The following is a guest post by Gabe Johansson….
If you’re trying to make more sales and sign up more people into your business, list building is one of the best ways to do it. With email marketing technology you can really sift and sort through who is interested in your products and who isn’t.
In order to have the highest rate of success, it comes down to 4 key aspects of list building. When you have all of this in place, it’s not long before your sales funnel is self-sufficient. Let’s break this down.
1. Set up your initial funnel
First off, pick up an email marketing service like Aweber or GetResponse to manage your subscriber list. If you’re trying to get people to sign up in your opportunity, you’ll want to use one of these services to manage and follow up with your subscribers as it’s more efficient and effective than doing it manually.
From there, create a web form related to your opportunity or product, offering free advice or tips. The more relevant your freebie is to your offer, the better results you’ll get overall. You can see prime examples right here on this site! With Aweber or GetResponse, you can have them host your web form for you, essentially making a simple 1 page website where the only option your visitor has is to subscribe. This is ideal.
Then, you’ll want to set a custom thank you page to your sales page so that interested people would have the chance to buy right away. It may seem pushy but in most cases, people that visit your site are already interested in something much like your offer. You’ll also want to set the confirm page to the same if you’re using double opt-in.
2. Write your follow ups
Follow ups are vital for closing more sales and reps into your business. You’ll want to craft 7-10 messages that are helpful and educate your prospects on why your solution is for them. Not everyone will buy right away, so allowing them to check out your links later on will definitely increase overall sales.
I’ve had people be on my list for months before they finally decided to buy from me, so you can just imagine how helpful follow up messages can be!
One of the most important messages is the welcome email. You’ll want to set the stage for your emails and tell your list what to expect. This includes explaining how often you’ll send emails, that you’ll be offering products/services, and where they can contact you if they need help. Being transparent is important so that your prospects know you’re a real person!
From there, write each follow up related to your offer and make sure to put a link to your sales page so people have the opportunity to take action. 7-10 is just to get started, but if you can write more definitely do it! Remember to make the emails as helpful or insightful as possible.
3. Email broadcasts
Broadcast emails are vitally important and mostly underused. I’ve been on tons of lists where I only receive an email or two per month, sometimes less. I’ve even forgotten that I signed up to those lists, which is the worst part. The purpose of broadcasts are to send out a live email with more time sensitive information.
I would suggest sending a couple broadcast emails per week to really keep in touch with your prospects, customers, and team members. Always include your sales page link, at the very least under your name when you sign off the email. These emails can be a lot more personal and have a great impact on your overall sales.
If you’re having a sale, running a promotion, or in an affiliate contest, broadcasts are highly effective, since you can’t include these time sensitive emails in your follow up series. On top of that, once your subscribers have received all your follow ups, keep in mind they will only be getting broadcasts. You want to keep your message in front of your list as often as possible!
4. Send targeted traffic
Your funnel, follow ups, and broadcasts won’t do you any good if no one is visiting your site! At the same time, it’s vital to know the above information before anyone gets to your site. Anyways, there are tons of ways to get high quality traffic to your site that converts to actual sales.
If you don’t have any list quite yet, the best way to go is to buy paid traffic. You can find a lot of people to buy high quality traffic from on sites like SoloAdDirectory and Safe-Swaps. All you have to do is create a short email promoting your web form page from step 1 and these vendors will send your ad to their list. You can buy ads as low as $30 per 100 targeted visitors. Each time I send out an ad, I usually profit which feels great!
You can also build up a YouTube channel, blog, or both but keep in mind that it will take much longer to see real results. Sure, initially it doesn’t cost money, but to get the best results you’ll have to invest more time creating content and making connections with the right people. My point here is to drop the “free” mentality. You’ll have to invest time and money to build anything worthwhile.
I actually recommend both buying paid ads and creating content. This way, you can send the content to the subscribers you generate from the paid ads to build better business relationships and have the possibility of getting that content shared for more traffic.
For paid traffic you can do solo email ads, banner ads, PPV, or even Facebook ads. Free traffic could come from social media, guest blogging, video marketing, your own blog, or forum marketing. These are only a few ideas, but pick one of each that you like and master that method until you’re building your list and making sales before adding anything else.
You should also be tracking your ads, and the easiest way to do this is copy your web form from Aweber or GetResponse and give it a new name and tracking code in the web form settings. This way, you can tell which ads or marketing methods are generating you results. Run with it and make big things happen starting right now!
Gabe Johansson: Email marketer. Weightlifter. Avid coffee drinker. Dream Theater Fan. I enjoy puns, playing guitar, and eating food by the kilogram. I teach people how to build email lists that actually make money. Sign up for my free list building training here