List Building 101

How To Build & Run

A Successful Opt-In List

Link Exchanges

You could compare these to exchanging ads with sites similar to yours. Exchanging links with sites that have content relevant to yours can go a long way in building your lists. They hardly cost a thing and are useful in attracting the kind of traffic you aim to have.

How Do You Go About It?

You and the site you’ve chosen put a link on each other’s website. This benefits both of you. Special care must be taken so that the other site does not look like an advertisement on yours. Since you will increase the number of links across the World Wide Web, your search engine rankings will also go up.

Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are formed for mutual benefit. Your promotions must be innovative. Rather selling space in your newsletter or blog advertising, ask your associates to promote you instead. The important thing is not to be competitors in the same line of business. Joint Ventures are a wonderful way to build lists and expand your customer list while getting great exposure. Some online marketers join hands with similar sites and exchange links and content; they even sign up with each other’s affiliate programs, promoting each other while making money in the process.

Joint ventures can apply to your blog and ezine too. Just imagine: here you are, running an ezine and a blog to a targeted audience. You have got a massive readership. This makes you a very attractive business proposition for other online marketers. Why? Because if they tie up with you, they can build their lists through your traffic too, without competing with you. That’s why ezines and blogs are like valuable property. What do you do when people are interested in partnering with you? Exchange links, grow your profits and build your lists at absolutely no extra cost.

Getting The Right Kind Of Partner

The most critical factor to consider, if you want your joint venture to be highly beneficial is the kind of partner you select. This means, your partner must be someone whose business is complementary to yours. Without being direct competitors, your businesses must be related. Your visitors must find both of you attractive. If you subscribe to newsletters that are related to your business, you will probably be able to start building your lists right from there. You can check the ranking of a site and then decide whether to partner with it. When you choose your JOINT VENTURE partner, check whether their strengths influence your products positively.

Types Of Joint Ventures

Your joint venture could be a joint subscription – an ezine Joint Venture. This is how that happens – you get a user on your site who signs up for your ezine. You send them a thank you message and invite them to join other ezines of interest to them. These other ezines are you JOINT VENTURE partners. They do the same for your ezines. You promote each other. When you let them advertise on your site, you get to advertise on theirs. It is a good idea to have a simple message for your user but remember to focus it on the kind of users you want.

These days exit pop-ups are being used very effectively by online marketers to partner with similar sites on the Internet. You will be incurring a cost for each visitor who clicks through your site while only a few will actually make a purchase. It does not matter whether you got them through an advertisement or a search engine, you are paying in some way. The solution is to make them all yield a return for what you are spending. As soon as a visitor leaves your site, exit pop-ups show them another site. What is clever about this is the fact that your visitors are through with browsing your site when the exit pop up opens in a new window. Suppose your visitor becomes a customer by buying something from you, and then they need not see the pop up. If they don’t, you can trigger the pop up when they exit your site.

How about making use of your email list to let your contacts know about your joint venture partner’s offers? Your list will hear it from a reliable source – you. You should get the partner to do the same for you.

Joint ventures and their success depends on how complementary the services of the two partners is.

Your Joint Venture Should Be A Long-Term Arrangement

One tactic that works is to give your visitors something exclusive, not commonly found elsewhere. This could be someone else’s services also, but should make your visitors feel that they are getting something special through your site. Your partner should also offer something of equal value to your visitors.

Keeping Track Of Your Progress

Any business activity must be tracked to see how successful or effective it is. In online marketing, it is vital to keep track of your advertising’s results. Make sure your joint venture partner sends you as much traffic as you send them. It makes no sense to send 5000 visitors when you are getting only 50 in return. So keep track of your sales as you share visitors.

The greatest thing about joint ventures is that you not only have access to the visitors on your partner’s site, but you also have full access to their buyers. Its much easier to make an existing customer consider your product compared to the effort to make a new prospect buy from you.

Joint ventures are one of the most effective tools for building your lists.

Press Releases

Press releases usually convey news to the media. They generally don’t use advertising. You can leverage a press release by using it effectively to build your lists. If you write the appropriate message on your press release, it can give you the kind of publicity that can direct more traffic to your website, increasing your sales at a very low cost. Press Releases also build the credibility of your business.

As a marketing tool, Press releases are very cost effective. The kind of integrity that can be built is amazing because your readers will believe independent authorities or reporters rather than promotional material. If you plan to send the press release by email, never send an attachment. Your press release must form the body of the email. Forget bulk email – address every email personally. Your autoresponder can do an efficient job here. You can also submit your press release to many free online newswires and websites.

