Building A Responsive List

Your business list is one of your key assets to your business. Sadly many people do not fully understand how to build a good responsive list. Their greatest mistake is thinking that the bigger the list the better response. This is not necessarily so. Most of us who have tried ezine advertising will definitely agree that sometimes it is the small list owners who bring the best response.

Why is this so? Because those list owners who have responsive lists know the secret of true list building. It is not the amount of subscribers you have it is the type of readership you are attracting. In other words are you specifically targeting your market when you build your list.?

Every once in a while there is a big hoopla about some so called Guru, who has unlocked the secret of how to build a huge list in a remarkably short time. They are usually selling this formula for x amount of dollars. When you look into it a little deeper it is often a fairly good method but has one fatal flaw, your subscribers are not targeted!

When you build a list from a non-targeted market you will indeed probably build a big list, in a fairly short time, but the catch is, how responsive will your list be? A large list without a good response is simply not worth the effort.

Here are some methods that will help you build a list that will be responsive to your ads and targeted 3rd party ads.

 

  1. Website promotion: a web form or subscription box is easy to set up with your autoresponder. Just copy and paste the HTML into your HTML editor.
  2. Cross promotion: when you get a sizable list, swap subscription boxes with related web sites.
  3. Ad swaps with other publications: Remember to swap with targeted newsletters and you will get sign ups this way
  4. Article distribution: circulate your articles around the net and put your newsletter information in your bio box. I have received subscribers this way.
  5. Forums and business networks: post often and intelligently, on these business networks and do not advertise but leave your link and signature file here.
  6. Always encourage our subscribers to pass on your newsletter to friends

These are just a few ways to promote your newsletter to your specific market. There are some other ways to build your list that are not using a newsletter as such but can be used to build your subscriber list.

1.      Viral marketing

a.    E-book-write or have written an e-book that your visitors, subscribers can download for free. Make it about a highly interesting topic that your visitors will enjoy and find informative. Scatter a few useful resource links with your affiliate ID embedded. Be careful not to overdo these. give resale rights to your readers and permission to give away. Include a link to subscribe to your newsletter. As more of these books are given away you will snowball your marketing and build a good-targeted list.

b.    Free report: This will work in the same way. The only difference is that it will be shorter.

Viral marketing is very powerful and cost effective.

If your customers are not already your subscribers include a link to subscribe to your newsletter with their thank you note. They will then be eligible for back end products that you will sell through your newsletter.

As you can see these are just a few ways that can help you with building your list. You can also join some Ad Coops if you have a marketing or home business newsletter to help you get targeted subscribers in exchange for free ads. The main thing to remember when building your list is to do it with people from your special market and get the maximum response from your list.

 

Cathy is a freelance writer and copywriter. She has written  hundreds of articles on small business development and marketing. She has also written promotional articles and sales copy for a variety of businesses. and is the publisher of 2 online publications. Her resource websites are:
 http://advertise-your-business.com
http://a1-newsletters.com