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Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world.  My name is Patrick and I’m your host.  You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location.  Today, we’ll be talking about building an email list so let’s get started.


So, what determines the value of an online business?  Certainly, the idea behind the business is worth something.  The revenue is worth something.  The inventory is definitely worth something.  Accounts receivable.  But at the end of the day, the biggest determinant of an online business’ value is its customer base and one of the best measurements of that is the business’ opt-in email list.  Even for an offline business, a large email list can directly increase the company’s value.  So regardless what you’re plans are, there are plenty of good reasons to start building a list of your own and we’ll be looking at that process today.


Let’s start with the basics.  A moment ago, I used the term “opt-in”.  An opt-in list means the recipients agreed to be on the list.  Perhaps they subscribed directly.  Perhaps they were added when they placed an order.  Perhaps they entered a raffle and had their email added that way.  And all these people have the ongoing opportunity to unsubscribe from the list and, at least for the moment, have not done so.  That’s considered an opt-in list.


Sending unsolicited emails to people who have NOT opted in is inconsiderate, dangerous and even illegal.  We all know what I’m talking about here.  I’m talking about spam and there’s tons of it.  But modern email technology has introduced a variety of spam filters, shielding us from most of the junk mail that would otherwise be coming our way.


There are a lot of tricks out there for accumulating email addresses without consent and you might be surprised at how easy it is.  In past chapters, I talked about little computer programs called spiders that crawl the internet for one reason or another.  Well, one common reason is to harvest email addresses.  A lot of websites list the actual email addresses of individual employees.  Spiders know what email addresses look like and they harvest any addresses they find.  For that reason, I recommend keeping email addresses OFF your website.  You can do so by requiring users to fill out a contact form or you can create a graphic of your email address – just a graphic of the typed email address – and include that.  The spiders won’t recognize it because it’s a graphic image but the people visiting your website won’t know the difference.


There are lots of other ways to accumulate email addresses without consent but we won’t focus on those here.  The point is there are ALSO lots of ways to accumulate legitimate opt-in email addresses and that’s our goal.


Last year, I sponsored a wine booth at an Art & Wine festival and raffled off an iPod at the end of the second day.  The winner was to be notified by email and people could fill in entries throughout the festival.  Over the course of two days, I accumulated about 850 entries and, therefore, 850 email addresses.  Most of them are still on my list and the iPod cost me $240 – not a bad deal overall.


But it’s worth noting these email addresses haven’t produced very good results so far and I think the reason is that the motivation to provide their email address had NOTHING to do with my mortgage business.  They just wanted the iPod, that’s all.  They had no interest in receiving mortgage-related information.  My experience with this festival demonstrates there’s a significant hierarchy within opt-in email addresses.  Indeed, my recipients opted in and have NOT unsubscribed but the response rate has been very low from that group.  Other people have email lists that are extremely productive and profitable.


To build a productive email list, you want to attract your recipients by offering something of DIRECT interest to your ideal customer.  I recommend creating an offer your target market cannot refuse.  Perhaps it’s a free “consumer report” detailing some inside information that any of your customers would love to have.  Perhaps it’s a free information booklet about saving money in your industry.  Perhaps it’s a CD or DVD.  Perhaps it’s a free sample of one of your products or a gift certificate for a future discount.  Whatever it is; it should be a great deal (or free) and appeal exactly to the audience you would like to reach.


Now that you’ve created an irresistible offer, where you do make it available?  Well, there are a number of options.  For starters, you can make it available on your website.  You can add a big graphic to your homepage announcing its availability.  People can click through to a second page where they can enter their email address and then receive the offer or have it delivered emailed to them.


This is pretty similar to what I’M doing, right?  I mean, each one of these podcasts comes with a FREE itemized to-do list with specific things you can do TODAY to start seeing results.  This is an added resource designed to benefit you, my listeners.  But in order to get it, you have to register and login to the members-only section of my website.  The primary reason I’m doing this is because it allows me to get your email address.  Don’t worry. I’m not going to inundate you unwanted emails but it allows me to develop a list of people listening to my podcasts.  That way, if I expand my business beyond this podcast series, I can contact you and let you know.


