It’s great to be told that you need to build a list which you can send emails to.

The problem is that once you have all the technical stuff set up, you don’t always know what to put in your emails.

One big question that I often get asked is how often to email a list. This can be a difficult question to answer.

First it will depend on how you train your list from the beginning. If you only send out rare emails your list is likely to forget who you are. So when you do send out an email it will probably go unnoticed. On the flipside if you always send out regular emails from the start, you are training your subscribers to expect an email from you every few days. Some marketers successfully email their lists several times a day! From our experience we find that most people don’t mind 3 or 4 emails each week. This is as long as you provide great content that is helpful and informative.

So what type of content can you offer?

This is the next problem that marketers have. Sending out the first few emails is easy and you have lots to say. But as the weeks go on you don’t always know what to say, and this is when you start to email less frequently.

Here’s some great ways to find content. One of the easiest ways is to set up a Google Alert in your business or niche. Then you simply talk about the latest news in this area. The same can be done with an RSS feed, set up a RSS Reader and each morning check it for updates. Other ideas for content include talking about business related news and news about your local area. You may support a charity or organization and this gives you something to talk about. Maybe you are into a certain sports team or have hobby that you do regularly. You can also send links to things on your Facebook page that you like as well as your blog posts. When you start looking for things to write about you will be amazed at how many ideas come to you. By talking about other things in your emails you are presenting yourself as a ‘real’ person. This is so important as you want your list to know who you are and what is happening in your life. When you do this you may just be surprised at how many of your subscribers start sending you emails.

If you are familiar with any aspect of list building you may have heard of list segmentation, but you may not really understand what it is. List segmentation is what its name suggests, a way of dividing a large list into a smaller one.

Your next question should be ‘Why?’

The main reason to divide your list is so that you can send out more targeted emails to them. For example if you sent an email to your list about self publishing a book on Kindle you can track who opens and reads your email.

Each autoresponder deals with this in a different way but you should have the ability to check on your email stats. The following applies to anyone who has an Aweber account.

To find out who is interested in your email you click on the title and then go to a tab that says Opened and Unopened. You then have the ability to create a segment that you can save.

So following our example you would find out how many people opened your email about self publishing. You can then save them into a new list called Self Publishing. Next time you want to promote a product or give out information on this topic, you know you have a list of interested people.

Using this method is going to help your open rates go up and it will increase your income.

You can even subdivide this segment even more and find people who specifically like Kindle products or who want to learn more about using CreateSpace. When you send more targeted emails you are engaging your list and they are going to love you for it.

It depends how far you want to divide your lists. But if you are currently not seeing great results with emailing your list, you should try this step.

Yes, this step is going to take time and effort to put into place, the effort can really be worth your while. List segmentation is perfect if you tend to offer lots of different products. You can easily create smaller lists for different areas, you could end up with lists like those below.

• Losing Weight
• Car Repair
• Blogging
• Writing a Book
• Creating Apps

Using list segments can be really beneficial to any serious marketer who is looking to provide their list with quality content.

When it comes to building an email list you really need to start thinking outside the box. What methods can you use to build your list that make you stand out from the crowd?

While most people are offering reports and eBooks as a gift for subscribing to a list why not offer them something different? Let’s look at some methods which aren’t used as frequently.

These ways include making use of webinars, videos and using Google+ Hangouts on Air. All of these methods provide exposure to you and provide you with a unique way of getting people onto your list.

With webinars you can provide people with a registration form. Then you simply provide great information on a certain topic for no charge. People will be thrilled with what they have learnt and will be happy to recommend you to their friends.

With videos you can leave a link at the end of your video for people to join your list. Offer them more information in the form of a free report of PDF. When you use this method make sure you add your squeeze page info into the description area.

Google+ Hangouts on Air are perfect for small webinars or you can use them to make a recorded webinar. Simply run the hangout without any attendees and then keep the link private. Share with people who register for it only.

Hangouts are the perfect opportunity for live interviews and using as a question and answer session. You could invite current list members to participate and let them ask questions about something they are struggling with. Then you can use this completed hangout session as your gift to new subscribers. This video would technically become your FAQ section on your website or blog.

If you are nervous about making a video a great way to start is by using power point slides instead of you being on camera. Just remember to create a slide with a call to action such as:

• Click the link below for more information
• Sign up to my free newsletter

You need to tell people what action you want them to take once the video or webinar has finished. Make sure your link is large and easy to read and always post it in the description box as well.

Try this method out for yourself today and see if you can’t increase the size of your email list quickly.

With so many marketers trying to build a list website visitors are now inundated with opt-in forms and squeeze pages galore. While this method still works extremely well you may need to get a little creative so that people will part with their email address.

One way to attract attention is by offering a survey or a poll on your page. This could also be done on Facebook as well. All you do is ask a couple of questions and make the last one a request for an email address for a gift.

The gift is then perceived as a ‘thank you’ gift and the person readily parts with their email, no questions asked.

Use the same thing with the poll. Who doesn’t love to offer their opinion on something? At the end use the thank you gift to get their email address.

