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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, they’re all great places to get new business from. However, the single best way to get people to come and visit your website repeatedly and to spend money on it is with an Email list.
The trouble of course is in building an Email list. How do you accomplish that? You could purchase an Email list – some companies do sell ones that are reliable, though many such lists are really just spam lists which can get you sued and will generate very few solid leads for you.
Plus, even the reliable ones are cold lists with people who expressed interest in a similar product to the one you offer rather than expressing an interest specifically in your products. Instead, here are five tips for building an Email list organically and effectively:
Ask People to Sign Up
It sounds obvious but it’s not. Offer an Email list for people to sign up with. There are a number of companies that offer the service free of charge or for low cost and you can then manage your list and send out targeted Emails to clients of your business whatever it is.
Use a Double Opt In
If you do arrange for people to sign up for an Email list at your blog or website, make sure to offer them what is known as a double opt in. This means that they will get an Email from you at their personal Email address telling them to confirm that they want to sign up for the service. The advantage of this is that you avoid accidentally spamming anyone.
Have a Privacy Policy
Many people ignore them, however for those who don’t (not to mention for the lawyers if they sue you), having a privacy policy is imperative.
Make sure to include what your policy is about selling your list. For example, generally, it’s best not to offer it for sale to anyone – if you do want to make extra money, you can offer to let people send an Email to your list on a one time, case by case basis, however you do need to mention this explicitly in your privacy policy.
You may also want to include an opt in which will let people choose whether to get third party offers mailed to them rather than automatically including them in such a program.
Offer a Freebie
I discussed this the other day. Because people are so inundated with information and offers, getting people to sign up for yet another Email list generally means offering something of value to get people to sign up with you. The easiest thing to offer is a free video or a free eBook which has real value (the pitch fest eBook is not a good choice).
It’s also a good idea to offer several freebies and let people choose one or the other of them rather than offering just a single freebie. Yes, you’ll get the fraudsters who will sign up with multiple Email addresses to collect the set, however when people see that they can only choose one, they tend to value it more than if it was only option.
Make Sure to Engage
Finally, when you build an Email list, it’s important to engage with people. This means actually communicating with them once in a while and offering them something useful rather than pure marketing. If all your Emails are there to sell something rather than offering something of value, your Emails are likely to be ignored fairly quickly after all.