The term “the money is in the list” is so often used that it is almost a cliche, but no matter your website, it is crucially important that you build a list.
Why is it so important that you have a list?
As you develop your business one of the most important things you can do to ensure success is having a list of prospects and customers. Driving traffic to your websites can be an expensive business, so by encouraging your visitors to join your list you then have the ability to market to them again and again.
Once your customers and prospective customers are on your list it then becomes much easier to follow up with them. By sending out emails with useful information and also reminding them about your products you become a valued source and somebody that they know, like and trust. this will have the effect of building up a loyal customer base for your business. Now the person you spend so much time and money to get is no longer a one-time sale.
Once you take into account lifetime value of your customers, it becomes increasingly apparent how valuable your list will be.
when you fully understand this relationship, you will soon see the building your business list should be a main focus. The larger your list becomes, the more money will make. This is because Europe more customers to sell new products and services to and because you’re also selling to existing customers. This is a lot cheaper than having to spend additional time and money in advertising to get new customers.
So how do you start building a list?
As a business you need to have an active list of subscribers. This could be a newsletter list, a buyer’s list or a more general list and is related to your business in some way. This isn’t very hard to do and there are just a couple of basic tools they need to get going.
The three basic tools are:
- An Autoresponder Service
- A Web Form to sign people up to your autoresponder service
- And depending on why people are signing up some kind of gift to encourage your visitors to do so.
And to maximise results you should look at developing a follow-up sequence.
There are a wide range of auto response services out there. For businesses we typically recommend a company called MailChimp, although we also really like a new company called SendReach. One of the great things about SendReach is because it is still relatively new they are offering a great deal on a lifetime subscription.
There are various other autoresponders out there, but we have found those to be the best options for most businesses.
Once you have an auto responder you then need to install it on your websites and if relevant on your Facebook business page. There are various ways in which you can do this. If you are a Vashon media client then we have our own plug-ins developed for doing this such as Easy Fan Page Design and Presidential List Building Machine. Also most auto responder companies have forms that you can create inside their dashboards.
You then need to decide how you are going to encourage people to sign up for your list. Sometimes the promise of discounts on your services or an offer of upcoming special offers can be enough, but offering a downloadable report or video or even software will give you better results.
Finally to maximise the effect of the auto responder it is worthwhile to write a follow-up sequence which are a number of emails will be sent out a regular basis to your subscribers to encourage them to take some kind of action, or just to build goodwill with your subscribers.
Alternatively, you can just hire us at Vashon media and we will work with you on your auto responder, designing your forms, coming up with a strong call to action to encourage people to sign up for your mailing lists and also work with you on a strong follow-up sequence.
If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment on this blog post and if you find it useful it would be great if you are able to share it using the social media icons below.
