The number one rule for an online business, no matter what niche or industry you work in, is to make sure you’re building an email list along the way.
This list is yours forever. Facebook, Google or any other online communication media can change their rules on how you use them whenever they want and without warning. Do you want to bet your business on it? Of course not.
You can future proof your business by focusing on building your own list of emails. Building an email list means you can contact the people on your list when you want, for whatever reason you want (paying attention to email marketing rules and what’s best for your subscribers, of course!).
But just having a list of random people on your email list is not enough. What are the email list building strategies for getting genuine prospects who are interested in buying from you?
FREE Checklist: Create An Effective Sales Funnel
The 5 Steps For Building An Email List Of Genuine Prospects
1. Reliable Email Marketing Software
One of the most important elements of building an email list is choosing reliable autoresponder company that provides email list building services. The autoresponder company you choose will help you maintain your list (or lists), create opt-in forms, and deliver your emails on autopilot.
You will have to pay your autoresponder company monthly, but it’s well worth it. Many of the autoresponder companies work on a sliding scale. It’s very inexpensive when you have few subscribers and the price only increases when you have more.
There is free list building software available that you can install on your own server that will enable you to host your own list, saving the monthly charges. The reliable autoresponder companies like AWeber work hard maintain top level ratings with ISP’s, so that their servers aren’t flagged for sending spam, thus causing them to get blacklisted.
If you send emails from your own server, and especially if you’re on a shared server with other unknown people, the chances of eventually having your server’s IP address blacklisted is very likely.
2. Create Something Of Value To Give Away For Free
Don’t think that people will sign up for your list just for the heck of it without a freebie or some other kind of incentive. People belong to a lot of lists these days and many are tired of getting marketing emails in their inbox.
You can break through the noise and clutter by offering something that will directly help your target audience to solve a problem or make their life easier. You want to offer something so awesome that your audience would actually pay for it if you had a buy button there. It’s important that you have something very enticing to give away for free. This might be a free, ebook, report or free product of some kind.
Take some time to develop your freebie. Make it something so good that people won’t want to pass it up. If you don’t want to create a freebie yourself, you could even buy resell rights or private label rights to something your audience would want, as long as those rights allow you to give whatever it is away for free.
3. Build A Squeeze Page
A squeeze page is simply a page that has the sole focus of getting people to sign up for your list. You’ll use a headline that captures their attention, a few bullet points that spell out the amazing benefits of the free gift you’re offering them, and some call to action text to get them to enter their email and hit submit.
You can use your autoresponder software to create enticing opt-in forms that you can put on your squeeze page. If you’re unsure of the technical steps at any point, you can search the help area of your chosen autoresponder company or use simple squeeze page software.
Once you have a squeeze page that sings the praises of the freebie you’re giving away (and makes it sound so good people couldn’t possibly pass it up), it’s time to drive traffic to that page.
4. Drive Traffic To Your Squeeze Page
Now it’s time to get traffic. It helps to become known in your niche. One of the best ways to do that is to interact on the social media sites that your target audience use. You can also make blogging and search engine optimization part of your strategy to get traffic and get people to sign up for your list.
The fastest way to get traffic and to get people to sign up for your list is to pay for ads. Paying for ads lets you instantly know whether your squeeze page is converting or not. This can help you make tweaks so you can get more people to sign up. Then, you can focus on more organic, unpaid methods of getting traffic.
5. Create A Sales Funnel
Now that you have your squeeze page up and running and you’re getting email signups, it’s time to get your autoresponder emails locked and loaded. These are emails that are sent out automatically when somebody enters their email address into into your opt-in form on your squeeze page.
This is the start of your sales funnel. Everyone who signs up to your list will receive an email that contains a link to download their freebie. From there, you can send them additional content they’ll enjoy—informative emails as well as sales emails. Pay attention to what will make the people on your list happy.
On average, a prospect needs to see your messages 7 to 8 times before they trust you enough to buy something. Email is the perfect way to deliver these messages. Invite them to respond to you and reply back when they write you. You aren’t just trying to sell within these initial autoresponder messages, though it’s absolutely fine to do some selling. Just be sure you have something they will be interested in and are likely to buy. You can email them with offers for your own products or offers for products that you’re selling as an affiliate.
One good technique is to ask people to reply to you telling you what their major challenges are in your niche. Then you can take those thoughts and make sure that your future products cover the answers. Don’t be afraid to present affiliate links and buy buttons for your products or services. People trust you and they already buy products related to your niche anyway. They may as well buy it through you.
Free Checklist For Building An Email List That Generates Sales
Everything you do online should be tied to building a mailing list. Good, consistent emails help build relationships and make sales for you. Give people every opportunity to sign up for your list. The more opt-in boxes and squeeze pages you have, the better.
People buy from those they know, like, and trust. If they’re on your email list, they’ll be a lot more likely to know, like, and trust you. Download my Email Marketing Sales Funnel Checklist that outlines the best practices for building an email list so you achieve the intended result with lots of prospects and lots of sales.
