What if you have a website, blog, Facebook page or other social networking site where you are building some traffic, people are reading what you have to say and now you want to go one step further and get them to join your list.
List you say…how do I get me one of those?
Let me just say that having a well developed list of followers (think of them as your Champions) has huge advantages for you:
- They tend to buy at a rate that is 10-100 times higher than first-time visitors to your website (that right there should convince you to immediately start building your own list)
- They give you a loyal, active subset of your market that can help you find new product ideas, help you test new concepts, copy and products, answer surveys and be those eager beta customers for new products and services
- They will be your #1 source for glowing testimonials – if you treat them right and they like you they will say pretty much anything nice you want them to about you
- Give your launches a huge initial boost. When you come out with new products or services, before your larger market jumps on-board they like to see some early activity – you can get that from your list
- They will buy affiliate products from you. Not only will your list be more open to buying your own products, but they will also buy referred products from you (assuming they are good and you do it in the right way) which means lots more profit from you.Â
- Your list gives you leverage in your marketplace. If you have a list of 10,000 loyal, responsive subscribers you can access partners, speakers, co-developers, marketing and service specailists that you would otherwise not get the attention of…a very niche fringe benefit.
So, how do you go about building your list then?
1. First, you need a list management service. We use a couple of them, Aweber is certainly one of the best out there…they have a low entry plan, offer amazing list growing and management features, have good support and are reliable from an up-time as well as email deliverability rate. Another option is to go with an all-in-one sort of front-end which includes Autoresponders such as 1ShoppingCart
List managers (also called autoresponder services) are critical since they handle…
- Subscription forms and links that you can put on your sites to get people to signup
- Unsubscribe links for people to get off your list
- Choices of pre-canned messages you want to send to your subscribers (Ex. Thank you for signing up, here is where you can download your incentive… an email minicourse where you pre-write 8 lessons to share with them over a period of a few weeks), OR broadcast messages where you can choose all or a portion of your list to send an email blast out with news, a product offer or other notice to your subscribers
- Detailed reports and tracking of open emails and open links within emails. Aweber is great for allowing you to look inside each and every list you manage noting daily signups, unsubscribes, trends over time, # of people who opened your email and in some cases, the percentage who clicked on a link within your email to see how effective your offer was
- Newsletter templates and management. We send our list a weekly newsletter, a mix of new content, promotions and blog post summaries for the week to drive traffic back to our websites – we do it all using Awe ber’s html newsletter templates and list management capabilities
Making the right choice of list manager is critical as you grow your list, you don’t want to lose months and years of work by having them disappear or shut you down – so getting it right is critical for your business.Â
2.  You want to have a high-value incentive that is…
- Of high perceived value to your subscriber base
- Highly relevant to your product or service (so that you don’t have 10,000 subscribers that love your freebie, but don’t want your core products or services)
- Is specifically designed to both deliver value to your subscriber and, at the same time, convince them they need more so that they will invest in an offer you make to them
Incentives we have offered include checklists, audio interviews, videos (a single video or a series), private membership site access, an ebook or report, access to a private group coaching call, access to software, tools or templates that you have developed for your market, etc…
3 You want to have a specific landing page designed to convince “cold” traffic to signup to your list in return for your incentive.
Just as you have webpages designed to sell your products and services, a landing page designed to “sell” your incentive and get your visitor to sign up to your list can be a highly effective way to turn traffic into subscribers.Â
Certainly, you can place opt-in forms on your various content pages, blogs and even on Facebook – these will be effective, but often have relatively low opt-in rates as visitors have become “blind” to these forms over time.
So, another strategy is to mention your incentive in your content and send them back to a page that is designed to “sell” them on your freebie in exchange for their opt-in.Â
These types of pages are often called “Squeeze Pages” or “Opt-In Landing Pages” as they are designed to “squeeze” your visitor into taking action to join your list.
4. Constant Communication. Once you have a subscriber on your list, you want to keep communicating with them so they get used to hearing from you.
In my case, I initially send out an automated set of lessons, tips, resources or videos/audios for them designed to add value and sell them on an offering we have…after 3-4 weeks they then are on my “drip” list where I send weekly messages including updates, tips, my own experiences, blog post notices, promotions and other updates.Â
Remember, keep them interested, engaged, curious and let them hear from you regularly – that way they will continue to like, support, trust and buy from you for years to come.
