Any business or venture is as successful as its marketing technique. This is why it is very important to chalk out a definitive marketing strategy. Networking is very important for any business venture marketing strategy. After all it is these contacts that might further get converted into clients or bring in new business.

This is why it is necessary to have a plan to gradually build any enterprise?s contact lists. There are many tips and tricks that can be used for this purpose. Some of them can be enumerated as follows.

? Flyers, handbills and ads are a very fast and secure way of promoting a company and adding to its contact list.

? Word to mouth promotion is also a very effective tool to build lists and therefore the company should promote and sponsor more events to make sure that they are in the minds of the people.

? The effects of technology on all fields should never be denied. The company or business should definitely take advantage of the newest technological tool in their hands to promote their business. The Internet can come in very handy for this purpose. There are various ways and means by which the company can utilize their website to promote their business.

? Blogging is a very effective means of building up a contact list. Writing key word optimized articles is also a very effective way of promoting a company or a business.

? Affiliate marketing is one more way of building a list of contacts. In this case if the company or the business already owns a website it can be very beneficial for them. They can use this website to publish ads from other websites in which case both the websites’ contacts would be utilized to promote each other.

? Posting web banners, blogs or articles that are related to the company’s website onto other popular websites, helps in utilizing the other websites, popularity and builds on the already existing long list of the popular websites.

? There are also loads of viral campaigns that can be launched on the internet and also sometimes in the surrounding locality that can help a lot in building up the lists considerably.

? Most of these campaigns revolve around strengthening the networking and the promotion of the website or the company. They can be a discount offer or even some contest that would require people to sign up for the information and thereby there is a possibility of building up the contact lists and meeting potential clients or even future sponsors.

? With the internet, there are a lot of search engines and web directories that can help in list building. In fact with some clever strategies a person can make use of the already popular web sites’ contacts and visitors to market their own websites and this can be done in next to nothing if it is done in the collaboration of the mentioned websites and an exchange of ideas or even promotion is taken care of.

I was recently surprised when someone who was new to affiliate marketing asked me. . .”Why do you need a list anyway?”

That’s a good question. And many newcomers are probably asking themselves the same thing. When we first start out, we aren’t really thinking in terms of long-term profit and we don’t really have the statistics ingrained in our brains. We’re just trying to figure out how to make money .. .so the list-building concept may not be all that intuitive.

This article is the first in a series of list building tips. Here I’m going to focus on why everyone (yes, everyone) in business benefits from growing a list.

But first, what is a list anyway? It’s basically just a series of people who have (hopefully) given you their contact information. These contacts are considered leads and the quality of these leads can vary greatly. For example, if you have a list of people who have specifically requested that you send them information about a product that you promote or the business you are involved in, that list is extremely targeted and qualified. If you have a list of contacts who are interested in your industry in general but haven’t shown any interest in your particular product or business, that too is a fairly targeted list.

Buying leads is another (not recommended by me) way to build a list. That would be considered pretty low on the list quality totem pole.

Remember that you might also have several different lists that each represent a certain niche or target market or quality level. You will want to market differently to each of these lists but that is another topic for a future article.

So, on to the real list building tips article number 1: five reasons you want to start building your list now if you haven’t done so already.

1. Increase your earnings, even from the people who don’t buy your product. Anyone who has already learned the lesson will gladly tell you. . .not having a list means not earning up to your potential. Look at it this way. You advertise a product for a month and you get a certain amount of sales from this. If you don’t have the contact details of the people who bought this product, you have made just one sale per person. If you do have the contact details, you can offer these people more similar products, or upgraded products of the ones they have purchased.

Or. . .look at it this way. Someone is interested in your product but they don’t purchase it right now. If you can get them on your list, you can send them reminders about this product or others they may be interested. If not. . .oh well, off they go to your competitors.

