List Building Mistakes

by KA

Posted: 15 years ago 12 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Hi, I'm a newbie trying to build my list and wanted to hear about the experience of others here, with building up an email list. Was it easy / tough, what mistakes did you make?

For me, so far:
I've got a small site thats been running for 3 weeks.
I'm getting about 50 visitors a day which is mainly PPC. My site has only just reached the second page of google and not seeing much traffic via that yet.

I only learned how to check for competition the other day, and it looks like I picked a competitive niche, which could be a bummer.

I am only getting about 6 /50 visitors a day to sign up which seems very low compared to what other people claim to have.
No one has bought anything yet.

I've been sending out follow up emails, but I checked today and most people on the list aren't even opening them. The follow up emails arent salesy, they just have helpful tips etc.

Today I had 8 people sign up, but 7 of them didnt even confirm their email optin! WHY??? :-0

I guess my main issue is I don't know if I'm horribly off track with what I'm doing or if I'm just expecting too much too soon.

#building #list #mistakes

tommen 15 years ago

Do article marketing and point the links in the resource box to your optin page instead of your blog.Have a valuable offer that people will want to sign up for.Send valuable information to your list and offer your affiliate products as a solution.

Before you see any sales, you need to build a relationship with your list, and this takes some time.
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PPV Guru

15 years ago

It's normal to get a lot of optins not confirming if you have your system setup wrong. What you should do is, send people to your optin form.

Offer them something for opting but don't give it to them on the optin confirmation page. Instead, on the next page of the optin, tell them they have to confirm their email before they can get their free product or free information.

After they confirm, let your first AR email be the email containing the link to their free product or the free information (ie, the page they opted in to go see). You'll have a much better optin confirmation ratio by doing that.

Thanks
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15 years ago

Originally Posted by PPV Guru

Thanks, I've already set up my confirmation like you've said. It seems crazy that people would give their email address and then not bother to get the free report!! Just checked and another two have signed up today and not confirmed!

The only thing I havent done with the optin thing is change from the generic Aweber optin confirmation page to my own one. Apparently that helps?

I find it odd that the aweber opt-in confirmation page doesn't remind people to look in their spam folder?? A bit of an oversight.

So when these people say they build huge lists in 2 weeks, is that for real? Has anyone in this forum been able to do that? Did they make sales from these people straight away? Is the difference between them and me down to good copy?

Thanks

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Video Rob 15 years ago

What are you selling?

It really is a number game, build hundreds of backlinks and build a huge mailing list.
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Amir.S 15 years ago

get a link wheel going mate with your targeted keywords.
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- RMC 15 years ago
  
  Could be that it's mild curiosity getting them to opt-in, and not rabid desire.
  
  Make it a must have offer, and leave a big unsatisfied question mark in their head.
  
  Follow up with loyalty bonuses and content, work in recommendations/sales messages over time.
  
  Rinse, repeat.
  
  From the initial opt-in though, it's as simple as plopping an overwhelming value added offer to what they already really wanted to know and they'll jump. I have one site selling at 9.5% per opt-in, and another one I setup recently that's seeing 15% for an affiliate product with a bonus offer.
  
  The tricky part is keeping them subscribed. Customer lists fair better than freebie lists though. But I've had even the most pure lists with nothing but content opt-out of emails directly pertaining to what they purchased. Weird...but if you drop that attention factor for even a second some people move onto other things.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  ryanmcmullen 15 years ago
  
  Where most marketers fail is in the follow-up. Once you get the opt-in, you've got 1-7 days to win over your prospect. Mix up your emails with some text, videos, links, etc. People gravitate to a certain medium, so increase your odds of success by offering numerous options.
  
  Don't be too concerned about your open rate. A healthy open rate is around 13%. Touch the five senses with your headline and they'll start opening.
  
  Hope that helps
  
  Thanks
  
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freudianslip27

15 years ago

Yes I also agree. You really need to make it enticing for people to finish the optin process and get the free report/coupon/etc.

I've been doing the free report thing for a while, but recently started working with offline businesses. The optin rate for people who want coupons is much higher, which has been interesting to see.

