provide value to your list and help them progress towards their goals. Your emails will need to be entertaining and yet, useful.
You’ll need to be honest in your emails and your personality needs to shine. The products you recommend should be good and you must always look out for your tribe because in a sense, since it’s your tribe, you’re the leader. Your vibe attracts your tribe.
Just like any leader knows his tribe well, you’ll need to understand the needs of your list. Create a subscriber avatar. For example, if you’re in the weight loss niche, you must know who your target subscriber is.
It may be a middle-aged woman who could be juggling her career and her family and trying to get her body in shape. Or it could be a busy mom who has had no time to exercise and she’s trying to get rid of a few pounds.
Or it could be an overweight man who wants to get in shape so that he can gain confidence and ladies will start looking at him in a whole new way.
As you can see, all these are different types of people with different needs. You cannot help all of them. You need to pick one specific group or niche and address the needs of these people.
Trying to be everything to everybody is a surefire recipe for failure. Speak in a language that your subscriber can identify with. If your list is mostly comprised of women trying to lose weight on their tummy but you’re talking about getting ripped and muscular, you will not form a bond with your list.
You need to be on the same page as them and know what their needs, goals and dreams are. Now you can help them and provide them the value they need. Once they see that you have their best interests at heart, they’ll trust you and anticipate your emails. You now have a tribe of people who look up to you and want your emails.
It is inevitable that you will get unsubscribes along the way. Do not take this personally or lose sleep over it. To become a navy seal, one needs to go through a series of rigorous of tests and must make the final cut. Many start out but only a select few get through. However, these few are highly trained and have a bond like no other.
In the same way, the people who do not ‘get you’… are better off on someone else’s list. You can’t please everyone. You should be glad to see them go because not only will your autoresponder fees be lower but you’ll also have a list that’s ‘tight’ and a bunch of subscribers who hang on to your every word.
That is definitely a good place to be. Keep building your list and while you’re doing that, always establish a relationship with your subscribers so that you have a growing list that becomes a tribe.
Many marketers, especially affiliate marketers, simply pound their list with offer after offer and provide absolutely no value. This inevitably results in a high unsubscribe rate, so they must be constantly trying to build their list to replace all those that are leaving.
Just thinking about that makes me feel exhausted! Wouldn’t it be easier to nurture your list, look after them and offer them products and services that will genuinely help them, instead of thinking purely selfishly about your next commission payment?
Take time to grow your list, nurture them, look after them and always have their best interests at heart and they will reward you and your business.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
Do You Struggle With List Building?
If you’ve been around internet marketing for any length of time, I’m sure that you’ve heard the phrase “The money is in the list.” You might get weary of hearing it, but it’s smacking you in the face for a reason – it’s the truth! Actually the phrase should really be “The money is in the buyers list.”
First of all, let’s answer the question, “What is a list?”
A list in internet marketing terms is a database of contact information for your prospects. So if you have a product or promote products about gardening and I sign up for your list, I’m a prospect that you can market to repeatedly until I unsubscribe.
So why is building a list so important? Let’s say you start off as an affiliate marketer. You find a niche you truly enjoy and you start working what you’ve learned into some traffic for your affiliate links.
Over a period of 30 days, you funnel 5,000 prospects from the World Wide Web who are interested in your niche straight through your affiliate link to the product owner’s site.
They even buy – yea! You’ve made a 50% commission with a 2% conversion rate. That means 2 out of every 100 people you sent bought the product, and your share was $26.00 (as an example). You earned a cool $2,600 this month – good for you!
But you’re leaving money on the table. Those 100 people who bought from your 5,000 clicks? They’re now on the product owner’s list, not yours. So what they’re going to do is send them more offers over the coming weeks.
After all, they are proven buyers. Over the next 30 days, those buyers fork over some more money for products that complement the original one they bought. That money goes to the product owner, not you – because you passed on building a list the first time around.
A better way to build an internet marketing business is to start with a list from day one. Before you let a single person slip through your link without capturing their name and email address, have your system set up to build a list.
Why should the product owner get to cash in on that person again and again when you’re the one who brought them the customer in the first place? Stake claim to each prospect and leverage your relationship with them for future sales and commissions.
You can have unlimited lists for different niches and send automated emails using a simple tool called an autoresponder, examples of which are Active Campaign or Aweber. Every day you can log in and see how many people have signed up, and you can create automated messages to send out to help convert your list into more sales.
If you want to learn more about autoresponders, you can read this article.
If you are serious about growing a successful online business, then you must make list building your main priority.
Even if you are an affiliate marketer like in the example mentioned above, there are ways to capture the prospects email address before sending them to the sales page.
You can do this by creating a free gift that the prospect opts-in (i.e. give up their email address) to receive. The trick here is to make the gift highly relevant to the affiliate offer.
Checklists, workbooks, case studies are such examples of good gifts, or “lead magnets” as they tend to be called.
Once you have your gift, you can create something called a squeeze page (sometimes called a bridge page in affiliate marketing) using your page builder of choice. If you use WordPress, I highly suggest OptimizePress and if you don’t use WordPress I would suggest Convertri.
When you are ready, you send your traffic to the squeeze page, the prospect opts in and is then sent to the affiliate offer.
This is a real win-win because you are building your list and you may also get some affiliate commissions if they decide to buy 👌
When you are a little more confident, you can try your hand at creating your own products and having affiliates send traffic to your offers. How amazing is that?
But whatever you do, you must ensure that you are actively list building all the time.
You also need to manage your lists proactively, and learn how to write compelling emails to get readers to open them and to take action on the contents.
Don’t just bombard your new subscribers with offer after offer. It is important to nurture your list and give huge amounts of value and helpful advice before asking them to buy even more stuff from you.
This is a major mistake that a lot of marketers make, especially in the internet marketing/make money online niches.
Another thing you should be doing is not bombarding your buyers with offers to buy things they have already purchased; this is just plain lazy marketing and happens all the time and shows that you don’t really care about them.
So, as you can see, list building is critical for the success and longevity of an online business. But it is also incredibly important that you nurture and manage your list once they have subscribed as it is much easier to convince a customer to buy from you again.
Write emails that help your subscribers and don’t be afraid to get a little personal and reveal things about yourself as this will only make them connect with you more, as you are not just another marketer, but a real person.
And remember that your email list is a source of free traffic, so look after it and it will be a source of income for you for years to come.
Your subscribers will expect you to sell to them so that isn’t a big issue, but don’t go for a hard sell every email. Always have their best interests in mind, rather than making a quick buck and they will reward you with their loyalty and custom.
And don’t email them too often! Some marketers email daily, others a few times per week or once a week. There is no right or wrong but you do need to email them regularly; once a week minimum or they may forget about you.
Some marketers can be very pushy and email multiple times per day, especially if they are promoting a product launch, but I personally think that is too much and too aggressive.
And don’t be afraid of people unsubscribing; it happens and is nothing personal. You only want people on your list who are going to connect and engage with you, so repelling the wrong type of person is just as important as attracting the right kind of person.
As I said earlier, you need to be managing your list and this includes removing people from your list who aren’t opening your emails as this can affect your delivery rates. And as long as you are continually trying to build your list, this shouldn’t be a big issue for you.
Just remember that your subscribers are real people with real problems that hopefully you can help them solve and you will do well.
So, go out and start building and nurturing your list today. 👍