When To Distribute A Press Release

Whenever you want to make an announcement about your website or your products, distribute a press release. It must convey something your visitors will be glad to know, that is out of the ordinary. This could be when you launch a website, or when you increase your product range. Or you might be entering new alliances, or maybe when you win an award for customer service, and so on. Some online marketers hire professionals to make an effective press release. While this could cost you some, it is a worthwhile expense.

Getting Mileage Through Someone Else’s List

The online marketer’s most successful way to build lists is through Opt-in email marketing. You can take advantage of other people’s lists too, to grow your profits. We have already looked at ezine advertising, article marketing and joint ventures, which are very useful to build your lists from someone else’s.

Forums

Forums are the most interactive places on the Internet where we see huge amounts of traffic. People constantly post messages regarding their opinions on various issues. They also ask questions that are addressed by other forum members. We can find forums that discuss issues related to our line of business and take part in the ongoing conversation. Many forums let you add a signature file to your post – here is where you place your subscription link. But this must be done properly; otherwise you will be labeled as a spammer. Ensure you post useful information.

Forums are a very viable list building strategy. We come across a lot of marketers trying to sell on these sites, but the right thing to do here is to launch yourself as an expert in your field. When this happens, people begin to have faith in your knowledge. They are in a better state of mind to visit your website and consider your product, simply because they believe what you say.

How To Go About It

Forums are online discussion boards wherein members voice their opinions, answer questions that are posed by other members and share relevant information that might be useful to the entire group. They are not a place where you can sell directly. So your aim must be to contribute information. You can easily find numerous forums for your specific keyword relating to your business. Become a member of several of these. Many forums let you update your profile, which you can make visible to the public. You can also create what is called a signature – which will be appended to the end of every message you post on the forum. Just put your name and website URL or squeeze page URL. Those who are interested in your message will almost always click to know more. You can then introduce yourself in all the forums. Take care not to write any hard sell message – just what you do. Generally, most forum members will respond by welcoming you into the forum. It’s a good idea to thank each and every one of them.

Participating In The Forum

Browse around the forum posts to see whether you can make a meaningful contribution to a thread of conversations or answer any questions that are yet to be responded to. Always remember to come across as someone with the knowledge to be a part of the forum. For example, you cannot ask them to click through a URL where they can find the answer in your book! That is not what you are here for. Regular participation will build your credibility and show you up as someone who is genuinely interested in the topic. Trust will build through your communication and then eventually, they will visit your website – not only that, they will also recommend you to others.

Building The List Through The Forum

The main aim of being on the forum is to build a targeted list for your business. So, continuously enhance your knowledge of your subject and active forum topics. Start a relevant thread of a current issue and write meaningful information. Don’t ever sell your website. Everyone on the forum can see your links in your signature. If they see you as someone who is there to sell, they will never click your link.

Most forum members will rate your product by the kind of messages you post. Share positive experiences related to the forum content. Offer tips that will successfully increase their profits or add to their skills If you have a constant presence in the forum, that makes a difference too. The effect here is, when people perceive you as an expert whose ideas work for them, they trust you and feel eager to click through your link to know more. They will not mind giving you their contact information to subscribe to your list. Knowledge, definitely, is power!

Chapter 5

Messaging Etiquette

We’ve talked so much about writing the right kind of email messages to your prospective customers whom you have got, or in the process of getting on your opt in list. Now, let us see what goes into making a good email message. This is relevant because the appearance of your content matters in the online marketing business. To look at the various steps involved in getting your message ready to send to your customer:

Composing Your Message

Use WordPad or notepad. Preferably only have 65 characters in each line of text that you write. You must break the line manually after this limit because most email clients have their default set to 65 characters when the message opens. Now if your message exceeds this limit, its very aggravating to have to scroll horizontally and see the entire mail as one long line! It is equally irritating to see emails that have unevenly laid out lines. Looks very untidy and gives the impression that you don’t care about how your messages look. Since none of us want to create that impression, this simple precaution can take care of that.

Making Your Message Personal

Think about how you feel when you are addressed as Dear Subscriber, and how you feel when you are addressed as Dear (your name). You can easily handle this through your autoresponder – getting it to fill in subscriber’s name in the email addressed to them, as if you are writing the email especially for them. Also, use their name at various appropriate places in the message – like “Did you know, (name)”, as if you are actually speaking with them.

You are aiming to build your lists and simultaneously starting to build a relationship with your list. So when you care enough to personalize the email to them, they will also feel comfortable about approaching you, and building a rapport.

