List building is about much more than just getting a huge list of names and emails. You’ve got to nurture your list in order to make your subscribers responsive. Responsiveness is the key because if they don’t reply to your offers, you still end up getting nothing out of it.

Now for me if I had $10 for every time we have heard or read the phrase “the money’s in the list” – well we’d have made a few dollars. But that as an aside it’s just so true if you can build and communicate effectively with your list, that list will be worth its weight in gold over time, so take heed of these simple but effective pointers to building and developing your list.

Getting Your List

First of all, only targeted subscribers are going to be responsive. In other words, you’ve got to get subscribers who are actually likely to buy from you. This means that buying lists or trading for them is a no-no. You’ve got to get people who are interested from the get-go.

Focus on the Reader, Not Yourself

When you write your messages, make it all about them and not yourself. Whenever possible, avoid using too much ‘I’ and fill your messages full of ‘you.’ Address their problems and needs, and then tell them you’ve got the solution.

In fact, a great way to come up with offers is to ask yourself, ‘What do my list members need?’ If you start by considering what they need instead of what you want (sales), you’ll make better offers.

Subject Line Is Everything

Spend a little extra time crafting your subject line. The subject line is what they’ll see in their email inbox and if it sounds good, they’ll check it out. If it doesn’t, they’ll delete it immediately.

Your subject line should speak directly to them (again, use ‘you’), address their needs, and give a quick idea of what you’re offering. Questions work well and so do subject lines that titillate their curiosity.

The best and really only way to find out what subject lines work best is to just send out messages and monitor results. Look at the open rate. If you messages are getting opened, that means the subject line is working. Rinse and repeat.

A Letter to a Friend

Even if you’ve got a list of 10,000, write to your customer as if you’re talking to a friend. Use conversational language and don’t make mention of all the people on the list. When they’re reading it, they don’t care about the other people who are reading it too.

Wrap your message up with a call to action that tells them exactly what they need to do in order to get their problem solved.

Scheduling Your Messages

How often should you send them messages? It’s impossible to say because every niche is different. The most important thing is to just be consistent. Don’t disappear for too long or they’ll forget about you.

Keep an eye on your stats and this will tell you how often to send messages. You’ll also find out what’s the optimal time. You can experiment a little with different times and see what works best.

List building is a science, so mess around with your messages and find out what works best.

To your continued success

Tony