When Size Doesn't Matter

By Rebecca Hagel
Posted Thursday, December 9, 2004

How to build a responsive mailing list. Building a big mailing list is easy. Building a profitable list of eager ebook buyers is more difficult.

Why? Because sometimes these two goals oppose one another. Let me explain...

Let's say I put you in charge of building a big mailing list for me in one month. And let's further imagine that I didn't care how you did it, as long as your efforts produced a bunch of unique email addresses. In fact, imagine if I told you that I would give you a dollar for every email address you produced. That would certainly motivate you to build a big list, wouldn't it?

So you set out to build a big list fast. Perhaps you offer free ebooks and other good goodies to anyone who signed up for the newsletter. You also started a contest with an expensive grand prize, since you know people will give up their email addresses for a chance to win a cool prize.

And maybe you even buy newsletter subscribers for my list, since that's another way to acquire a lot of names quickly.

The deadline hits and you've built a list of 20,000 subscribers. Not bad. But do you want to know the truth?

This list is next to worthless!

You didn't build a list of people who wanted to read my newsletter. Instead, you built a list of people who wanted something else, like an entry into a contest.

Will these people even look at my newsletter? Probably not. This means they won't buy products that I recommend in the newsletter. About the only thing this big list is good for is to sell advertising space...but that would be dishonest since the list isn't responsive.

The example above hits home with a lot of people. The experts say we should build big mailing lists, so we do. But often in the process of building a big mailing list fast, we lose sight of the main goal--building a responsive mailing list.

For maximum profits, concentrate on building a responsive list FIRST, and secondarily focus on building your list fast.

About the Author
Rebecca Hagel is the author of "The Beginner's Guide to Marketing and Making Love!" Get set to open your mind and spirit to online marketing success. Go to (http://www.thebeginnersguide.net)