Layout Of The Ezine/Message

Every message starts with a title or subject. If your email is an ezine, give it a catchy name and include the name of the publisher, URL links, issue number, etc. This will inform your recipient about where it is coming from and identify you. Readers like to recognize who it is right away to encourage them to read on further.

Listing The Contents

Can you imagine this ebook without a table of contents and the page numbers of each? Just think about having to search for something without a clear idea of what the ebook contains. The title alone is not sufficient. To enable your reader know exactly what to expect, build a table of contents with a list of everything you have included in your email/ezine, so that they not only find you organized, but find it easy to browse through.

Proofreading

This one is obvious. We can’t ever imagine reading an ezine or email full of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. We form a negative impression of the sender. It looks like they did not bother about what the reader might think. It is always necessary to send out quality content to your prospects. Make sure you check spellings and grammar, or get someone to check them. Send them out only when you are sure they are free of errors. Check every link to see if it works, if you are providing any. It can be annoying to the reading to click through a link, only to find that it does not work because of a simple error in the link. You will just end up losing a member.

Check To See If You Are Spamming

There are certain standards to follow to check whether your message is spam free. Ensure that you are aware of them and do not use keywords classified as spam. This will not only get your messages filtered, but you will reported as spam and spoil your credibility.

Can You Use HTML In Your Emails?

Most ezines offer the option of receiving them as text or email version, according to the receiver’s preference. HTML can make your ezine look very good. But there are email clients who just don’t display these. All that time and effort in creating a jazzy ezine just goes waste. If your subscriber has low Internet bandwidth, they may or may not have the patience to wait till the page loads. What to do? Make both, and give your contacts the option of whether they want HTML or plain text emails. Many people prefer text emails, while some prefer HTML. The advantage of your HTML version is that you can put it on your website and make it look great. You can also give the text version a link to the HTML version – which gives your contacts the choice to click and see.

Helps in improving your page ranking as well.

Include A Quote For The Day

It is nice to see a relevant quote by a famous person that is related to the content of the message. This can add to the emphasis on your theme.

Original Content

This is always a plus point. It helps in relationship building. When you write your own original content, your personality just comes through in your words.

Does It Work?

The only way to find out is to try it on yourself. Do this: send the emails to yourself first. Try clicking all the links on a variety of email clients to take care of any possible glitch. After all the hard work, you don’t want your contacts to have a problem reading your email or ezine, do you? Online marketing is all around your optin list. Give it the respect and consideration it deserves.

Chapter 6

A Word About Tracking Your Visitors

We have looked at the various ways in which we can build a massive list – as you try each of those methods – separately or in combination, you will definitely find ways to get the maximum benefit from them. Building lists being the foundation of your online business, you also need to get a clear understanding of what your visitors do when they visit your website. You need to monitor and track this vital information, to be able to study your visitor’s habits and decide which avenue is bringing in the most number of visitors. Any system needs to be monitored and adjusted for optimum performance. It is the same with list building techniques.

You want to know when most of your visitors seem to quit half way at a particular page on your site when they are on the way to buying a product. Ensure that the process of shopping is easy for your prospect. They must not find any part of your website difficult to use. Be aware of any issue that might cause a delay or sidetrack your customer. You might even find a positive difference by changing the content from time to time to sound more appealing to your visitor. Simplify your order process. Web surfers are impatient. They do not like to get stuck on a specific web page.

It is good to have detailed tracking information about the visitors to your site. You can get efficient packages that let you do this automatically. It is not enough to just know how many visitors browsed by your site. You also need to know what they did there. This will help you smooth any wrinkles on your site. Getting a traffic log lets you understand the source of traffic being referred from different places like search engines, directories, etc.

Rather than the tracking reports that come as complex text files, opt for a traffic-logging package. You can have a log analysis package or subscribe to a traffic logging service. The latter is more economical. The procedure involves putting a code on the page you want to track. Every time the page is viewed, related information gets stored on the traffic logging service’s remote server. They make this available to you in real time charts and tables. This is the kind of information you can expect from an efficient traffic logging service:

Number of people who visit your website
Where they came from
Source of traffic and numbers from each
The keywords that are bringing them to your site.
Which of your pages are being visited the most number of times.
The route by which your visitors navigate your site.

