Hi everyone! So we covered two things in our previous list building lessons. First, we talked about the first step in list building – caring about your readers. Then we discussed list size and loyalty. Now it’s time to consider the nuts and bolts of your list building strategy.

You want to be in touch with your list on an on-going basis. There are two ways you can do this.

The first is to create a long-term series of follow-up emails.

Follow up emails are wonderful but they have drawbacks, too. I have a few follow ups on all of my lists. At the VERY least, you want to sit down and create a welcome follow up email. This doesn’t have to be complex – just say hi and thank them for subscribing. Offer a nice free download in the process.

After the welcome email, you can schedule emails to automatically go out on your behalf as often as you want to – from daily to weekly or whatever suits you. I initially spaced my follow up emails apart every 3-4 days.

There are different ways of thinking about follow up emails. I personally like to see value happening here. Good, thought-provoking lessons are winners for follow ups.

In some of the list building courses (and forum posts) I’ve read, some people hammer in the idea that if you’re not selling in every single email, then you’re “leaving money on the table.” All I have to say to that is, “Great!’

It’s okay not to be so greedy that you’re always pocketing everybody’s cash. Geez, get some personal satisfaction out of this, why don’tcha!?

There are some products that you’ll be wanting to promote long-term – like a hosting package or email autoresponder tool. Those are okay to link to – maybe in a lesson about those things.

I have a warning for you, though. I deleted my old link cloaker and now all my email links are busted. I have to go fix them. It’s a pain in the butt. I’m almost of the mindset that no cloaking is necessary. If you want to pay me back by buying through my link, go for it. Those who want are going to go around the cloaker anyway and just Google the company name.

You want to make sure that your follow up emails are evergreen in nature. Don’t talk about the “new Google + tool” in a follow up because it won’t be so new a year from now.

The second is to create a broadcast email frequently.

Broadcast emails are my favorite now. The only drawback is sometimes I feel like I have a great lesson that I want new subscribers to be able to read years down the road. So I try putting this stuff on my blog now. Some people use follow up emails for lessons and broadcast emails for promotions.

This mixes the two strategies, and it’s a perfectly acceptable way to email market in my opinion. The only issue with it is that some people will get double emails on some days. This could cost you subscribers. But I feel like if I’m providing value, and I know I do whether it’s a lesson of mine OR a promotion (since I review things thoroughly), then it won’t matter to my loyal subscribers.

So sit down today and make a list of about 10 lessons you could teach people. Doesn’t matter what niche it’s in! If you’re in the cooking light niche, then come up with 10 lessons on cooking light. You don’t have to write them just yet – just get your list together.

You might do some keyword research using Google’s free keyword tool to see what people are wondering about. This is a great way to generate some ideas for your email marketing.

Guess what else? Private Label Rights are great for follow up emails. No worries about that ugly “duplicate content” hassle (which I never worry about anyway). No need to even edit the content.

I start selling those 52 packs of articles primarily so my PLR customers could fill up a years’ worth of weekly email marketing and they love it. They just plug it right in and maybe include some of their links to things in there.

Okay so next time we’re going to dig into the process of creating our opt in freebie to entice new subscribers to sign up!

Did you miss:

Part 1 of the List Building Series

Part 2 of the List Building Series

Move on to Part 4 of the List Building Series

Tiff

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