Building A List For Your Online Marketing Business - By: Shirley Crichton

In this article I'll be looking at the different aspects of building your customer list, including the reasons for having a list and the basic steps for managing and building a list for your online marketing business. If you're just beginning, or about to begin an internet business the basics are here for you and, if you're already experienced , then this article will be a useful reminder.

Now unless you're absolutely new to online marketing, you'll know that building a list of customers is the basis of any successful online business. Building a list of prospects and customers and maintaining your relationship with them, is the most important aspect of online marketing today. It's the reason that people will buy from you rather than from anyone else in the vast choice now available. That's why top internet marketing entrepreneurs have always been prepared to spend time building and nurturing their own loyal customer base.

Fortunately, the internet makes the mechanics of building a relationship easy and by creating a good relationship with your customers and prospects they learn to trust you and that will reflect in your sales and repeat business. To keep in touch with your list regularly, all you have to do is email them and, each time you do, you build their trust in you and ultimately, your products.

Some marketers use an ezine, which can look very professional. However an ezine will require a lot of input from you as they are usually published weekly or fortnightly and need a significant amount of content each time. A good alternative is a weekly or fortnightly tips email, which is much easier to produce and need only be a few paragraphs long. Just keep it full of relevant information that will be of benefit to the recipients.

You can build a list quickly if you just want people with very broad-ranging interests. But if you want to target your list closely to your products, as you presumably do, then you need to be clear about who you want to attract. For example, to build a list of people interested in sport is a very broad field. But to build an email list of people whose interest is short mat bowls, is much more targeted and will need a much more focused approach. Overall, it's generally more profitable to be selling to a smaller, targeted list who are interested in what you are selling, rather than a much larger general email list with wide ranging interests because, the more specifically you target your list to your products, the higher percentage of sales you will achieve.

Three of the most effective tools you can use for building a list are,

1. Article Marketing. This is a great way to get your name and website link broadcast to the world. If you write articles on subjects connected to your products in some way, you can submit them to online publishers for general distribution to anyone who wants to use them on their own site. An article is not an advert for your product. It needs to be informative and interesting so that people want to find out more about your subject. Then, at the end of your article there will be a resource box where you can briefly promote your website and include a link to it. Article marketing is a very simple, effective and free way to build a list. The articles don't need to be long, 500 - 750 words is normal. They just need to be informative and interesting to be popular.

2. Pop Up Boxes and Inline Forms. Although they may seem annoying, pop boxes do work. If you have one on your site it should increase your list sign ups. You can use a pop box that appears when a visitor comes to your site or one that appears when they leave. All you need to be is a simple pop up box asking for their name and email address. Simpler is usually better and gets more sign ups. You can also use dynamic pop ups that aren't blocked by general pop up blockers, which will improve sign ups even more. However, if a visitor fills in a static form on your site their action is probably much more deliberate than if they respond to the pop up box which is put up in front of them. So, while the pop up may collect more names, the form fillers are more likely to genuinely want the information.

3. Pay Per Click Adverts. You can bring traffic to your website by using Pay Per Click search engines ads. Google and Yahoo are most popular. But, you need a good understanding of the system to make this work for you. Most important is the cost per sale and conversion rates. So, I highly recommend you learn about this technique before starting, to avoid any unwanted surprises. You'll find plenty of information with a Google search for pay per click metrics.

As you get people signing up, you'll want a system to automatically manage your list. If you don't, you'll have to manually add each person who subscribes, delete unsubscribes and send out your individual emails yourself! Not a good idea! Fortunately there are a several list managing services you can use to automate your list and email processes, like Aweber.com. To make the whole process as easy as possible, this service needs to be in place from the beginning, so check some out as soon as you can.

OK, so these are the basic principles to building a list. And now, just like the successful internet marketing entrepreneurs who nurture and treasure their lists, you can start creating yours, using the ideas and information outlined above.

About the Author

Shirley Crichton is a UK information marketer, passionate about sharing what she has learnt with people new to this often confusing world . Do you want to learn more about getting your internet marketing business started and profitable? Claim your free and comprehensive 95-page report ' Online Marketing Made Easy' at http://www.ShirleysOnlineMarketing.com to give yourself a head start.

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