When you have the above information, you can look at the best ways to optimize the benefits on your investment. Your tracking software can equip you with the necessary information to analyze the results of your efforts. You can assess your success with the number of hits, visitors and the number of times the page was viewed. You can track the hits when a picture or page is loaded from your server to the visitor’s browser. More important than this is the number of page views and visitors. You can track how many people visit your site and how much time they spend when they are there. You must aim to make your visitors stay longer by reworking the content on your site, to get a minimum of two page views per visitor, if it is not already happening. This helps you keep tabs on how well your site is designed and the effectiveness of your marketing methods.

Chapter 7

Be Wary About This

While most list building methods are tried, tested and proven effective, there are still some things we need to be wary about. Some techniques do have some drawbacks that you must watch out for and avoid.

Two such really efficient list-building methods are co registration and product giveaways. Not only do these build your lists quickly, they also take advantage of various other methods to save you valuable time and increase your profits.

So what is it that we really need to be on our guard about? Consider the following situations:

When a visitor signs up for your list, he or she is also signing up with the competition. This is something you just cannot avoid. These visitors will get your emails as well as the competitor’s and might probably decide to unsubscribe from one, which could be yours. How do you tackle this? One way is to make sure that you send distinctive emails. Never send the same email twice. Keep yourself up to date with what is happening with your competitors. Be different.
If you are part of an affiliation program, you will be promoting someone else’s products. This means you will be directing traffic to a squeeze page. Here’s where they will sign up with the original seller of the products being promoted by you. Now, even if you are earning a commission through the sale of the product, you wont have the contact information of the person who bought the product. Whereas the product owner will. Not only that, he can continue to keep in touch with them, thanks to your efforts. To counter this, what you can do is send these visitors to your squeeze page first – where they can sign up with you for a free ebook or product related information. From here, send them to your affiliate’s squeeze page or link via your freebie or autoresponder. This way both of you will have the email list and you will be building a targeted email list.
Those free ebooks that you got from the web to give away can backfire. There is nothing wrong with not being able to write your own ebooks – what with the multitude of free stuff available for use; but what you need to do is to check the contents of the ebook you are offering as a freebie for signing up. While its only normal to include the name and URL of the author of the ebook, these days many authors have an opt-in form in their ebooks making it necessary to register with them to access the ebook. This means your subscribers will go there. Here, you can handle this by first asking your prospective customers to opt in to your list first before you give them the link to download the ebook. Many marketers offer a package of many ebooks related to the same topic and give them as an incentive for signing up on their lists. How about getting the resale rights of the ebook? Many authors do not mind doing this. This will enable you to rebrand the book with your own opt in form and offer it. You are happy, and so is the author. You get your lists; and the author is appreciated for his or her work.
The trick with different methods is to get both the email id of the visitor as well as keep them happy by offering them something.

Chapter 8

Other List Building Tips

Lists are the frameworks of the online marketers business. To that end, we have had a detailed look at different successful methods. Apart from these structured methods, there are many things you can do on an ongoing basis to collect addresses whenever you can. You must take full advantage of your existing resources. Each time you interact with a customer is a chance to build your list. Here is a quick checklist for your immediate reference:

Every web form you have must have an email list opt-in box, be it for registration, placing an order or requests for information.
Whenever you circulate physical paper forms or send out direct mail, request your customers to fill in their email addresses. When you have an event or road show, urge your visitors to write in the ‘Visitors’ book’ giving you their email and contact information.
Every paper that leaves your office must have an email request. This could be regular correspondence, your answer to customer queries, your bills and other customer correspondence. You might find collating email addresses manually quite tedious, but the more channels you use the better are your chances to increase your list.
Use your URL. Put it on all your official stationery like your letterhead, leaflets, newsletters, magazines and advertisements. This will serve as a readily available reference for people to visit your website. Your visitors must be able to opt in for email communication with you from anywhere on your homepage.
Be careful about using agencies that match postal addresses to various databases and come up with email addresses. You can never be sure of the success rate you will have. And its tough to find an agency that will charge you by how many emails are valid rather than file size. If you really have to try this method, you must be prepared for the possibility of unpredictable results. Some email ids may be wrong. The ones that are right may not be interested. Since you have not asked their permission to send them email in the first place, they may treat you like Spam!
You can use your existing contact list and build on it. Not only will it be a verified list but also an effective strategy. Get your existing contacts to forward emails or recommend them to their friends and family. This is called viral marketing. Since these people receive it from a known source, there is no danger of spam. Make a nice relevant message that can be passed on. Make it easy to be sent on. When these people see the forwarded mail, they will opt in as well. Every communication you send must therefore include a ‘forward’ link option.
On all your web pages, put a tell-a-friend option.
Too much is too bad. Don’t bombard your subscribers with one mail after another. At best, they will simply block you. Decide on a frequency based on the content of your message. It is a good idea to let your users know what they are signing up for before they opt in. Once you have them on your list, get feedback about what they think is the correct number of emails and they will be happy to tell you. Can you guess what will happen if you don’t do this? You will receive an opt-out or an unsubscribe request.
An exciting way to build your list is post events on your web page that are of common interest to the traffic passing through your site. In the events page, invite the participants to get others to sign up and also receive email communication.
Many businesses keep their prospects and customers updated on industry news by emailing them. You can do it too, and request the recipient to send it on to their associates who can sign up to receive it from you directly. And you keep building your list.
Think about this: many people have email ids from their universities or professional memberships forever. But these people prefer to have multiple email ids, one for each of their interest so that they can be organized. You can use this to your advantage by offering these people an email address with your business’ brand. This will help you spread the word about you; as well as you can be sure that you have an active email address in your list.
For your visitor to stay on your list, you have to provide value and a valid reason for them to want to be there. Use your autoresponder to keep your message alive in your prospect’s mind. Wont cost much – will work.