The better the deal, the more interested people will be. It also pays to make things as simple and straightforward as possible. You'd be surprised how easy it is for people to get lost!

Matt

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15 years ago

Hi, thanks for the replies.

Originally Posted by Murali

maybe the incentive to confirm is not strong enough. did you mention in the squeeze page that they were going to get the free report in their email.
cause when most people register to get a free report they think they could just put in any email id and they will be redirected to a download page.

but then when they find out (after entering a bogus email id) that they will only get their report in their inbox they dont bother to go back and do it again (with the correct email id).

Good point about email. I wrote on the squeeze page that they would "get access to", not that it would be emailed to them. I will have to change that.

Originally Posted by ryanmcmullen

Where most marketers fail is in the follow-up. Once you get the opt-in, you've got 1-7 days to win over your prospect. Mix up your emails with some text, videos, links, etc. People gravitate to a certain medium, so increase your odds of success by offering numerous options.

Don't be too concerned about your open rate. A healthy open rate is around 13%. Touch the five senses with your headline and they'll start opening.

Hope that helps

So when should I actually try to sell them something? In the first 7 days or after?

Originally Posted by RMC

Could be that it's mild curiosity getting them to opt-in, and not rabid desire.

Make it a must have offer, and leave a big unsatisfied question mark in their head.

Follow up with loyalty bonuses and content, work in recommendations/sales messages over time.

Rinse, repeat.

From the initial opt-in though, it's as simple as plopping an overwhelming value added offer to what they already really wanted to know and they'll jump. I have one site selling at 9.5% per opt-in, and another one I setup recently that's seeing 15% for an affiliate product with a bonus offer.

Yes, I think I could work on making it more of an irresistible offer. But I'm still a newbie. Trying to work out how to do that!

In my 3rd follow up email, I had an offer for 50% off on a product, which I thought was "overwhelming value", but it didn't work. Actually, I'm not sure if anyone even opened that email!
I've pushed it back to my 8th follow up email now.

Maybe I need to work on better email subject headings?

There's too much to think about all at once!!!

Thanks
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Chris Pambos 15 years ago

Hi KA,

To make it easier on yourself and increase odds of experiencing success, you should turn double opt-in off, there is a large portion of people who will opt-in but simply will not confirm their email, that's just how it is.

Also, you need to ensure that you have a very valuable incentive in order to make your prospect want to enter their details and join your list so they can get access to your goodies.

A good tip is to create a unique incentive that can only be found from joining your list and your list only.

If you want to take your auto responder sequence to the next level to increase your odds of generating a sale, rather than provide tips, try taking the time to create a mini training series where you either tell or show the 'How To' to whatever your topic may be.

Don't teach 'How To' for everything related to your topic, perhaps one or two very good tips via video content will do the job then recommend that if they want to learn the rest that they go visit website X where X is the product you're currently trying to promote.

Keep your emails 80% content and 20% promotion, I've personally found that to be a good ratio for myself when utilizing email marketing.

I highly recommend that you invest in Tellman Knudson and Shawn Casey's course called List Pros, this course was created specifically for the newbie in mind who wants to get started with internet marketing and list building.

I'm not sure if this course is still available or if it has been taken off the market at this current time, you should Google 'list pros' and visit the official website as there is a ton of quality free training content that for someone like yourself, will open an entire new world to you and of course, show you exactly what you need to do in order to start generating revenue with your online business.

Since I have the impression that you're totally new to the IM realm, if you're going to try and tackle PPC, I highly recommend that you read 'The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords' by Perry Marshall.

This is an excellent read for any beginner PPC marketer, this will give you a very detailed understanding of PPC marketing and how to go about implementing PPC marketing the 'correct' way.

I hope these tips I've provided will assist you greatly in heading in the right direction with your marketing.

Regards,

Chris Pambos
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dsmpublishing 15 years ago

Hi guys

the biggest mistake i ever made with my mailing list years ago is that i offered them too many freebies early on and didnt offer them worthwhile products to get the sales converting. You need to turn those new subscribers into buyers as quick as you can.

for building a list my favourite method is with twitter though there are many different ways to do it. How about doing a WSO with your free product to get a really good quick hit of subscribers.

kind regards

sam
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List Building Mistakes

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