Why Start An Email Marketing List?
When you start an email marketing list, it will become the most valuable asset of your business. Your email list is made up of people who have willingly given you their email address because they want to hear more from you. They want your messages in their inbox.
Reading emails is the number one activity online and email marketing is the most effective marketing technique.
Take a moment to think about how often you check your own email, as opposed to, say, checking social media or using a search engine. Your prospective customers are doing the same. This is why if you’ve not done so already, you need to start an email marketing list for your business.
Click Here: Free Email Marketing Guide
How Much Does It Cost To Start An Email Marketing List?
When it comes to email list building one of the common questions asked is how much will it cost? A lot of business owners who are new to email marketing assume they can just purchase a stack of email addresses, send out an email, and watch the sales start rolling in. Rarely, if ever, is this the case. Most of the time the recipients aren’t even responsive, and the emails sent aren’t even opened.
This isn’t because email marketing doesn’t work. It’s because that strategy doesn’t work. So, as far as how much does it cost to start an email marketing list, that isn’t the right question. The question should be is it worth buying an email marketing list?
The answer is no! It’s not worth it.
Yes, you can go out and buy a million email addresses for a few hundred dollars but it will almost always cost you more than it makes you. Just think about this for a second. When you receive an unsolicited email from somebody you don’t know, do you click on it and do business with that person? Chances are you don’t. That’s because people don’t buy from people they don’t know. The first place to start an email marketing campaign is to reach out to your existing database of clients (if you already have a database). If not, you can grow your list in an organic matter.
How To Build An Email List For Marketing
The regular day-to-day email management systems, like Outlook, Apple Mail, Windows Mail, Gmail, etc, are not designed for email marketing. To start an email marketing list you need an email marketing software service, commonly known as an autoresponder. This software enables you to automatically send, obtain, manage, track and organize your list of email addresses. Regular day-to-day email management systems don’t do this and, as you email list grows, it will become impossible to handle your email marketing manually.
Some email marketing services, such as AWeber, offer a free 30-day trial. This allows you the opportunity to start an email list and maybe make a few sales before you start being charged for the service. After your free trial is up you will be charged a fee based on the size of your list.
How To Build An Email List From Scratch
Once you have signed up with one of the email marketing services you will need to create an opt-in box to put on your website. This is the box where people enter their email address to join your list. This is very simple to do via your email marketing service. You create a code which you can copy and paste onto your website home page. You now have an email opt-in form ready to collect email addresses when people land on your website. When someone opts in they will be on your list and you can email them whenever you want.
Try to design an opt-in box that’s attractive and place it in a prominent spot on your website. Also, think about what you’ll give in return for someone’s email address. One of the best ways for building an email list fast is to offer something of value for free. This could be a report, ebook, video tutorial, newsletter – anything that your target market will want to get their hands on. You can set up your autorepsonder to automatically send this freebie when somebody signs up to your list.
4 List Building Tips
1. Always Get Permission First
If somebody enters their email address into your opt-in box, they are giving you permission to send them emails. Never send an email to someone who didn’t request to get an email from you. This is extremely important to your overall success. It’s very difficult to run a successful email marketing campaign if you’re sending information to people who didn’t request it.
2. Focus On Helping Your Subscribers
Building a list is not just about selling as many products as you can. Yes, you want to make sales. Ultimately, that is the main goal. However, you don’t want to shove every possible product or service that you’re selling down your subscriber’s throat. Instead, you want to focus on helping them and providing value. Show your subscribers how your products can help them. Helping will turn subscribers into loyal customers.
3. Send Emails On A Regular Basis
Most people new to email marketing are afraid to send more than one email a week. If you’re helping your subscribers, they will love hearing from you. Honestly, they wouldn’t mind if you sent them an email every day. However, remember, it’s all about helping. If you aren’t helping don’t send out the email.
4. Test Everything Before You Send It
Always send your email message to yourself before you send it to your list. You want to make sure everything looks right. Proof read everything. There’s nothing worse than reading an email message that has lots of typos or links that don’t work.
Start An Email Marketing List With Confidence
Email marketing is extremely cost effective. The return on investment (ROI) is generally around 40%. When you communicate through email, you can build a loyal audience of people who truly want to hear from you. This free email marketing course reveals more on how start an email marketing list, set up autoresponder email software, write welcome emails, grow your email list and more. Plus, you’ll get a fill-in-the-blank email templates to use for your next email marketing campaign.
