subject: An Email Marketing List: Its Like Free Advertising [print this page] An Email Marketing List: Its Like Free Advertising
I have a question for you. What if you can send an ad to a thousand people, they already know you and trust you, some of them have bought from you already. Not only can you send your ad to a thousand people, you can do it once a week and here's the real kicker: It costs you absolutely nothing. How does that sound?
My response to this question was, "No way, whoever is offering that is obviously a scammer" Well, its real and its the difference between all the people making money online, and the ones failing. Its your email list. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "The money is in the list" a hundred times. I never fully understood the power of an email marketing list until someone asked me the very question I asked you. So the money really is in the list.
The reason online marketers stress list building so much is not because you've sent a thousand people through your sales funnel, but because you can re-contact them and offer them not only your first product, but many more after that. I also builds rapport which increases sales. One of my favorite stats is that most sales come after the fifth contact.
When I heard that statistic I started keeping it in the back of my mind. I joined a few lists myself, and I realized I started trusting people more and was more willing to buy from them the more emails I got from these people. It wasn't that their content was enthralling , just the fact that I had heard from them before boosted my trust and gained rapport with me.
So just advertising your product alone, one contact, will not get you sales or referrals, at least not many. In fact, if your not using your advertising to build your list, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You're losing sales by not building a list. You're losing valuable contact.
That's what the heart of sales really is: contact. The more relationships you build, the more contacts you have, the more sales you get. Of course your list needs to be a two way street. No "do not reply to this message" junk like you see on so many emails. At the very least your contacts need a way to contact you. The easiest way is of course an email back. Even better if they can contact you by phone and such. And what's even better than that is if they can contact each other.
Now I'm not saying that you send your list out to your members, but something like a forum or social networking is a great way to have your contacts help each other. It creates a self reliant community, and that helps take some of the work off of you. Why should you answer the same question fifty times when your contacts can answer each other just as easy? Not to mention its a great way to get testimonials
So lets just do a quick review here. If you get one thing out of this article its this: Your list is free advertising...FOREVER. It will grow and the contacts on it will help you as well as new members. So right now if you have a website or if you're selling a product get names, get email addresses and start seeing your numbers skyrocket.