It’s important to point out here that the buyers are the ones who will continue to buy. If you’ve sold a product to someone, you can be assured that this person is much more likely to buy that same product again or the next product you offer than someone who hasn’t bought from you. That’s just one more reason to build a list.

2. You don’t need your own product or business yet. . .and you can make money while building. Many people get started with marketing online and they don’t really have a clear idea about what they want to do. Or maybe they are trying lots of different things. As far as list-building goes, that’s perfectly fine! You can start out promoting someone else’s product as an affiliate and build your list that way. As you start to learn more about online marketing and get a clearer picture of where you want to go, you are actually building up one of your biggest assets that will serve you in the future.

3. You can do market research for free. Building a list means having access to feedback and ideas. This goes hand in hand with number 2. Once you can maintain contact with people, you’re able to ask them what they are looking for and in turn, you can develop your marketing strategies accordingly.

4. Building your own list means building your brand/image. The Internet is an amazing power. But you can get lost in a sea of cold websites and hypey sales pages. Building a list puts you on a more personal level with your customer and allows you to establish a rapport. Who do you think people are more likely to buy from. . .the person they’ve never seen before of the guy/gal who sends them those really cool emails about something they are interested in. . .?

5. Your own lists represent multiple sources of income. The ideas you get from your list and from what actually compelled them to join your list allows you to create your own products/services or seek out others that you can offer them.

List building can be creative – the more you put yourself and your personality into the mix, the more successful you’ll be with it.

Keep in mind that your goal is not just to obtain a bunch of email addresses or phone numbers. The real point of list building is to provide value and to maintain relationships with the people who land on your list.

If you’re wondering how it is that you actually get people on your list(s), stay tuned for the next article.

Copyright (c) 2010 Titus Hoskins

If you’re into affiliate marketing you will probably already know how important list building is to your overall success. However, I sometimes get the feeling from close examination of my competitor’s sites that list building takes a back seat in their site layout and design. One also gets the general feeling that list building is not as important as it once was, especially in the early days of online marketing before the advent of so many social media/networking sites.

Granted for the ordinary webmaster, in the age of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, building your own personal autoresponder lists have taken a backseat to these social networking sites which obviously builds your subscriber list for you. But these are third-party sites controlling your subscribers and while they more or less eliminates the whole notion of unwanted spam, they do present issues regarding the use of these lists.

Coming from the old school of marketing, I realized the importance of my lists from the start. I also realized the most difficult part of building a list was not getting the subscribers, but connecting in some way with them and building trusting relationships with lists in the tens of thousands is not an easy thing to accomplish.

List building in regards to affiliate marketing is of special interest to me since I am a full-time affiliate marketer and anything which makes my job easier I will try. Like most affiliate marketers, I have created niche sites dealing with the products and services which I promote. One major component of these sites is the list building element. On almost all my sites I try to capture my visitor’s contact information to give follow-up information which lets me market to these subscribers in a very subtle way.

The important thing here is to offer free ebooks, guides or e-courses in order to capture this contact information before these customers are sent along to the merchant’s site. This is the “old squeeze page” which many online marketers use in order to build their own list of potential prospects for their offers.

This must be a “win-win” situation for everyone involved so I like connecting these lists to special sales, coupons and deals which are offered by the merchants. These customers can get $100′s off the price of the products featured so that they end up with a good deal and you end up with a sale.

All this couldn’t be possible if you didn’t build your list of targeted clients or customers looking for the products you’re promoting. List building in this area has proven very effective for my affiliate marketing, so effective I try to put my subscriber form or box on all my webpages. So if you’re an affiliate marketer who is sending your visitors directly to your merchant’s site, think again, and see if building or capturing your visitor’s contact information is worth your while? If done properly, this can be an excellent way of increasing your sales and commissions.

Another form of list building which I believe too many affiliate marketers take for granted is the powerful little “cookie”. For those not in the business, a cookie is simply a piece of code which identifies your referrals as belonging to you or your affiliate ID, if a sale is made immediately or for any time in the future you will get credit for the sale because you referred the customer or client.

