5 Steps to Build Your Own Subscriber List

By Bob Kosimov
Posted Thursday, August 19, 2004

Let me ask you this ‘Who can you sell your products or services to over and over again?’

Your subscriber list is an unlimited source to market your products to. You can test your products, run surveys, do anything that might be of interest to your subscribers. You don’t even have to spend any advertising money, your list will do the job.

But what should you do if you don't have your own subscriber list? Well, then you should build one (of course, there are thousands of list-owners, who would be pleased to offer your product to their list for a fee, but better yet to build your own). And that’s what you are going to learn in this article.

Ok, let’s jump-start to building your subscriber list.

1. Where to start?

As soon as you have your web site up and running, first thing you should do is to put up a subscription form in the most visible places on your site. Your goal is to collect e-mails. Attract your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter by offering free info like a helpful article, report, or free book. Or you can offer a discount on your product if they sign up for your newsletter. Ideally, if you have a list of 10,000 e-mails, then you should be pretty well balanced.

2. Opt-in e-mail

One of the factors of successful e-mail marketing is using opt-in method. In other words, your messages should have ‘unsubscribe’ link on the bottom of the page, so that your subscribers can stop receiving your messages when they want by a simple click. Otherwise you will be reported as spamming.

3. Double opt-in for safety

You can increase your targeted subscriber list, using double opt-in sign up method. That is, if someone subscribes to your newsletter, e-mail is sent to their address. They have to answer to the e-mail in order to be included in the list. That means they are interested in receiving your newsletter. And it is their e-mail address. This is the safest way to increase your targeted subscriber base.

4. Contacting your subscribers

Once you have collected few e-mails, you have to decide how often you would broadcast your messages. Biweekly or monthly is a pretty good interval. It gives you enough time to come up with something that can be of interest to your readers.

You can send your newsletter every week or every 5 days. But it requires a lot of commitment to write it with interesting content and meet the deadlines. Besides, they could already be receiving newsletters from other marketers. So, they might just not have enough time to read all of your messages. However don't exceed a monthly basis. Your subscribers should get a constant reminder that you're still around and not confuse your e-mail for spam.

5. Personalized messages

If your messages start with ‘Dear Steve’ or ’Dear Susan’, it will warm up your subscribers. And they will be more receptive to the information you are about to share with them. It also adds to your credibility and helps to increase your response rate. So, send them personalized messages, possible with link: (http://www.aweber.com/?202651) ‘AWeber’ or link: (http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop/t.x/813946) ‘Mailloop’ software.

Some additional tips

One of the mistakes in e-mail marketing is using 'catch all e-mail' feature. Use the only e-mail addresses that people have entered to receive your newsletter or ezine. Forget that 'catch all e-mail' stuff that comes with your hosting package. Because if people didn’t subscribe to receive information from you, they wouldn’t read your e-mails. And you don’t want to be accused of spamming, putting your reputation at risk.

Don't be insistent in promoting your product. Rather explain the benefits that your subscribers will get in a friendly fashion. Sometimes, you get e-mails that urge you to buy their stuff, almost demanding why you haven't done that yet. So be careful it might hurt your credibility.

Well, now you know how to build your own subscriber list. Follow these suggestions and your success as an e-mail marketer is guaranteed. Remember, you don't have to get millions subscribed to your newsletter, you only need 10,000 and you’re set for life. The only thing that’s left to do is you just have to put some in and do it.

Good Luck!

About the Author
Bob Kosimov offers helpful articles, free downloads and other useful webmaster resources. Visit his site at ‘link: (http//activeresponder.com)’.