When using this method always make sure that your free gift is related to your business. Otherwise once you start sending out emails on a totally different topic your subscribers are going to quickly leave your list.

There are various tools available for creating and running surveys and polls. Just do a search online for the most popular ones. Some of these tools will have both free and paid options. For list building purposes a free tool will be just fine.

Your main purpose for running your survey is to get people onto your list. So you don’t need to ask too many questions, enough so that when you suggest giving them a gift they think it is a good idea.

At the same time you could use the survey as a research tool as well. You could find out just what problems your readers are having and what their likes and dislikes are. This provides you with valuable information that you can use in your business, such as new products or training ideas.

Another add on to this is to run a contest and offer a great prize. Once people have filled out their ballot you then get them to share it with their friends. This provides you with the ability to target even more people.

Contests can be run on various social sites making it easy for people to share. Just make sure you read any rules regarding running a contest first. You don’t want to overstep boundaries and risk losing your account.

If used correctly using Giveaway events can be a great way to build your list. There are two different ways to do this. First you can join a Giveaway event that is being hosted by someone else. Two you can create your own event.

The advantage of the first one is that you don’t have to set up the event and find people to contribute. Plus all you have to worry about is running your own promotions. This can get you great exposure but you may also be competing with a 100 other marketers vying for subscribers.

When searching for ongoing events look for ones that relate to your business and your niche. Some are very general while others may be more specific. For example if you are in the health industry then you want to look for these types of Giveaway as opposed to ones target for online marketers.

Running your own Giveaway may take up more of your time but the rewards may be higher. If you get together will other people in your niche and limit the number of people offering products you could see a better opt-in rate.

If you offer business coaching then you want to get together with 8 or 10 other coaches and give away a product or video during the event. Each person is responsible for creating their own gift and their download page. All you need to put together is the main page which contains a list of all the offers.
Everyone agrees to promote the Giveaway to their lists, on their website and on their social sites and inside any forums they belong to. The benefits of doing this are that you are reaching more targeted subscribers.

You will get people on your list who are immediately interested in what you have to offer. They will be open to receive more emails from you and they are more likely to stay on your list for a longer period of time.

With more general giveaways you will attract a large number of freebie seekers who are interested in nothing but getting something for free. They will join your list and unsubscribe almost immediately. Don’t worry if this happens as these are not the kind of subscribers you want.

Why not get together with some other marketers and try a Giveaway Event? Iit may very well bring you more subscribers than you anticipated.

Once you have your first list in place it is time to start sending out emails to your subscribers. It is important to stay in touch on a regular basis so that they don’t forget who you are.

There are a couple of different ways you can send out emails to your list. The first one is by creating a Follow up Sequence. These are pre-written emails that you load into your autoresponder service and schedule them to go out at certain intervals.

Most people recommend that you have a minimum of seven email messages scheduled. These don’t have to be that long and the first one should be sent as soon as the person opts into your list. Just thank them for joining your list or newsletter and tell them a little about who you are. This is also a good time to let them know how often you are going to email them.

By telling them in advance that you are going to be mailing several times a week or once per month, the person will expect to see your email in their inbox. If you say nothing and bombard them with daily emails you will get a large number of unsubscribes.

Another type of email message is called a Broadcast. These are used when you have a special announcement to make to your list. This could be when you are releasing a new product or you found a great deal on something of interest.

Broadcast messages can be used in addition to your follow up emails. Many marketers will send broadcasts out after the initial seven emails. The advantage of sending a broadcast is that you can send it to more than one list and you can schedule it to go out.

The last type of email message is called a Blog Post email. This is simply, as its name suggests a notice to your list that you have just published a new blog post. Your subscribers can read the post inside their email or click on the link and go to your actual blog.

Here’s a quick recap of the different types of email messages:

• Follow Up Sequence – great for engaging new subscribers and allowing them to get to know you. It is recommended that you create seven messages.
• Broadcast Message – useful for announcements and special offers
• Blog Post – use to engage your list and let them know you just added new content to your blog

Use these tips to get started on the right track and keep your list engaged and happy with your content.

You have probably heard countless marketers talk about how the money is in your list and the need of building one. But do you really see the value in this for your own business?

The best way to describe the importance of list building is by providing you with an example. Let’s say you are an affiliate marketer – someone who promotes a product for another person or company and receives a commission percentage.

You decide to promote a specific product that will bring you a nice payment for your efforts. You love the product and decide to set up a website dedicated to just this one topic. Next you spent time promoting this product all over the place and make lots of sales. All you focus on is driving traffic to your affiliate link.

One morning you wake up to find that your affiliate payments have stopped coming in. You contact the company only to be told that they have stopped using affiliates or they are not selling that product anymore.

Your income stream has disappeared over night. Even though you may have sold hundreds of products to happy customers you have no idea who they are and how to connect with them.

Now let’s look at this from a new viewpoint. You still go ahead and build a specific website for this product. You just add one more thing to it, an opt-in form. This is a form that people who are interested in this product and niche can fill out to get more information from you. This could be a video review or a short report with more information about this product.

As visitors arrive on your site, they love the product and they take advantage of your free gift and use the opt-in form. These people are now placed onto your own private mailing list, separate from the company that you are promoting.

