What’s In A List?

by Sean SEO on February 12, 2009

in Internet Business, Self Promotion

A lot of internet marketing mavens will tell you that you need a list.  You need a list of people to sell to when you market online so that you don’t have to spin your wheels trying to sell to strangers.  When you have an e-mail marketing list, you have a group of people to sell to and many of them will read every e-mail you send them.

So, will any list of names do ?

Of course not.  A list is only as good as the effort that went into forming it.  You need to build your list with two things kept in mind:

  1. Your Target Audience
  2. Relationship Building

Target Audience

Building a successful list is useless unless those names on it actually want to hear what you have to say.  That’s why it’s important to identify a niche in internet marketing.  Identifying a niche doesn’t limit you to selling one type of product but products sold to a list should fall under a general niche umbrella so you know the people reading your messages are potential customers. If you have more than one niche, you need more than one list. It’s going to be fruitless to just add any old name to those lists because you won’t know how to write to their wants and desires when you write a call to action.

Relationship Building

After you’ve gotten a name on your list, it’s time to develop a relationship. You can’t deceive your way to wealth. Relationship building doesn’t happen overnight but this will happen over time if you do it well and it can be very profitable to both you and the person on your list. Building confidence requires delivering value on your part but building that relationship creates confidence so that the people who are on your magical internet marketing list might actually believe what you say and as a result, might be willing to buy what you’re selling.

Have a most outstanding day.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010

 

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Jazz Salinger March 20, 2010 at 7:21 pm

Hi Sean,

This is really timely advice because it’s an area I’m moving into. I understand that my list will be more effective if it has my target audience on it. I need to learn more about this so I can use it effectively. For instance, can you have different lists for the same site? If you’re marketing to different geographical areas?

Relationship building is obviously an important part of having an effective list. I think the same rules apply online as they do offline when you’re trying to market to customers.

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2 Gee March 20, 2010 at 7:34 pm

Yes Jazz you can.

In your autoresonder you should be able to break it into sub lists.

I would recommend using Aweber. They are an excellent company and resource. Just be aware that as your list grows you may be in for increased costs. At a certain number the costs increase. The initial cost is something like US$19-20 a month

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3 Rita Pepper March 30, 2010 at 1:07 am

This I haven’t got into yet something i should start looking into but at the moment I am running out of hours in the day

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4 Jackie Stenhouse June 21, 2010 at 10:00 pm

I have a small list of people who have opted in on different topics so find it very hard to manage. Its time to clarify my topic and get on with building a list for a particular niche.

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