As you keep experimenting, experience will show you more ways to success.

Chapter 9

Importance Of Spam And How To Avoid Being A Spammer

Spam is a terrible thing. We are all victims of spammers from time to time. Some unauthorized person gets hold of our email ids and we end up getting unsolicited mail. Lets look at how spam happens.

How Spam Happens

It is normal practice to maintain a list of your existing customers’ email ids. Most business have to do this so that they can be in touch with them to keep them updated. But what happens at times is, they unethically rent out these lists to outside parties. These people send out unsolicited mail to the list. On the part of the business, they betray the trust of their contacts by disclosing their contact information without their permission.

Spammers are experts at guessing and generating random email ids. It’s not very difficult to do so. Take email ids like hotmail and yahoo – many of these emails can be guessed easily. If domain names are known, those emails are also easy to guess. Once they come up with a list, they get going on spamming them.

A sinister way of collecting email ids is web spiders that behave like search engines which save page information. But the spammer’s web spiders just save any email id they encounter. With all of us putting contact email ids on our web pages, can you imagine the number of email ids they will get hold of?

At some point or other we have participated in chat rooms using screen names. Most people use a screen name that is the first part of their email id. When spammers hang around these chat rooms for a while, all they have to do is grab these screen names, add the ISP and there you are! An active list of email ids! As easy as it can get.

Another irritating method that spammers use is to keep a list of email ids that they have come across. They take someone’s list and spam him or her, under the false illusion that if it is their friend’s lists, its okay to email them. It never occurs to them that unless the email id’s owner specifically permits them, they cannot send them any email.

Fighting Spam

Thankfully, most email clients now use filters that let you block email ids from which you don’t want to receive email. So every time you receive spam, you can simply block the sender.

It’s a good idea to have multiple email ids for different purposes. This minimizes spam. Use one id for personal uses, another for signing up with online businesses and receiving mail from them and so on. Don’t use your personal email on the web. Especially for chat rooms, have an email you don’t use for anything else.

Alter your screen name and protect your email id. More than anything, before you give out your email id, check whether the business has a strong antispam policy in place. If you’ve noticed almost everyone who asks for an email id makes it a point to mention that they will never rent, sell or give away your email id to third parties. They also specify exactly what they are using your email for.

The above points tell us, as online marketers, what not to do when it comes to spamming. Okay – you have seen the customer’s aspect regarding spam. Now lets make sure you don’t spam!

Don’t Be A Spammer

Sometimes by oversight, online marketers tend to spam their lists. A few complaints and he checks himself. But what happens if your ISP brands you a spammer? They act first and then investigate. They present you with a hefty penalty and ruin your reputation.

How Can You Avoid Spamming Your Lists?

First, understand what spam is. Simply put, when someone does not ask to receive communication from you, you simply must not email him or her. If you go ahead and email them anyway, that means you are spamming them.

Make the effort to build your own opt in and double opt in lists. Even if it is time consuming, it is safer in the long run. Don’t buy them from a spammer, however cheap or tempting.

When you choose your partners for joint ventures, etc., make sure that you work only with those who have a firm stand on anti-spam.

Even if there is one spam complaint from one of your recipients, it can close your entire business and cost you heavily. Why waste all the hard work and effort you have put in by sending a message to someone who didn’t ask for it?

