Why should you build an email list?
To make money!
Most people just build a website thinking it will magically make them money. This could not be further from the truth. If you don’t work on your website either by providing up to date information or by writing a blog then your website is nothing more than a promotional brochure. If anyone has handed you a brochure how long did you keep it before just throwing it in the bin.
Some businesses and websites don’t need to be more than a brochure. You just want people to find you or contact you by finding your information on your site but lets face it they can do that these days just by finding you on Facebook or online white pages.
There are many ways to make money from your site. One of the most effective and cheapest methods is to build a email lists, either by a subscription form on your site or by using blogs that make your site more informative and interactive.
Once upon a time you would buy a list of emails and just spam them with your promotions. That wasn’t much then and certainly doesn’t work anymore.
Do it right
When was the last time you got an unsolicited email that you opened up and viewed with credibility? Maybe never.
And that’s where the difference lies.
We should only be asking people that have read and enjoyed our work if they want to sign up. They already have an interest in our products or services so just ask them if they want to keep in contact.
That’s building an email list does. It allows your customer to say “I like your stuff show me more.”
We aren’t building a list that will be 500,000 emails overnight. You could do that by obtaining a list from dubious sources. That would be useless and probably expensive.
What we’re after is building a list of highly receptive and appreciative people who have volunteered their email addresses.
1,000 emails from your list are far more productive than 100,000 random emails.
What is the basic structure of building an email list?
Here is the usual basic flow that you’ll see:
- Call to action — “Please come check out my other articles here!”
- Landing page — A page showcases what you do and what you can offer for readers
- Lead magnet — A reason for them to give their email address, often a giveaway
- Opt-in form — An applet or platform tool that lets a user enter their email address
- Email marketing platform — This tool will let you set up welcome emails, automation, etc
What is a ‘Call to Action’?
The call to action (CTA) is a section on your blog, social media, or other pages that asks a reader to subscribe to your email list. There are many different methods for doing this, but it requires a bit of copywriting and creativity on your part.
Bloggers often position these at the bottom of their post, at the very least.
There are several different strategies for optimizing conversions, but I’ll save that for another article.
There are many articles and too much information to include in this post. We are just trying to highlight why you should consider building your lists. Once you build your lists you can then target your audience for the products or service you want to promote.