Now, the trick here is to pick affiliate products and programs which have a 90 Day Cookie or more; if a sale is made in those 90 days you get credit for the sale. The longer the length the better, there are even some products and companies which give life-time cookies.

Why is this so important you ask?

Well, if you have a popular site you can quickly build up a long list of potential customers cookied with your affiliate IDs. The larger the list, the more sales you will make. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game, the more numbers you have, the easier it is to succeed. I have found this so profitable that I try to “cookie” all the lists I build in the process mentioned above, so that all these potential customers have my affiliate IDs attached.

So it doesn’t take a genius to realize, used in combination, this can be an extremely profitable form of list building which every affiliate marketer should be doing if they haven’t already figured out this simple marketing strategy. Build your lists, cookie your lists, and then sit back and reap the rewards.

ABOUT LEE MCINTYRE (AUTHOR OF MAILING LISTS UNLEASHED)

Lee McIntyre is a teacher who has already successfully sold digital products online in the teaching niche. Although Lee has only been trading online since 2006 he is a true success, selling 600 copies of his first Internet Marketing ebook, Auction Profits Unleashed, during pre-launch alone. Since then Lee has launched a number of successful ebooks, a membership site and an excellent newsletter.

ABOUT MAILING LISTS UNLEASHED

Inside Mailing Lists Unleashed, Lee McIntyre explains how to go about building, maintaining and profiting from your very own email list and illustrates this with stories from his past experience and insightful screenshots. The topics Lee covers include;

- Why the traditional model of Affiliate Marketing is flawed!!

- How to automate your List Building Efforts!! – How to create a Sizzling Squeeze Page!!

- How to create an Effective Thankyou Page!!

- How to create an Effective Confirmation Page!!

- How to create your very first Newsletter!!

- How to profit from your List!!

After a short introduction, Lee criticises the traditional model of affiliate marketing. He believes the core advice is correct but the way people are encouraged to execute it is poor. Overall, Lee thinks that just looking at sales is a short-term approach. Focussing on building a list is (in Lee’s eyes) a much better long-term approach. I agree with what Lee says in this chapter. By building a list the traffic you generate can be utilised multiple times and it is a much more efficient system than sending leads direct to a sales page.

Next, Lee goes on to discuss how to automate your list building activities. The best way to do this is by taking advantage of the services of an autoresponder. Lee and myself both recommend the services of Aweber because of their brilliant email delivery record. In this chapter, Lee explains in detail how to use Aweber and set up your first list. He includes some excellent pieces of information which include; how to keep subscribers on your list and how to effectively brand yourself. Overall, this chapter provides a great introduction to Aweber, particularly for beginners looking to start their first list. The screenshots are really helpful if you are struggling with any areas of the setup. However, if you are experienced in the use of Aweber you will probably be able to skip right through this chapter.

In the third section of Mailing Lists Unleashed the topic of squeeze pages (pages that are designed to collect the name and email address of visitors and add them to your list) is covered. Lee describes how he decides what to include on his squeeze pages, his 6 golden squeeze page rules and also provides some squeeze page examples. I found this section quite useful because it allowed me to evaluate my own squeeze pages critically. In particular, Lee’s squeeze page rules acted as a check list for my own squeeze pages.

Next Lee goes on to discuss in greater detail how to add the web form to your squeeze pages using Aweber. Like the previous chapter on Aweber the information here is informative and the screenshots really make it easy to follow. However, it is aimed more at the beginner who is doing this for the first time. I cannot fault the information itself but if you have created a few web forms in Aweber previously you are unlikely to learn anything new.

