A list in the field of internet marketing refers to a database of email addresses of prospects to whom products and services are sold. In order to be successful in online marketing, building lists of prospects is a crucial first step. The conversions from prospects to customers increase when there are a dedicated set of people to market to.
Intention Behind Building A Mailing List
This can best be understood with an example. If a marketer of obesity reduction programs finds a prospect, he can market the program to him once. Whether the prospect buys the product or not, the interaction between the marketer and the prospect ends there. However, if the marketer first adds the prospect to his mailing list, he has the additional possibility of marketing related products like nutritional supplements and exercise equipment at a later date to the same prospect. The idea behind building a list is to develop a relationship with the prospect so that he is a source of long term revenue for the marketer.
Setting Up A List Building System
There are certain tools and processes to be set in place if one wants to start building a list of prospects. One needs autoresponder software, a set of lead capture pages and techniques for generating traffic.
- Autoresponder: This software works in conjunction with a lead capture page and records the email ids and names of prospects in its database. Then it can be programmed to send out pre-composed messages at pre-defined intervals that serve to move the prospect down the sales funnel. Once the messages are set up in the autoresponder, the marketer does not need to worry about contacting each and every prospect in his list.
- Lead Capture Page: This is an HTML page which contains a marketing message followed by a opt-in box which is used to capture the name and email id of the prospect. The marketing message consists of an attractive headline which serves to get the attention of the potential prospect and this is followed by a list of benefits of the product being offered. In many cases, the opt-in box also offers a valuable free gift to the prospect to entice him to give his email id. This gift can be an ebook written by the marketer who is also an expert in the subject.
- Traffic Generation: Once the list building software like "Lead Capture Pages" and the Autoresponder are set up, one needs to direct traffic to the page to start the automated list building. One can use techniques like article writing, article marketing, ebook writing and social networking to drive traffic to the lead capture page.
- Newsletters: One thing must be kept in mind about sending messages to the prospects which is that one must not send only sales messages to prospects but also informative messages which provide value to them. 90% of the time, the marketer should send relationship building messages while only 10% of the time, he should promote his products and services.
There are several other list building secrets such as viral list building and exponential list building which can also be tried out. Building an email list requires a great amount of patience and perseverance but it gives high returns in the long run.
Yogesh Lokhande - I am a management professional with over 10 years of experience in Information Technology, Marketing, and Education. I live in Ahmedabad, ...
