[Show Transcript]

I’m Randy Charach from RandyReport.com and THIS is the show that takes you from internet zero to business hero!

In this week’s lesson you’ll learn why building your prospect and customer list is the lifeblood of your business. In most businesses, particularly Internet marketing, your list is where the money is.

It’s crucial to the success of your Internet business that you focus energy on building your mailing list. If you cater to more than one target audience then it’s important that you segregate your various lists among the various niches. On top of that, you must also be able to pull data from your spreadsheet or list management software based on specific criteria such as where the lead came from, and when they subscribed and what they subscribed to and so on.

Let’s start by talking about various forms and types of lists that your business will grow to depend on. For one thing, you’ll likely have an online list of e-mail subscribers that you obtain from your or one of your websites. For example, when a visitor arrives at your website they can put in their first name and e-mail address to receive a free report or free mini-course related to the topic of your website. This becomes your e-mail subscriber list of prospects that are interested in the subject of whatever it is you’re promoting on your site.

These subscribers are indicating to you that they’re interested in what you have to offer and this is the first step of your marketing funnel, which ultimately converts these prospects into paying customers. It’s up to you now to nurture this list and offer value to these prospects over time. Once an individual subscriber becomes a customer, they’re now part of a more valuable list that your business depends on to earn money for your company so you can keep the economic cycle going.

It’s much more expensive and difficult to find new customers, compared to creating new transactions with existing customers. That’s why it’s important that you keep your list of customers safe and alive. By safe, I mean, keep backups of your client list and keep them in a safe place. Don’t use any online program that does not enable you to backup your data and keep it on your own hardrive. Remember your list contains your leads, your prospects and your customers and without these people you lose your ability to earn income based on the asset contained within your list. You can always find new software, new products, new systems, but without access to the people who are going to do business with you then you’re back at square one.

This may seem obvious. The reality in most people’s off-line businesses though is that they completely neglect to ever build and maintain a list of prospects and customers. Most people running an online business don’t think about the value of their list until they’re faced with either losing it all together or having it diminish to the point where they no longer have a flow of transactions to keep their business alive. You can raise the bar in your business by constantly bringing new leads in to your marketing funnel, nurturing those leads and converting those people into lifelong loyal customers. In most online businesses your most valuable asset is your list. It’s that important!

There are several really good online software that make all this possible and not too difficult to manage. Your prospects can automatically be transferred to a list of customers and start receiving new promotions and this all happened behind the scenes automatically based on criteria that you set up initially. You can get up-to-date recommendations of autoresponders and shopping carts that help to manage you list at Randyreport.com so don’t worry right now about the technical part of keeping track of all of this.

A couple things for you to keep in mind, and decisions you may have to make is whether your list is an opt-in or double opt-in list. An opt in list simply means that the person who subscribes to your list is doing so by simply entering their information online and then that’s it – they’re on your list. A double opt in means that the person will also have to check their e-mail and click a link within their e-mail, which acts as a secondary confirmation that they did indeed enter their information and wish to be on your list.

There are pros and cons as to whether you choose to have an opt in or double opt in list and they basically boiled down to this… you get more people on your list with a single opt in, but you run the risk of been accused of spamming, since some people will forget that they opted in. You run an even bigger risk of foul play, where for some malicious reason e-mail addresses are entered into your system by a party other than the person who actually owns the e-mail address. I suggest you go with double opt in and do a really good job of reminding people of the benefits of why they actually opted in, in the first place. So they take that next step of clicking the link in their e-mail, and actually follow through with joining your list. Next week, I’ll talk about conversion and provide practical tips on how you can increase the percentage of people following through and decrease the amount of people who will on second thought not bother opting into your list after all.

Another important thing for you to know is that is that there’s a direct correlation between the amount of information you ask your website visitor to provide and the percentage of people who will actually provide any information at all. Of course, at the very least you’ll ask for your prospect to enter their e-mail address so they can receive your information. The next step would be to ask for their first name and e-mail address. The simple act of asking for their first name will decrease the number of subscribers you get. The advantage of asking for the first name is that you can automatically merge their first name into your e-mails and personalize your correspondence to them. This can help your conversions down the road so at the end of the day your business may do better with fewer, but somewhat more qualified people on your list. I’ve seen cases where the personalization hasn’t increased conversions so it’s something your eventually going to want to test for yourself…or, make the name an optional field.

At times it makes sense for you to go so far as to ask for their mailing address but this would be something that you would do a little further along in your relationship with the person once you’ve already corresponded with them and proved that you’re for real. You also need to incentivize the request for this information by offering to mail something tangible that can’t be delivered online. Of course, the only time you do this is if you had a specific marketing plan in place with physical mailings.

There are literally hundreds of ways to build your list and through the course of this show, and with the material offered at Randyreport.com I’ll share with you the most effective ways to do so. To wrap up this short introductory lesson on list building I’ll leave you with a few things that you can do to get started right away to build your list. The first thing you can do is direct people to your website through your off-line marketing pieces. For example, you can offer a free report available from your website and print out the offer for the report on the back of your business card.

You can run small ads on websites and targeted niche publications. You can write and submit articles online and offer more of the same free content to people once they subscribe to your list. Offer your free report or e-zine in your e-mail signature file on every e-mail that goes out. Add your e-zine to e-zine directories. If you know the lifetime value of your customer and the percentage of which your prospect turns into a customer based on joining your list then you can figure out how much you can afford in a pay per click campaign and pay for ads through search engines advertising programs.

As you can see there are many different ways to build your list and I obviously haven’t even scratched the surface in this short lesson today. Those four, five or six or whatever methods that I just shared with you are plenty to get you started and if you just use even one of those methods effectively you can build a successful profitable list in no time.

So please don’t overlook the importance of building and maintaining your list and be sure to physically take control of your list and protect it against any risk of loss.

‘QUESTIONS FROM STUDENTS’

Our question today was submitted online at Randyreport.com by Robert E., who wrote…
Hey Randy, great show, just starting out online, and don’t have a product or service to sell yet but do
Have a website with a blog. At what point should I start building my list?

You should start building your list right…..now. Just think about it, I’m sure you’re making some effort to get people to your blog and no matter how great your content is some of them aren’t going to come back. If you offer an incentive for those visitors to join your list then you raise the bar in your business and take control of the situation and have the ability to reach out to them whenever you want and not just hope that they’ll come back to you. Not only that, but now you’re building an asset, something tangible that you can work with. So offer a free report or specialized information that they won’t find on your blog as an incentive for them to enter their information on your website and transcend from a casual visitor to your site to someone who welcomes an ongoing relationship with you and your business.

Thanks for that question Robert, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the show. Notice at the close of the show as I do every week you’ll be invited to my website with an incentive to do so…and also notice when you get to my website there will be further incentive for you to join my list. This is how business is done online and it’s a proven, solid way to build relationships and build your business.

Today you learned various considerations you need to think about when building and maintaining your list of potential customers and current clients. Bringing new people into your business and maintaining those new relationships is the lifeblood of your business and requires your utmost care and attention.

[End of Show Transcript]