Following this Lee goes on to cover thankyou pages. A thankyou page is the page that subscribers see after they have entered their details into the web form. If you do not create a unique thankyou page Aweber will show subscribers a default page. However, Lee believes that it is imperative for you to create your own thankyou pages because it can increase the number of subscribers who confirm their subscription. He then goes on to explain his 4 thankyou page rules which are in a similar vein to his 6 golden squeeze page rules, and as always includes screenshots of some of his thankyou pages for illustration. I found this chapter to be another informative one. It was not quite as useful as the chapter on squeeze pages but the 4 thankyou page rules were good nonetheless.

After this Lee goes on to cover confirmation pages. These are similar to thankyou pages but instead of appearing immediately after the customer has entered their name and email address, they appear once the customer has confirmed their subscription to your list. The chapter is laid out in a similar way to the previous ones with Lee explaining how to set up a confirmation page in Aweber, then listing his 3 confirmation page rules and finally providing some screenshots for illustration. Although this chapter is laid out in a similar way to previous ones I feel I learnt a lot by reading it, because at the time of reading I was not utilising my confirmation pages effectively. Reading this chapter brought that fact to my attention and allowed me to do something about it.

Once you get to this stage of Mailing Lists Unleashed you should have your automated email list building system in place (if you have been acting upon the advice as you read). Subscribers who enter their details on your squeeze page will be directed to a thankyou page. This thankyou page will encourage subscribers to confirm their subscription. Once they have done this they will then be directed to the confirmation page. All this will take place automatically without you having to lift a finger.

Now that everything is set up Lee goes on to cover the next stage of the process – creating your first newsletter. Lee first discusses how his very own Lee McIntyre Newsletter boasts a very low unsubscribe rate and a very high response rate because he does things a little differently to many email marketers. He then goes on to explain how to make your own newsletter unique by breaking a number of the established email marketing rules. Lee finishes the chapter off by detailing how to increase the reach of your newsletters and also how to make a little money with them too. Overall, this was one of the most useful chapters for me. After reading it I found a lot of areas in my newsletters which required improvement. If I had not read Mailing Lists Unleashed they would have gone unnoticed.

Next Lee goes on to describe how to distribute your newsletter with Aweber. As with all the previous chapters on Aweber, Lee provides plenty of screenshots and lots of description to ensure that the beginners can follow. The chapter is very informative but for those who have some experience with Aweber the knowledge will be of limited use.

Lee heads into the final chapter of Mailing Lists Unleashed by discussing how to profit from your list by setting up a few follow up emails (emails that are sent out to subscribers after a pre-determined interval e.g. followup email 1 can be sent 3 days after subscription, followup email 2 can be sent 2 days after that etc). Lee goes into great detail outlining what he would include in each of these follow up emails which I personally found very useful. Overall, this chapter was the one from which I gained the most. Before reading this chapter I really was neglecting my followup emails. However, with Lee’s detailed instructions this was easily ammended.

In conclusion I highly recommend Mailing Lists Unleashed to both beginners and more experienced email marketers. The screenshots and detailed instructions that Lee provide make it easy for someone to set up their first email newsletter as they read. However, the little touches that Lee recommends to; maintain subscriber loyalty, increase the amount of money your list makes and make readers more responsive to you can really help enhance your email list. This ebook is not without its flaws. Lee does not cover all topics with the same level of detail. In particular, the subjects of negotiating product discounts and driving traffic to your squeeze page are only covered briefly. Nevertheless, if you want to start your own email list but find yourself lost Mailing Lists Unleashed is a good place to start.

GOOD POINTS

- Very detailed instructions and informative screenshots make it easy to implement the ideas as you read. It is ideal for beginners.

- Lee’s unique ideas will make your subscribers a lot more receptive to your emails.

- If you follow Lee’s instructions your email list will be largely automated once set up.

BAD POINTS

- Certain points, including traffic generation and negotiating product discounts for your list, are not discussed in a great level of detail.

HOW I HAVE GAINED FROM MAILING LISTS UNLEASHED

The most significant benefit for me was the section on followup emails. I really learnt a lot here about what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do to improve this situation.