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Building your email list

How do you go about building your email list and why do it anyway? Here Peter Hanley takes you through the reasons why and the how to do as well.

 

A list like no other.

Before you can achieve any marketing you must have someone to market to.
This is what we call a list. Names, email address, phone number (mobile), interest
and place of business.

Why even have a list?

Knowing your customers is important because they spend money with you.
It’s not rocket science, ignore them and they will spend their money with someone else.

What can you do with a good list?

You can pick up the phone and call them. OMG, pick up the phone, you mad or something.

Furthermore, you can email them, yep a simple email message to say hi.

Maybe we can SMS them, all the rage now, SMS works. 

Working with lists

Perhaps you can send them a newsletter, everyone we know at a click of a button. 

Then we could even send a letter or in the post mailer.

Or we can go and visit with them, sit down and have a chat.

Before we can do anything we need to know who they are, their contact details and what they like.

If you run a CRM system ( contact relationship management) you will have all this in one spot.

When you have this, you are a lot of the way there.

A good list represents real value on a daily basis and end of business sale time.

A short story

 building your email list

Let me tell you a story. A customer of mine had an aquarium shop, they sold Goldfish and things that go with Fish.

Unfortunately, it did not work out and she had to close the doors after several years of trading.
The only thing of value that was left was her customer list.

Her closest competitor wanted that list and was prepared to pay good money for it.

Where to place your list for best effect

 Money gone

Just imagine picking up several hundred new customers it would double his business.
I wish this was a happy ending story but it was not. Her bookkeeping and list were in such a mess we could not broker a deal for her.

The list would have paid all her debts and she could have walked free.
The moral of the story was a real lesson to me; there is money in a list, real dollar value so ignore this lesson at your peril.
The other side is selling your business; a list then shows the buyer what he can expect and adds real value to the sale.
A list can generate income on a quiet day, week or time, quickly and without a lot of costs.

How to build a list

A CRM package costs a lot of money and time to maintain and depends on the size of your business.
Your accounting package will probably hold most of the information you need.
You can run a simple excel spreadsheet system to record your details.
When you develop an email, newsletter or SMS list the system will also maintain a list for you.
Ask the question.
Get the name phone number (mobile is best) and email from everyone that walks in the door.
You can use a raffle a prize, a giveaway or just a promise to supply some information.
From your web pages have a pop-up or exit box to obtain names and emails.

Inhouse sources

We have talked about your in-house sources, billing sales journal, CRM, any available list.
From callers and inquiries. Everyone that wants to do business with you.
Encourage the staff and even reward them for achieving targets, do every legal thing to get those names

You will end up have several lists;

Everyone that you have done business with.
Those interested in product A or B or C
Service clients, sales clients, potential clients.
In later lessons, we will talk more about segregation and why all the lists, at this stage we want names.
Get your list started today, set a target and start to work the list.

A few reasons to have a list.

A friend of mine in the Health area sent out 130 messages to past clients asking them to come back.
The result was over 30 bookings. He now sends thousands per month and has done for years.
Don’t wait for the big numbers, start working your list small and work up, the practice will improve the performance
Imagine the satisfaction you will achieve seeing this work. Even better counting the dollars return.

Spamming

It would be remiss of me to not talk about spamming.
I don’t provide legal advice and you can Google details relevant to your country.
However, my understanding is that if you have collected names of people freely given in the course of business with you they should be legal.
Names gathered outside of this are possibly spam.

Example of Spamming

General real estate agent gathered names and numbers from the for sale section of the local paper.
They created a list and sent a message. Yes, they were in an interest group but they had no prior connection or business involvement. The result was that he was subsequently fined for spamming.
Combing the internet or trade journals is a similar activity and should not be done.

In conclusion.

A list is a valuable asset, it is worth more than stock because it appreciates with time.
Use it for contact calls, newsletters, SMS, Email campaigns or any other purpose just use it.

 

At the Wealthy Affiliate, we teach everything about lists for free.

 building your email listPeter Hanley

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Other great training.
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Building your email list for profit by Peter Hanley

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