Go to Bed with Your Customers – Build That Relationship to Last!
The Importance of Building an Email List
All successful internet entrepreneurs agree regarding the necessity and advantages of having an email list. Your email list is a database of important, direct contact information that enables your business:
- To keep in touch with your customers by building relationships on a regular basis and allowing you to generate direct sales without going through any third parties
- To have complete control over your customers and be independent of internet companies, such as Google, Twitter, or Facebook, who may change their rules at any time. In the unfortunate event your accounts or websites get interfered by a ban or restriction, you still have your list.
- To service a much larger and broader number of potential customers that could possibly fit in your local business. Consequently, you will have two sets of clients: those online customers you ship products to or provide services for online and those offline customers who walk in through the front door of your business. If you had an email list of 5000,perhaps the accommodation of such a large number of customers would be impossible for your tutoring class or hardware store, however you could still tutor at the same capacity online through live video streaming or ship hardware supplies across the nation to your clientele.
So how exactly do you build an email list?
The first step is to direct all your traffic from the different sources to a squeeze page also known as an opt-in form. A squeeze page is simply a one page website whose sole aim is to collect email addresses. Successful New York business consulting firms continuously advise on the importance of having an opt-in form on your websites. An opt-in form has the same function as an opt-in page but may appear embedded within your website page in a prominent area or may appear as a pop-up box which is simply a box that pops up in front of a web page although the web page can still be seen in the background.
Whichever design you decide to use, just understand that nothing else should be found on your squeeze page-no sales offers, no article content. Your traffic simply enters a first name and perhaps a last name and their email address. They shouldn’t be able to perform any other activity that would distract them from this exercise
How do you get people to give you their name and email address?
Naturally nobody would want to do that and that’s why your business needs to offer a free gift of value to entice people. This free gift should be so valuable such that your prospects will see it as a no-brainer to sign up. I know many business consultants in New York who use this technique frequently to their advantage. Of course you need to mention this free gift giveaway in all your traffic generation sources to drive them to your squeeze page.
A free gift initiates the relationship between your business and your customers. It can be in the form of a report, an e-book, a video or an audio file but it must be valuable or something that your customer would appreciate. Information that solves people’s problems is a proven strategy that works in any niche. By researching news articles, forums, blogs and popular website in your business niche, you will be able to gather a ton of information from the questions people ask and the comments they make. Use this research to create your free info-product gift.
You can also offer free physical product samples too and requiring prospects to not only give you their email address, but also their mailing address. This gives you a list of people who are more responsive to your business and you may want to target them more in your sales pitches compared to those who only provide an email address. This free product gift should also be valuable to your customers and not a way to get rid of expired or outdated stock. I’ve experienced a variety of marketing consultants in New York honing in on this technique by offering valuable information products such as books and monthly magazine subscriptions. Put your best foot forward and see what your business can afford. Most prospects are willing to pay for shipping fees provided it’s worth it.
Once you have collected emails and sent free gifts as you promised, you can now focus on monetizing the list by sending sales offers to your list and also maintaining your relationship with them through regular communication.
Until next time,
David R.
