Successful online and Offline marketers have found a way to quickly build and monetize on their email lists. Follow up email lists are a critical tool for any marketer. Lists of 10, 100, 10,000 or 100,000 people strong do not matter. Focusing only on the size of the list does not produce results; you must learn and understand the strategies and programs it takes to build a list. We begin with strong and focused lead generation; targeted niches, targeted opt-in boxes and value driven follow up copy for subscribers. These articles will summarize four email marketing list building strategies and show you how to build a productive list.

Step one is targeted market or niche objectives. Business success comes from focused attention to a specific market’s needs. What are you trying to accomplish? What need do you fill? What challenge can you fix? Look at the overall picture of your business and then plan out effective marketing programs, timelines and milestones to reach predetermined goals. Create a series of messages to lead your target audience to your offer page. We accomplish this with traffic methods.

Step two is niche targeted and focused traffic generation. Traffic or people reading your content are the base elements in the Internet marketing world. That’s seems simple. What is not obvious is what needs to be done to attract this traffic.

For example, there is organic traffic, paid ads, referral incentives, and many Offline ways of generating online traffic. Some marketers spend $10,000/month in Google Adwords, some insentivize with affiliate commissions and some employ teams to generate and publish content. If you are an Internet marketing newbie, the vast amount of differing methods that are available can be overwhelming. In the end, traffic depends on how much time you have, how much you have to spend and how good a manager you are.

Step three is well placed lead captures or “opt-in” forms. Once we create a steady stream of readers, our opt-in box gives people the ability to ask for more information. To increase our opt-in numbers we use incentives to coax prospective clients to leave a name and email address. The more value you give away the high the opt-in.

Step four is follow up with subscribers. Again value is key. After subscribing to your list, people are going to look for valuable knowledge, feel good entertainment or relevant information about what you are doing and how they can benefit. When your prospects perceived benefit his higher than they’re perceived monetary value then they will be willing to purchase whatever it is you have available for sale.

Experienced marketers differ in how many messages to send to a list in a given week. Aggressive marketers or guru’s send several times a day. The downside is that this practice causes rapid list burn out or churn. Consistent and valuable information is key. Emailing valuable information two or three times a week cuts down on churn and increases reader interest. Longer periods tend to decrease retention and your list will get stale.

These four steps are the foundation of a profitable Internet marketing plan and key to building a valuable list. Follow up lists are basic tools for any Online or Offline business. That is where the gold is. Each and every subscriber is valuable so treat them as if they were live customers that you would speak to in person.

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