Building a contact list can be as easy or complicated as you wish. But why make it more difficult than it needs to be? Use the techniques below to increase your subscription and retention rate and build a solid contact list.
Focus On Your Customers. Use your email list to learn more about your customers. An email list is not one-way street. Even if you use your list primary to send out a newsletter always, give your readers a way to contact you.
List a special “editor” email and encourage people to write you with any comments that may have about the latest newsletter issue.
Create a survey about a hot topic that your newsletter relates too. Read the headlines in industry bulletins and then ask your readers to email you back with their opinions.
Make a questionnaire. Lots of people love sharing their ideas with others, especially if they feel they are helping a group of like-minded people.
Take a poll. Use your newsletter to take an “exit poll” on some product or service that you sell. Publish the results on your website at a later date.
Send out “Product Updates” or “How-to Guides” on products or services to former customers. Offer discount coupons to new products or services.
Ask “what did we do wrong” questions. Encourage your readers to give you and your business improvement tips. Provide a simple contact form for people to reply anonymously.
Provide quality content in your newsletter that is not readily available elsewhere.
Create a community. People love belonging to groups of like-minded individuals who understand what their goal is.
Answer questions. Use your surveys and questionnaires to learn what is confusing to your readers and then work to find the answers to their questions. Solve problems. Use your newsletter to provide useful how-to information for your readers.
Vary content formats. Although your newsletter is an email, place links inside to videos, podcasts or PDF files on your website.
Give away something free. Although your readers are already signed up, reward them by offering free products or services a couple times a years. Remember, Oprah gave away a few free cars once to her studio audience and now there is a waiting list that is years long.
Create exclusive learning courses for your readers. Use the information you have gleamed from your readers to create a learning course that provides answers and solutions for a common problem in greater detail. Encourage them to forward these special issues with business associates.
So as you have learned that maintaining and building a contact list using the tips above can be a very simple and easy process.
Ever wonder how to build your list quickly and easily? Read this article to see how you can use these nine techniques to build a responsive mailing list.
(1) Create High, Quality Content
Create good, quality content on both your website and within in your newsletter. Nothing keeps readers interested as well as useful and helpful information. Use your education and experience to write tips, how-to and definition pieces for your core audience. Good content keeps a list strong and growing by word of mouth.
(2) Don’t Stop Adding Content
Keeping add articles to your newsletter. You want web visitors to see a great archive of older material. Nothing presells better than a “library” of old issues. By placing your subscribe form on each archive page, sooner or later a browser or “lookee-lous” will turn into a genuine subscriber.
(3) Do Your Keyword Research
Write your newsletter based on what your niche market is looking for. All keywords have minor keyphrases or related keywords that people also search on. Use good keyword tools to find those popular keywords and related search terms to write about. Search engines will index the archive issue bringing more visitors.
(4) Submit Articles to Niche Directories
Use search engines to locate niche article directories that match or are related to your market. Write small articles to take advantage of this little used promotional method. Add a good resource box listing a weblink to the mailing list signup page.
(5) Be helpful in Forums
Take the time to register with forums that discuss the problems of people in your niche market. Add comments or helpful hints on discussions that relate to your website or newsletter. Use your forum signature line to post a weblink to your mailing list landing page.
(6) Post Ads in Forums
Some forums have either free or paid advertising sections where their users can post ads selling services, etc. Use this service to lead interested readers to your mailing list subscriber form.
(7) Use Email Discussion Lists
While not as popular as they once were, you can probably still find a good email discussion list that serves your niche market. Join the list. Read a few issues and then start a related topic. Take a strong position on whatever the issue is. People enjoy reading slightly controversial emails. Just don’t get too hand and violate the list’s policy. Use a weblink back to your website and mailing list.
(8) Create a Squidoo Page
Use this popular Web 2.0 content management system, to post articles, videos or podcasts about your niche market. At the bottom of each article, list your email list squeeze page.
(9) Create a “Current Events & News” Blog
Go to Blogger and open an account. Create a blog that you use exclusively to “chase” the latest fads and hottest trends in your niche markets. Write quick and breezy, “who, what, when, where, why” news-style stories. At the bottom of it one have a link to more “news” and your newsletter signup form.
Building a solid Internet business that will grow and prosper for years to come appears a daunting task at first but if you have ever wanted to know the “secrets” of success marketers then read this article and learn how to build your downline the easy way.
There are two keys to a successful downline program: a good system and good people. If you have done your homework right, you have picked out one the best systems you can find. So now all that leaves is picking and keeping good people in your downline.
The first thing you must do is recruiting. Recruiting hardworking, ambitious people is not all that difficult if you “look” for them. When you cast a wide net to catch just any old thing, your downline ends up having a lot of “tire kickers” and “lookee-lous”. What you want to do to fish with bait that smart people are already looking for.
So what are smart folks searching for on the Net? Simple, answers! They have lots of questions about how downlines work; the differences between the various MLM and Internet marketing programs, etc. They look for articles, podcasts and free special reports that tell them how solve problems.
This is how you capture them. Provide them with the answers they want and help them solve problems and they will want to hear from again. Provide them a quick and easy means to sign up for your downline list! There are several very good downline builder programs available for this.
Once, they are signed up, you need to work on becoming a “mentor”. Just don’t leave your new, hardworking recruit, hanging and twisting in the wind! You have to build your downline one person at time. You must talk to them…teach them what they need to do next to make the most of this opportunity. Give them tips on what to avoid and how to solve common problems that everyone encounters.
At first, you will create these on an “as-needed” basis but soon you will have a library of “canned” how-to guides. Send these out to each new recruit and see how quickly you can build your downline using mentoring.
Next you need to maintain your downline. When you build your downline, you must be prepared to encourage people over those initial humps and bumps. Event the best of people can have a slump, as the leader, you must act as part coach and part cheerleader.
Give them “atta boys” and praise, no matter how small the sale but don’t be afraid to give someone slacking off some hard advice and little boot to the rear. Coaches lead their teams to victory and everyone deep down inside wants to be a winner. Your downline is your team and most of the people on it want to be financially successful. By helping them, you are helping yourself in the long run.
Building your downline can take time, patience and creative thinking but once you know how to build a thriving downline, you can easily become successful beyond your wildest dreams.
If you ever have wanted to know if it was possible to build a large subscriber list using very affordable web promotion methods then you should read this article on free list building tips.
Build a Mailing List
(1) Use Parked Domains
Nothing is more irritating than to click on what you think is a good link only to find an old expired or parked domain name that is still getting traffic. But still of being angry, contact the webmaster/owner responsible for the site and offer a cheap deal (the cost of the monthly hosting fees, maybe) to have your mailing list squeeze page displayed prominently on their page.
(2) Use Your Own Domain Errors
All websites have common HTTP errors such as “Bad request 400” or “Unauthorized 401”, etc. Instead of letting them go, just locate and edit your error webpages like “Not found 404” or “Internal Error 500” to display your mailing list landing page.
(3) Change Your Landing Page Title
Instead of using a title like “squeeze” or “mailing list” you can try using “Benefits-of-Reading- Keyword-Newsletter” or “Keyword-News-Here”. Add at least 300+ words of keyword rich text on the squeeze page. This is for the search engines will pick it up and index as a normal content page and add it into the search page results it delivers to visitors.
(4) Write Press Releases
If you have a new product or service or improved on the old ones then submit a press release to a publicity service such as PR web. Include in the about section a weblink to your mailing list form with an offer for a “free” or “special discounted” item/service.
(5) Write Articles and to submit to Paid Distributors
Use an article submission service or distributor like ISnare to “push” your articles out further on the web. Make sure you submit your best and most polished articles because you want to have the most bangs for your bucks using this technique. Include a weblink for your subscription in the resource box.
(6) Invite Others to Publish on Your Website
If there is someone in your niche that you admire, ask them if they would be willing to publish a short Q&A article on your website or blog. Of course you would gladly include a link to their website in your newsletter and displayed on your front page. And in exchange they would mention of your website in their newsletter and place a backlink for you on their website.
(7) Publish in a related Newsletter
Contact the editors of a related but non-competing newsletter and ask if you could write a short piece for their readers. Keep contacting editors until you get a nibble. See if you can include your resource box at the bottom of your article. Again make certain to give these articles your best, because never know who may be reading your items.
Building a mailing list is simple using the above techniques, and now that you understand how they work, you should be able to starting growing a large mailing list on your own.
Lots of small business people make email list building sound both time consuming and difficult but here are 10 easy ways you can build a list to increase traffic to your website, increase revenues and decrease the number of “click-aways” on your site; all with very little effort on your part.
(1) Place a simple sign-up box on every page of your website. Make it easy for people to build a list for you. Let them know you are offering to give them even more great information or keep them in the loop of happenings with your business.
(2) Send out regular emails to your list. I am on lots of email lists. I get one e-newsletter that can run as long as 5-10 printed pages! I love’em. I get another newsletter “post card” that is only 200-300 words long. I love’em too. It’s not the length; but the “constancy of purpose”. Keep in contact with your list.
(3) Encourage your readers to forward your emails to their friends and business associates. If you write useful and interesting stuff, this is a free and easy way to build a list. People will naturally want to share your newsletter with their friends. But at least a 2-3 times a year, ask for help from readers when doing a “membership drive”.
(4) Make changing email addresses easy for reader. Place your change of address link in every email. The harder you make people work to change an email address, the more likely they are to just “delete” your message when it comes to the wrong inbox. Plus if someone is changing jobs and addresses and wants to take your newsletter along with them, let them!
(5) When people sign up for any of your services or buy your products, tell them they will receive your emails, too. Most people are more than willing to receive “Upcoming Events”, “Product Updates” or “Customer Service” messages from someone who they have done business with in the past. This is a great way to subtlety build a list without using a hard sell.
(6) Bring a hard copy sign-up sheet to all of your face-to-face events or at your front desk. I attend lots of conferences and other small business events and most everybody has a sign up sheet. But with tiny little lines! So naturally, by the time I crammed in everything, it was mostly illegible. So I started leaving my business cards instead. And you know what? No one ever follows up! Get people’s email addresses and use them!
(7) Collect business cards at face to face presentations or meetings. If you do lots of speaking events or presentations, tell your audience that you have even more information available, if they would be willing to leave their card with you and let you add them to your email list.
(8) Build a List by Asking For an Email Addresses On All of Your Forms. If you use contracts, letter of agreements or service agreements or forms of any kind for your business, change them to add email addresses to them. If people are filling out “name, rank and serial number” already, they will not balk at giving you their email.
(9) Offer a special download on your website. You don’t have to create an ebook or anything big. If lots of people come to your business asking the same kinds of questions, then you can create a mini how-to guide, checklist or FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) with the answers. You can then direct them to the website and get their email address in exchange for the information.
(10) Sponsor a contest or drawing. Place the contest sign up sheet proximately on your website and encourage people to register to win” and get your free newsletter.
Bonus: The most important tip of all: Create great content! If you write useful and relevant articles for newsletters, people will become hard core fans and spread the word about you and your business.
