Newsletter – or something similar – sign up forms are the real bread winners for your business. Through the sign up forms, you can get at least the first name and email address. To avoid spam issues, those sign up forms are double opt-in to ensure that the recipients really want to receive the newsletter and you are sure to deal with real subscribers, not fake ones.
For a small business, the list you build one newsletter subscriber at a time is your goldmine. Forget about renting a list from third party marketing services for your email marketing campaign. YOUR own list is what really matter. Once you get people in your list, you can responsibly “market” your products or services to them.
Of course, getting people to sign up and be included in your list is another story; you need to offer something valuable to entice people to sign up, ranging from special offers valid for subscribers only to freebies.
A real life case study: My client/partner’s
A clients-slash-partner of mine is doing something similar to what I did for a living. However, his results are at least 5 times better than me (translation: He makes 5 times of what I make, even more.)
Our main difference: I have zero, zip, zilch, nada in my list (a.k.a. I don’t have a list!) He has 2,000-ish real people in his list who are more than willing to spend money on whatever business offers he has for them.
One of his confessions: A single offer (yes, one short, straightforward newsletter) to his list can yield him $500 – $700 on regular basis, for years. And of course, he does more than 1 offer every month (I know because I’m in his list!) What’s more, that’s just from one list; he has a couple of them, targeting a different market niche. Go figure.
Another case study – this time a brick-and-mortar small business – involves a local meat shop I know that boost its sales by deploying list building strategy by offering specials to those sign up for the shop’s newsletter. The results: Sales has increased by 50 percent since adopting the newsletter strategy.
Something I – and you – need to do
I need to take list building/list marketing seriously. I knew so many list success stories, in such a way that I can’t deny the fact that, indeed, the money is in the list.
This is also on my top priority list: If you are going for online route, I recommend you sign up with proper email marketing services, such as Aweber, and prepare something valuable to help boosting your sign-ups number. And, oh, don’t forget to prepare quality newsletters to be sent to your subscribers.
Ivan Widjaya
List marketing