An email list is a collection of the contact information of people who have shown an interest in what you have to offer by filling out an opt-in form on your blog. By submitting their names, email addresses and phone numbers, they have indicated that they are willing to receive further information from you in the future.

It is a known fact among every successful internet marketer that the “money is in the list”. Without an email list of highly targeted subscribers, you really don’t have a solid business. Usually, visitors to your website wouldn’t buy from you on their first encounter, but if you’ve collected their emails, you can keep offering them useful information, build trust, and then sell to them later on.

In this article, the mechanics behind building a very responsive email list would be discussed, so you can go on to build one that you can sell to for years to come.

In order to build a list, you would need the following very important tools:

• An autoresponder like Aweber, Getresponse, Mailchimp, I-Contact, Constant Contact, Listwire, Trafficwave. All of these platforms help you create opt-in forms which you can place on your blogs or websites. You can also schedule follow up emails to go out at set intervals to your subscribers.

• Something of value that you can give away in exchange for an email address, name or phone number. These could include a free report, an audio recording of interviews with well respected professionals in your niche, a series of videos, a white paper, a free teleseminar, a work book, an MP3 of a program, a webinar, training, tips and strategies, etc.
• A squeeze page (lead capture page, opt-in page)
• A means to generate traffic to your squeeze page (free and paid methods).

How to use Squeeze Pages to Build Your List:

List building begins with a squeeze page, which is created for the sole purpose of getting visitors to hand over their names, email addresses or phone numbers. It is basically like a sales page except that instead of a “buy now” button, you have an opt-in form where a visitor can enter their contact details in exchange for something really valuable. Squeeze pages consist of a powerful headline, a strong call-to-action and an opt-in form.

It is important to ensure that your potential customer is able to enter their details easily, without any form of distraction. Therefore, your capture page should be simple while still grabbing their attention at the same time.

The Importance of Good Copy writing Techniques for Getting Good Conversions on Your Squeeze Page

Good copy writing entails a delicate mix of strong psychological triggers and persuasive sales points. Your headline should address a specific problem and the solution you’re providing with your free product. The conversion rate of your squeeze page would drastically increase if you’re successful at triggering an emotional response in your customers. People trust ordinary people and they can very easily sense if you’re being dishonest. For instance, you should give your visitors honest reasons why you’re offering a discount or why you’re limiting the number of free reports you would be giving away. This open conversation would help to build trust in your visitors.

Be very specific when using income claims to back up your claims of success so that your visitor doesn’t become suspicious of your claims. Make sure they’re believable. General numbers sound phony, try to be exact.

Use words like “hidden”, or “secret” to build curiosity. Also, questions like “have you heard?”, “did you know?”. Curiosity is the easiest emotion to arouse, therefore use it to build your list.

Tell your story in the headline. The free product you’re offering is a solution to the visitor’s problems, so present the problems and examine it. By doing so, your customers recognize the problems in their lives and want to find a solution. Once you can make the visitor understand the problems they face, present the solution in your product.

How to Use Blog Side Bars/Widgets to collect emails: 

You only have a few seconds to get your visitor’s attention and move them from being a visitor to a subscriber. Hence, it’s advisable to place the opt-in form at the top right corner of your blog; even before your profile. However, there is the downside of your visitors getting distracted by blog posts, videos to view or links to click on.

How to Send Traffic to Your Squeeze Page Using Free Methods:

Since the traffic is free, the return on investment is usually high. However, it takes a lot of time to get a consistent flow of visitors to your squeeze page, it also involves a lot of hard work. But once you get a hand of it, it build up and the resultant traffic is long-term.

Here are some examples of free traffic generating methods:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• This means getting your blog or website listed on search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. When people are looking for information related to your topic. The idea is to identify keywords that your customers are typing into search engines and creating content on your blog that contains those keywords. By consistently adding relevant content to your blog, your rankings would increase and more visitors would locate your blog and consequently your squeeze page.

Article Marketing:

• Write informative articles and submit them to article directories like ezinearticles, goarticles, etc. and include a link to your squeeze page.

Social Media Posts:

• Millions of potential customers hang out in social sites like facebook and twitter. You can write a funny post with pictures and videos and link it to your squeeze page. You could also create short videos and upload them on youtube and other video sharing sites.

Forum Signatures and Blog Commenting:

• Visit blogs and forums related to your niche and leave helpful, non-Spam comments and include a link to your capture page.

Paid Methods to Send Traffic to Your Squeeze Page:

The major advantage of using paid traffic is that it provides immediate results. It is also easy to tell if it campaign is profitable of not. The disadvantage being how expensive it is and the possibility of losing money is high when you begin testing.

Below are some paid traffic methods you can try:

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC):

If you want to explore this method, you simply open an advertizing account with a search engine. You would be bidding on keywords that your customers are likely going to type into the search engines and whenever they do, your advert would come up. Since it is highly targeted, it could be a very fast way to build your list.

• Joint Ventures:

They’re strategic relationships with other people who already have a target audience that would be interested in your product. You can work out an arrangement whereby you send out an email to their list with your free products and they can do same with your list, this would mutually benefit each others list building efforts and is an excellent way to effectively and efficiently build your list with targeted customers within a very short period of time.

• A Funded Proposal:

This is a marketing plan that you can use to see an inexpensive information product to your target market, thereby making them your potential customers of your high-end product on the back-end. This is a good way to differentiate between the freebie seekers and those who are ready to buy your products. Everybody wins because the customer gets valuable information and you make money, building trust at the same time. You can get qualified leads, make immediate sales and generate income to fund your marketing costs.

The importance of an email list can’t be overemphasized. It has been estimated that the value of an email subscriber is about a dollar per month, so if you built your list to 10,000 subscribers, you could be making up to $10,000 monthly! It is well worth the effort involved in building your list- so, get a good autoresponder, create a powerful squeeze page that attracts visitors, making them happy to give you their email addresses and then drive traffic using a combination of free and paid methods. It would most certainly pay off in the long run.