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5 Steps to Build Your Own Subscriber List
Written by Bob Kosimov
Let me ask you this Who can you sell your products or services to over and over again?
Your subscriber list is an unlimited source to market your products to. You can test your products, run surveys, do anything that might be of interest to your subscribers. You dont even have to spend any advertising money, your list will do the job.
But what should you do if you dont have your own subscriber list? Well, then you should build one (of course, there are thousands of list-owners, who would be pleased to offer your product to their list for a fee, but better yet to build your own). And thats what you are going to learn in this article.
Ok, lets jump-start to building your subscriber list.
1. Where to start?
As soon as you have your web site up and running, first thing you should do is to put up a subscription form in the most visible places on your site. Your goal is to collect e-mails. Attract your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter by offering free info like a helpful article, report, or free book. Or you can offer a discount on your product if they sign up for your newsletter. Ideally, if you have a list of 10,000 e-mails, then you should be pretty well balanced.
2. Opt-in e-mail
One of the factors of successful e-mail marketing is using opt-in method. In other words, your messages should have unsubscribe link on the bottom of the page, so that your subscribers can stop receiving your messages when they want by a simple click. Otherwise you will be reported as spamming.
3. Double opt-in for safety
You can increase your targeted subscriber list, using double opt-in sign up method. That is, if someone subscribes to your newsletter, e-mail is sent to their address. They have to answer to the e-mail in order to be included in the list. That means they are interested in receiving your newsletter. And it is their e-mail address. This is the safest way to increase your targeted subscriber base.
4. Contacting your subscribers
Once you have collected few e-mails, you have to decide how often you would broadcast your messages. Biweekly or monthly is a pretty good interval. It gives you enough time to come up with something that can be of interest to your readers.
You can send your newsletter every week or every 5 days. But it requires a lot of commitment to write it with interesting content and meet the deadlines. Besides, they could already be receiving newsletters from other marketers. So, they might just not have enough time to read all of your messages. However dont exceed a monthly basis. Your subscribers should get a constant reminder that youre still around and not confuse your e-mail for spam.
5. Personalized messages
If your messages start with Dear Steve or Dear Susan, it will warm up your subscribers. And they will be more receptive to the information you are about to share with them. It also adds to your credibility and helps to increase your response rate. So, send them personalized messages, possible with link: http://www.aweber.com/?202651 AWeber or link: http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop/t.x/813946 Mailloop software.
Some additional tips
One of the mistakes in e-mail marketing is using catch all e-mail feature. Use the only e-mail addresses that people have entered to receive your newsletter or ezine. Forget that catch all e-mail stuff that comes with your hosting package. Because if people didnt subscribe to receive information from you, they wouldnt read your e-mails. And you dont want to be accused of spamming, putting your reputation at risk.
Dont be insistent in promoting your product. Rather explain the benefits that your subscribers will get in a friendly fashion. Sometimes, you get e-mails that urge you to buy their stuff, almost demanding why you havent done that yet. So be careful it might hurt your credibility.
Well, now you know how to build your own subscriber list. Follow these suggestions and your success as an e-mail marketer is guaranteed. Remember, you dont have to get millions subscribed to your newsletter, you only need 10,000 and youre set for life. The only thing thats left to do is you just have to put some in and do it.
Good Luck!
Bob Kosimov offers helpful articles, free downloads and other useful webmaster resources. Visit his site at http//activeresponder.com/?code=5.
bobk@activeresponder.com
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