Incidentally, this is the single biggest drawback of podcasting.  You can have a huge audience but there’s no way of knowing who those people are unless you can get them to provide their contact information voluntarily.  So here I am.  I admit it.  Yes, I want your email address.  I’m willing to offer additional free resources to get it but getting your email address is a major objective of mine.  So … please … register on my site and check out the itemized to-do lists I’ve got posted there!


Okay.  So, once you’ve set up the redemption process on your website, you can promote YOUR offer’s availability through a variety of ways.  You could post something on Craig’s List.  If the offer is truly irresistible, you could contact groups, clubs or associations and let them know about it.  Again, if the offer doesn’t threaten anyone and if it’s truly a great value, organizers won’t mind promoting it to their members.  If you really sit down and think about it, there’s an endless list of groups, clubs, associations, newsletters and events you could contact.  You could even create a press release describing the offer and fax it out, followed by a phone call.


Another way to promote your offer quickly is to “rent” someone else’s list; someone who’s list includes YOUR target market.  Yes, it’ll cost you but it’s often the fastest way to build your own email list.  The trick here is to find the list that most closely resembles the list you want to build for yourself – in other words, you want to find a business that caters to the same audience as you – and then make an absolutely irresistible offer so they’ll respond.


You see, list owners will NEVER show you their list.  They’ll only agree to send your message out on your behalf.  After that, you’ll have the opportunity to capture the email address (or other contact information) of those who respond to your offer.  If they don’t respond, you’ll never know who they were.  The point here is that you shouldn’t think about maximizing profits when you’re renting someone’s list.  Instead, try to offer something SO good; try to offer something SO enticing, you end up with a huge response rate.


Once they respond, you get their contact information; you get their email address; now, they’re on YOUR email list.  And that’s the game.  Once you’ve developed a list of people who responded to one of YOUR offers, you’ve got something to work with.  You can then send future offers and promotions to the same list with almost NO cost.  And THAT’S where you can make some money.  That’s where the opportunity lies.  And besides that, if you’ve developed a big enough list, you can rent it to OTHER people who are just starting out themselves.  Once you’ve built a significant opt-in email list, it quickly becomes a license to print money.


So, what’s the magic number?  What constitutes a GOOD email list?  Well, most web gurus agree that a list with more than 10,000 names is a good list and one with more than 25,000 names is a great list.  A friend of mine has a list with about 42,000 names.  That’s an awesome list and she can charge over $500 just to MENTION something in her monthly newsletter, and that doesn’t even include her standard advertising revenue or the products and services she’s promoting to her audience on an ongoing basis.


Okay.  Let’s talk about the sales process a little.  I alluded to this before but it’s worth some more discussion.  As I mentioned, your initial offer should be almost too good to be true.  It should be a great value that almost everyone in your target market would want.  So, what specifically should it be?  Well, the cheapest way to do this is to provide some valuable information.  That way, you can provide the irresistible offer at virtually no cost.  It can be a PDF file that’s emailed to people once they fill in their email address.  It can be an audio or video file hidden behind a password-protected firewall.  Or it can be an email newsletter subscription delivered once each month.  With any of these, the direct cost is zero and the delivery cost is zero as well.


Obviously, the information needs to be genuinely valuable.  Think about what information is generally unavailable but truly coveted by your target market.  Find something that they can really use.  Find something they can really benefit from.  And then compile the information in a readable format, create a PDF or an audio file or a video file and voila.  You’ve got your offer!  Of course, it would be just as easy to create a gift certificate or a coupon.  Whatever you decide to do, make sure it presents REAL value to your target market.


With information products like e-books and consumer reports and so on, we should spend a few minutes discussing recipient psychology.  The people who get these types of things tend to evaluate these offers based on a variety of often irrelevant details.  Keep in mind they have to decide they want the information BEFORE they truly know what’s inside.  Yes, I know; you can describe the information but the exact contents are unknown until they receive it.  As such, people are often impressed with the number of pages the document has; the more, the better.  And including a sampling of excerpts can bolster the perceived value.


