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by Kelly K. O'Neil
Award-Winning Business & Marketing Coach
Every successful Internet marketer who will share the secret to their success will probably tell you the size and quality of their mailing list is a key component. Although it's not the only ingredient, it's essential to success in any online endeavor. If you are marketing a service or product to an online audience, you must learn how to build your list. This involves learning to master the process of acquiring names, increasing your exposure, managing your list, maintaining your subscribers, and staying in contact. Once you understand the process and mechanics, you don't have to do it all by yourself. You can solicit help from other members on your team—a virtual assistant, SEO optimizer, web designer, and copywriter.
The process begins with capturing names off your website to build an opt-in list of subscribers to your e-zine. You may choose to send short e-mail tips instead of an e-zine, or an ongoing e-course. Usually you set up a box with an offer for a free report, survey, questionnaire, or complimentary consultation. Once signed up, you add the name and e-mail address to your database for future contact.
Next you want to increase traffic to your website so you can capture more names. There are myriad ways to drive traffic to your site:
- Pay-per-click advertising
- SEO optimization
- Press releases
- Article submissions
- Blogs, podcasting, viral marketing
- Ads in others' e-zines or on others' websites
- Teleseminars—your own or as a guest expert on someone else's
You can also increase your list by:
- Adding names of existing clients, affiliates, referral partners
- Including new contacts made through networking
- Buying or renting a list
- Creating joint ventures and sharing lists with your partners
Managing your list is a function of whatever database system you and your web designer set up. There are many effective programs that will get the job done. Review several of them, ask for referrals, and sign up. Then turn the management of your database over to your VA and web designer.
Retaining your subscribers is easy when your give them reasons to stay on your list. Valuable information sent out by e-mail broadcast periodically can include a monthly or bi-monthly e-zine and occasional e-mail messages. Too little and they will lose interest. Too often and you will lose subscribers. Find the right balance. Get feedback by asking your database what they enjoy about your e-zine and what they would like to see. When someone opts-out, find out why on your automatic opt-out form.
Stay in contact with your list by using your e-mail software also known as an autoresponder program. This allows you to set up messages, e-zines, etc. in advance of when you actually will send them out. If you wanted, you could load up your program with 6 months or a year's worth of messages. You know those Internet marketers who send you 3 e-mails/week? Do you think they're sitting down and writing 3 e-mail messages/week? Not at all! They load up their e-mail programs months in advance to save time and energy and automate the process. At UpLevel Strategies we use www.emailbrain.com.
If you want to build your online empire, you must build your list. Get started NOW! If you need more information about which database or e-mail broadcast system to use, contact our office for our suggestions.
© Kelly O'Neil 2006
 About the Author
Kelly K. O'Neil, Chief Strategy Officer, UpLevel Strategies
Business & Marketing guru Kelly O'Neil is passionate about helping entrepreneurs succeed in business through her Business Mastery Success System™. She is the lead author of "Visionary Women Inspiring the World: 12 Paths to Personal Power" (Skyward, 2005) and is writing her second book Guerilla Business Strategy with mega-marketing genius Jay Conrad Levinson. Kelly's company received several awards for her exceptional work including the PR Compass award for outstanding Public Relations, The ADDY Award for Branding and recently received the Purple Cow Award acknowledging her company as one of the Most Innovative Companies in America by best-selling author Seth Godin.
For more information, or to subscribe to O'Neil's Arrive! E-newsletter filled with countless tips and resources for creating more profit in your business, visit www.uplevelstrategies.com. Please contact UpLevel Strategies at (408) 615-8150 for a Complimentary 30 Minute Strategy Session.
NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to info@uplevelstrategies.com.
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