Now when you wake up to the news that this product is no longer available, you have a course of action you can take. You simply replace product A with product B on your website. You then send out an email announcing that you have discovered this great product to your list.

During this time you have been emailing regularly to your list and have provided them with great information. They trust, know and like you and will gladly follow your advice. Bingo! You start making a new income from your list and can replace the one that you just lost.

Hopefully this relays the importance of why building a list is so important. Why not start yours today?

Business owners today need to have an active list of subscribers. This could be a newsletter list, a buyer’s list or a general interest list that is related to your business in some way.
Creating a list isn’t that difficult to do. All you need is a couple of basic tools and you are ready to go. Let’s take a look at the basics:

Autoresponder – there are several companies that offer an autoresponder service. The most popular ones are Aweber, Get Response, iContact and Mail Chimp. It is recommended that you go with a paid service otherwise you may find that the company sends out promotions along with your emails. This can really tick off your subscribers plus it doesn’t look professional. You can get started with a service for a basic account for under $20 a month, some even have low cost monthly trials.

Actually that is all you need to start list building unless you don’t have a website or blog set up! Using a reliable service will ensure that your emails get delivered and you now have one central portal where you can manage your emails from.

Once inside your account you will find that creating a list and an opt-in form is relatively easy. This will differ depending upon which service you chose. Just follow their instructions and if you run into any difficulty use their help or support function.

Your next step is to place your form onto your website. Again this is easy to do if you have a wordpress site. You simply take the code and place it inside a text widget in your side bar. You can also have your form displayed at the end of each of your blog posts as well. This just makes it so easy for people to sign up, especially if they just enjoyed your post. All they have to do is read, enjoy and give you their email address.

A good way to entice people to part with their email address is to give them something in return. This could a free book or report, access to a private video or a free coupon or even a 20 minute consultation.
This really covers the very basics of getting started with building a list. Getting an opt-in form on your website is a great start. From there, as you learn more about list building, you can improve your techniques.

So just how do you get people to join your mailing list? This is such an important question for many new marketers. Today the face of marketing is changing and people are using social media sites for almost everything.

People use Facebook and Twitter to update their day with what they are doing and how they are feeling. So if people are spending so much time on these sites it makes sense for you to take advantage of this.

If you don’t currently use social media that much for your business you need to improve this. This isn’t hard to do and all you have to do is starting posting about what you are doing each day. This includes linking to blog posts you write or about a new discount you are offering. Even sharing things you like outside of your business is a good idea.
Let’s see how you can put using social sites together with building your list. Well, first you can post a link to your squeeze page on your wall or page. Plus you can leave informative posts about what you are offering.

Offering people access to a private group is often a great way to entice people onto your list. Of course you will want to offer them valuable information that you don’t give out to other people. You are offering them something special so make sure you keep to your word.

Adding new subscribers to your list doesn’t always happen overnight and you may need to spend time letting people get to know you first. Then when they are comfortable with you they will be ready to join your list.

If you enjoy using images and graphics don’t forget about including sites like Pinterest into your list building efforts. You can create a photo contest and run it via Pinterest, just have everyone post to a specific board. They will need to subscribe to your list in order to find out who the winner is.

Facebook provides you with the opportunity to run surveys and polls so why not take advantage of this? Ask questions and actively ask people to Like and Share your poll. This way you can potentially reach more people who are interested in what you have to offer.
Get into the habit of becoming a regular user of your social accounts and you will discover ways to build your list and to keep them entertained and happy.

A squeeze page is a dedicated page that entices someone to sign up for something. This could be a webinar, a free video or a gift such as a coupon, ebook or report. You can include any type of gift you like but it is best to offer something which is related to your business.

Before setting up your squeeze page you want to get your free offer or gift prepared. You can write this yourself, use a ghostwriter, or use a PLR product which you modify. Once you have this ready upload it to your website or deliver it through a service like Dropbox or Box.com.

Now it is time to work on your squeeze page. There are several ways to do this as well including:

• Creating an html page
• Using a free template
• Purchasing a Squeeze page software
• Using a plugin

Your squeeze page should highlight what your offer is about. You need to list the main features and benefits of the product. It is best to highlight these by using a bulleted list.

A good squeeze page should always include the following elements:

• An attention grabbing headline
• List of benefits
• A desire for your reader to want more info
• A strong call to action

By combining all of these elements you are creating a strong desire in your reader, one that they will act on. With the end action being that they subscribe to your list to get your free gift or offer.

Having a striking image or using a video are two other good tactics which you can use on your squeeze page. An image makes your page visually pleasing and a video is a great way to include additional information about your product. You could even pop in a couple of testimonials in there.

Once your squeeze page is finished you can upload it to your website and your page will be live. Don’t forget to add your autoresponder code into your form so that subscribers are added to your list. If you are using a squeeze page software there will be a place to add this in.

Your next step is now to promote the heck out of your new squeeze page. You can promote it on all your social sites, and you can use the link in your signature file in forums. Even when you leave blog comments you can use the URL as your website. Just look for every opportunity you can and leave your link.