Whenever you include an excerpt, always include the page number it came from.  For example, you could have: “Page 38” and a quote such as “Search engine optimization is driven by 3 primary criteria and we’ll discuss each one in detail.”  Doing this will increase the appeal of the document because people will naturally wonder what’s on pages 1 through 37 and what comes after the discussion about search engine optimization criteria.  It gives the document dimension; depth.  It makes it appear more substantial.  You want your offer to carry the highest perceived value possible.


Another option is to give them a gift certificate for some product or service, preferably one of your own (obviously).  Again, it can be provided as a PDF file and it will accomplish 2 things: accumulating email addresses AND spurring new sales (even if those sales are at little or no profit – they’re still sales – it’s still revenue).  If you decide to offer a gift certificate, I would make it a substantial savings; enough to clearly represent real value.  We live in a world saturated with special offers and 50% off sales.  Your gift certificate should demonstrate an unusual savings to motivate a response.


Obviously, we could go on but the list of ideas is endless and I recommend you get creative for your own campaign.  Whatever it is, we’re trying to get people into your “sales funnel”.  By offering something that’s either free or a great value, you’re getting new bodies into your sales funnel.  Getting them to enter your funnel needs to be as easy and enticing as possible, requiring very little effort and providing TONS of benefits.  These people don’t know you at all at this point.  Make it easy.  Make it inviting.


Once their in your funnel, you want to start offering them new products or services.  Each step should be small so the first offering after they’ve entered your funnel should be inexpensive – maybe a $10 item, something small but still an excellent value.  As you provide value and build their trust, pull them through your funnel, offering increasingly expensive items.  You could have items that go all the way up to $1000 or more.  Don’t underestimate the value people will put on your products and services.  Don’t limit yourself by offering products only within a certain price range.


Here’s a golden rule.  Don’t assume the people in your funnel are anything like you.  Don’t market to yourself.  People are all different.  Everyone is NOT like you.  Everyone thinks slightly differently and has different needs.  The mere fact you own your own business is evidence you’re NOT like everyone else.  You’re already in the minority so don’t make assumptions about your audience.  Have a wide selection of products and let your conversion rate speak for itself.  If a product sells, keep it and offer something even nicer.  Keep ratcheting up the ante and only stop when you offer a product no one’s willing to buy.


It’s extremely important you decide what’s on your product menu BEFORE you begin.  This is difficult, I admit it.  In fact, I have a hard time following my own advice on this one because I get too excited and always want to pull the trigger too quickly.  But make sure you take some time at the beginning and lay it all out beforehand.  You want a plan.  Believe me; once you start building an email list, you have to act quickly.  You need to be on top of it and have everything ready to go.  The progression of events plays a major role in maturing your list; transforming them from new faces to happy, trusting, grateful, paying customers.


This is important.  You know it’s true in the real world, why not on the internet?  First impressions are everything.  You need to know what you’re going to offer them and what’s next on the list.  Block out some time.  Do some brainstorming and get it organized.  Build your products and get them ready.  Once everything’s ready to go, start the campaign and not a minute earlier.  Planning is the key to success.  Don’t look for shortcuts.  Spend the time and execute like a pro!


Please visit TacticalExecution.com to get an itemized list of things you can do TODAY to start getting results.  It’s a FREE 1-page PDF file in the members-only section so you have to register and log in, and then you’ll find it under the “Resources” tab.


You can also view upcoming topics by clicking the Marketing tab under Podcast Chapters.  If you have a suggestion for future topics, please use the Contact form to let us know.  And finally, all the websites referenced on this podcast have been included on the Links page.


Okay, thank you very much for listening.  If you like what you hear on these podcasts, please tell a friend about them.  Modern technology like podcasting can help elevate new and innovative thinkers but we all have to play our part to help spread the word for those who deserve our endorsements.  If I am deserving of yours, my thanks.


I DO offer workshops, seminars and keynote speeches as well as consulting services so please email me at Patrick [at] TacticalExecution.com for more information.  I’m also doing an extensive podcast series on stock market investing, real estate finance and the economy.  It’s called Financial Audio and you can find it on iTunes.


Stay tuned.  There is a lot more to come.  In the meantime, think big, take action and market strategically.  Bye for now.