Take care to see that your email messages conform to the CAN-SPAM law. Constantly update your lists. You must maintain a record of all your subscribers. Keep strict track of those who unsubscribe from your list for whatever reason. Use your autoresponder to keep track of when the visitor signs in along with their IP address.

Avoid Opt-In List Providers

Another segment to avoid is opt-in list providers. They sell you lists of relevant emails collected for you from others. You can’t be too sure about the genuineness of these lists, as there are different types of providers of varying quality. What you can do to minimize the risk is hire someone who will build an exclusive list for you, compulsorily having double opt-ins. The last thing you want is to be stuck with a list belonging to someone and be accused of spamming.

There are times when you cannot avoid using a subscriber service. What you definitely can do though is to make sure their practices are ethical.

These subscriber services put an ad for various opt in offers. The visitor has the choice of selecting the ones they would like to sign up for. After that, they directly sign up on your list. See the anti spam policy of these services.

Don’t even look at free for all sites. Nothing comes free in life.

Provide Quality Content

Make sure you write informative and good quality content when you message your contacts. There are certain words classified as spam filter triggers that can activate your customers’ spam filters and block you. You will never be able to reach them after that. So be aware of what these words are and compose your message accordingly.

Include an anti spam clause in your agreement if you happen to run an affiliate program.

Don’t say, “this is not spam” in your messages. Replace it with something like “this message is being sent to you because you because you, or someone using your contact information, subscribed.” Also add that your subscribers have the option of opting out of your list in every message that you sent.

Don’t ever use email addresses from online groups or communities without their permission. Forums as we know are very powerful and the kind of negative publicity you will get from them will ban you from half the sites across the world.

And finally do not plug your promotional material to newsgroups and mailing lists, unless they give you their express permission. You will recall all that you read in the ‘Forums’ section in Chapter 4 of this book. It is hard work to build your lists. Do it the legitimate way. Follow the rules and be successful!

Chapter 10

Keeping A Clean List

We have a good head start on how to build lists. We know the risks of spamming – and we know how to avoid it. We will now consider a crucial aspect of list building – keeping a clean list. What do we mean by clean lists? Just that we don’t retain inactive email ids and weed out the ones that are not likely to yield the result we expect. Only keep those email ids that are active, prospective and likely to contribute in a positive way to your business. Your email provider can give you the tools necessary to keep a clean list of email addresses, by helping you remove the emails that are invalid. Do not forget to make sure that each and every email you send out has a link that lets your recipient update their information and contact details through your Web site.

Your List Is Your Bottom Line, Respect It

You just cannot continue to keep the email id of someone who is not interested in receiving your messages just to maintain the size of your list. No matter how attractive the idea is, do not try to hold on to email ids unless they are responsive and happy to receive the information you send them. If you do not respect their wishes and email them even if they do not want it, they will just report you as spam.

Coordinating Within Your Organization To Keep Updated Lists

Some organizations have several divisions handling different aspects of the business. It is possible that one division has an email list that has a different set of addresses compared to another division. Now imagine sitting with them to compare and share. Both divisions have legitimately valid and verified lists! What a valuable resource! Practically a goldmine. But wait. It is not nearly as simple as that. You have to ensure that there is perfect coordination while using similar email lists within the same organization. Different divisions send emails about various subjects. If you are sending emails to one set of contacts on your list, another division might be mailing similar content to the same set. You cannot afford to send too many emails to one contact from the same organization and increase your opt out rate.

One more aspect to this is that the lists within an organization must make sure that the email ids of the people who have unsubscribed are updated in all these lists. This is necessary particularly if you have multiple email systems. Just imagine, one division continues to email a list that has actually opted out from the list. In such a case there is the risk of being reported as spam with serious consequences.

A coordinated strategy throughout the organization can take care of this.

Chapter 11

Conclusion

For any online business to grow, there must be an optin list. Building this list is an ongoing process if the business is to survive. More than anything else, marketing and emailing a list that has consented to receive your information is important. It is the only way that can build customer loyalty and build your bottom line. If you expect your customers to recommend you to others, you must follow ethical methods of building your lists.

Online marketing is such a continually evolving business that you have to constantly keep in touch with how your competitors are doing and what methods they are using to succeed in this line. You have to keep on trying new things, innovate and test whether your efforts are bringing in the desired results. Some people are content with trying proven methods that have worked for years for others, while some prefer to take the chance to try new methods. Once in a while, there is a revolutionary system that is experimented with and found extremely effective for those prepared to grab the opportunity.
Good luck with your list building!

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