We’ve all heard the statement; “The Fortune Is In Your List”!
As cliche’ as it is, it’s most likely a very true statement, but chances are you’re not leveraging your list and receiving all of the benefits out of your list that you should be.
In this article I am going to provide some list building tips and also go deeper into the steps you should be taking to utilize your list the way that the experts do. We’ll discuss what a list is, the benefits of building your list, why any marketer worth their salt uses list building in their business, and how you can maximize your list to get the full potential from it.
What is a “List”
Let’s start from the beginning…
What is a “List” and how do you build one?
A “List” is just a way of describing an email list. Your Email List is a list of your businesses contacts. These contacts are made up of your businesses prospects and customers.
At a minimum your list should include the name and email address of your contacts which will provide you with the ability to communicate with your list via email. It’s also a good idea to try to get your contacts telephone number too since this also opens up another communication path with your contact.
Building Your List
The first rule of thumb in building your list is to provide a method for capturing your prospects and customers contact information at every touch point that you have with them.
Via the Web – Provide a signup form on your website where visitors have the option of completing the form and being added to your email list. To encourage visitors to subscribe to your list offer a free gift in return. The gift could be something like a weekly newsletter, an eBook, or a training video. The idea is to provide an incentive to your visitor for joining your list, gifts and free information are always a great incentive.
Manually – If you present information about your business at conferences or seminars then be sure to have a method for visitors to add their name to your list. Again, offer a gift or prize as an incentive to get them to join your list.
Customers – Many businesses make the mistake of only contacting their prospects and ignore the relationship they have already built with the customers. Customers are people who have already bought a product or service from you so you have already established a relationship with them whereby they have shown trust in you. Don’t neglect your customers, ensure they are part of your list.
In general – the best list building tips I can provide you are;
- Build your list!
- Build your list!
- Build your list!
Start early with your list building… You’ll soon find that your list will grow as more and more people visit your website or come in contact with you. If you need tips on driving more traffic to your website to help build your list then this video may help you. The Future of Internet Marketing and some great list building tips..
Segmenting your list
Segmenting is a fancy word for categorizing your list into types of contacts. The benefit of segmenting your list is that you can tailor your communication to your different segments. You can segment your list in many different ways, here are just a few ideas for segmenting that we use;
- Type of Contact – prospect or customer
- Contact Point – how did the contact get on our list, via our website, manually added
- Location – segment based on geographical location
- Warmth of Contact – provides a method for identifying how hot the contact is
- Customer Time Frame – when did this customer buy, <30 days ago, 30-60 days ago, > 60 days ago
- Customer Spend – how much has this customer bough from us, <$100, $100 – $500, > $500
As you can see you can go crazy with different methods of segmenting your list. The key point is that the tool you use for segmenting your list needs to provide you with this capability. If your building a list but your list software doesn’t provide a method for segmenting your list then you need to find another list software provider.
Segmenting your list is crucial to your ability to gain the best results from your list.
Utilizing your List
So you have been collecting your contacts information for awhile now and you have done a great job with segmenting your list, Now what?
Many marketers make the mistake of just capturing contacts, adding them to their list, and then setting up an autoresponder to automatically follow-up with their contacts on some predefined schedule with canned emails… While this may be a great step in the right direction you’ll soon learn that your not leveraging your list and getting the maximum benefits from it.
The Gurus in Marketing know that properly utilizing your list by providing personalized follow up and regular targeted offers to their list yields the greatest profits!
Good list management involves moving your prospects through your sales cycle by identifying where they are in the sales process and…
“targeting them with the proper communication at just the right time!”
So what do the gurus use in their marketing and list utilization?
Customer Relationship Management
Most Gurus will tell you that you need to build a Customer Relationship with your list.
All the Marketing Gurus know that the best way to leverage your list is to understand what offers work best for what contacts and to tailor their offers to the specific customers wants, needs, and desires.
While most list building applications like AWeber, Constant Contact, etc… provide the ability to build your list. They lack the features you need to build a Customer Relationship. This is why all of the gurus use a Customer Relationship Management system to build and nurture their list.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM for short) provides you with the ability to uniquely identify, communicate, and sell to your contacts. It’s like having your email list on steroids and is probably one of the best, if not THE best, list building tips I can offer you.
So what is a CRM and how do you get one so that you can begin to reap the benefits of list building like the Guru’s?
You can start out by watching this short presentation on the CRM solution that I recommend and learn how using Customer Relationship Management in your business can truly unlock “The Fortune in Your List”!
Summary
List Building takes time… However, the benefits that your business can derive from a good quality list are endless.
In this article I have highlighted several approaches that you can take in your list building efforts. All great marketers know that building a list is one of the best pathways to success and prosperity. However, just building a list is only the basics. As any guru knows, you need to leverage your list by utilizing the features and functionality of a good CRM system to really gain the benefits your list can provide.
I hope that my List Building Tips help you towards your success…
and you “Find the Fortune In Your List”!
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