What The Heck Are You Supposed To Do With A Mailing List!?

Hello!

Hope your day is going AWESOMELY!

Today’s question was on list building.

Specifically: “You have talked about “the money being in the list” and back end sales etc.  I understand the concept to first get people on the list.  But how often and what types of offers do make to your list? And given that only a fraction might open the email what sort of total conversion rate would you typically expect at a given price point?”

I am NOT happy with how the video turned out, but I don’t know how else I could answer it.

Truth is, in my experience, list building has been VERY variable. I can’t (honestly) give “clear cut” answers because there are so many things to consider (such as the niche you’re in, how often your niche gets mailed, when the last time you’ve mailed to your list, your relationship building abilities, etc).

That being said, I gave you some of my best tips for what to do when you’ve built a list.

I’d say this video is more newbie-oriented. I’ll give the Cliff-Notes below so you can see if it’s worth your time. :) Here goes:

Once you have a list, you can mail about these things:

Blog posts (This is better than content in an email since it trains people to click on your links.)

Relationship building goodies (The video goes over what I do in my niches. Relationship building is huge if you want people to trust and eventually buy from you.)

Surveys (Surveys are awesome for figuring out what people want to hear about! You can use them for product creation, for knowing what to promote, and knowing how to NOT waste your time.)

Affiliate offers (Promote things people have expressed interest in ONLY. Promoting other things is disrespectful – not to mention gets you a world of unsubscribes.)

Other tip: Make sure to have emotionally compelling headlines that get people to want to click.

If you’re totally lost:

When I say a “list”, I mean a list of names and email addresses that business owners accumulate. This can be a list of past customers, people who have signed up to your list to get a free giveaway, or people who have expressed some kind of interest in your services. List building is VERY important as it takes several exposures to a brand or company before most people want to do business with them..

Things I Forgot To Mention In The Video:

As far as how often to mail, I’d say to be respectful. I wouldn’t recommend emailing people with 3-4 different offers in one week on a normal basis.

I’ve done it before – and made a LOT more money when I did – but at the end, I don’t think it forms good long term relationships, it’s certainly not helping the consumer, and I feel like a worse person for it.

Dennis and I stick to one main offer during each week now, and maybe a weekend special for a cheaper item.

I’d also say when you’re writing your emails, it’s helpful to imagine that you’re writing to your core customer. Think about what that customer looks like – how old they are, what their house looks like, what they’re wearing, all of it… and then just write your letter to that ONE person. It makes it MUCH easier to write email copy.

As for emotional headlines – make sure they MAKE SENSE to your message! I hate when people have a headline such as “She’s going to KILL ME” and then when I open it, it says something like, “Made you look!”. Not only is it disrespectful but it makes me not trust the marketer.

Here are some examples of good headlines:

“He did WHAT?”

“How leaving my hubby prevented overeating” (got this from Jena LaFlamme!)

“FINAL NOTICE!” (a Frank Kern classic that works very well if not used all the time…. it gets people super interested in what they might be missing)

Okay… I hope I remembered everything, and I hope that helps. I’m going to keep editing as more questions come in. Here’s the video: