You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “The money is in the list.” This phrase has gained in popularity as more business owners realize the value of an opt-in list. Your subscribers are people who have expressed an interest in receiving your information. They’re practically asking to buy your products or service. They just need a little more convincing. That’s where your email messages come into play.

Here’s how to build and maintain a profitable opt-in list. Grow your list; grow your business.

Step One: Create a compelling offer

The very first secret to building a profitable opt-in list is to create a compelling offer. Now a compelling offer might be a free consultation, or a free coaching session. However, if you’re marketing to someone who doesn’t feel they need consulting but instead needs a service provider, requires training,  or wants information, then you’re not targeting them with the right offer. A compelling offer needs to be related specifically to your targeted niche. You want it to be something that appeals to them, not everyone on the planet.

A compelling offer also has to be valuable and unique. For example, if you’re marketing to financial advisors, then it might be something like an e-book or report on “How to choose the right VA for your financial advisor practice.” It must offer value.

Step Two: Market your offer

Once you’ve decided on your offer and have created your product or giveaway, it’s time to market that offer. You can market any number of ways. The goal, however, is to drive targeted traffic to your opt-in form or offer page. You can use:

* Article marketing
* Social networking
* Co-registration
* Facebook advertising
* Blogging

Make sure your marketing efforts support each other. Create a comprehensive marketing strategy and send each prospect to your opt-in offer page.

Step Three: Use your list right away

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to focus on building the list and neglecting communicating with the list. Make sure you begin building that relationship with your subscriber right away. Send them a welcome message. Send them value in the form of links, downloads and information.

Start using your list right away. Make sure to have all your items in place and anything that you use to brand your business. Make sure it looks professional and builds authority and credibility. You want your prospects to trust you.

Step Four: Create a communication plan

Make sure you’re communicating with your subscribers on a regular basis. An autoresponder is a wonderful tool because it enables you to create and schedule your messages in advance. Each new subscriber can receive the same messages in the same order, regardless of when they signed up. This gives you control over the relationship-building process.

Also remember to offer valuable content, not just promotional messages. An autoresponder automates the process, including the subscribe and unsubscribe management. You don’t need to hire anyone to manage the task for you. Your time is free to build your business in other ways.

Step Five: Partner with others to grow your list

Once you have your list building and management process smoothed out, consider partnerships. You can really boost your subscribers by partnering with other relevant business owners. This can be in the form of doing joint venture giveaways, swapping ads or banners, etc.  Also, they can help market your opt-in list by including a link to your form in their newsletter and vice versa. You can support each other to succeed.

Your opt-in list can mean the difference between thousands of prospects. It really can launch your business. If you don’t have an opt-in list, start creating a plan to build one. You’ll be glad you did.

Participating in a joint venture is a great way to grow your list quickly in a short time.

Here’s how it works…

Say you have a colleague or client with a large list (500+ subscribers) and she knows a few other people with large lists. Collaborate to contact about 10-15 other people who have a free product to offer and want to grow their lists. Have each of them send a brief product description, link to free product page, and a graphic representing the bonus or just their picture. Now, create a one-page site listing the products each with a link to the opt-in page.

First, choose a theme that would fit your client or customer base. You can check http://www.epromos.com/calendar/promotional-calendar.html for some ideas.

Here is one example that I just did for a client last month:

February is National Time Management Month. You are a professional organizer and have many friends who are also organizers as well as productivity specialists, e-mail management gurus, filing mavens, etc. You ask your circle of colleagues to be participants in the promotional giveaway and all they need to do is send you a bonus product for the giveaway. Those participants would then send an e-mail to their lists promoting the event and directing everyone to the free giveaway page. You should provide the suggested copy for everyone as well as letting them tweak as necessary (called a “swipe file” – you want to make it as easy as possible). Your readers get free bonuses and everyone gets to build their list.

I have been a part of a few giveaway joint ventures that followed this basic format. The results have always been a success aseach participant promoted the event in their newsletters, blogs, broadcasting to their ‘lists’, posting on listservs, Tweeted, posting on Yahoo groups… it was viral marketing at its best!

There’s no point in putting out a great newsletter if you don’t have a list of people to send it to. Building your list is an ongoing process, and here are a few ways to get started:

1. Provide a free gift, such as an e-course, a special report, an e-book, or a tip sheet. Nowadays people aren’t going to hand over their email without getting something else valuable in return. You or your virtual assistant can set up your autoresponder or shopping cart program to deliver this gift once a visitor has submitted their name and email. 
2. Make sure you have a sign-up box on each page of your website; you never know which page people will land on. Also, make sure the sign-up box is “above the fold” so that visitors don’t have to scroll all around to find it.
3. Create a separate landing page at your website that’s dedicated to your newsletter or free gift. Include a description, testimonials, a sample issue or archives and of course your sign-up box. See my e-course offering page as an example:  http://www.emarketingtoolboxessentials.com/

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I wanted to share with you a marketing/list-building  strategy that I’m part of this month. And it’s been unbelievable. Joint venturing is a great idea that you can do with your clients and/or other colleageus to grow your lists. Here’s what we did:

My client has a pretty large list (1100+ subscribers) and she knows a few other people with large lists, but mostly she contacted about 15 other people who have a free product to offer and want to grow their lists. She had them each send to me their blurb, link to free product page, and a graphic. My task was to create the “free giveaway” page and pull all the info together.

We are using this month (June is Effective Communications month) to our benefit as we have each person send out two announcements during  the month, directing everyone to the free giveaway page. We provided the suggested copy for everyone as well as letting them tweak as necessary.

The result? I went from 132 subscribers to over 200 in one day. And the best part is that this is going on all month long; each participant is promoting in their newsletters, blogs, broadcasting to their ‘lists’, posting on listservs, posting on Yahoo groups… it’s viral marketing at its best! This not only forced me to up my marketing game but I created an upsell product to offer all these new subscribers. Not to mention that my client gets a nice target market to highlight her new program and new product. Genius! Continue Reading