List Generation - What's your focus?

As you probably suspect already, the tighter the focus, the more responsive a list tends to be. Offer a free report about how to take full advantage of Twitter, or something along those lines. I would not mix those members in with others who have come to you through some other interest group. You can, but you won't get as good a response rate, and maybe more importantly, people will drop off in droves as they get emails that aren't about anything they have an interest in. That, to me, is the biggest reason not to lose your focus in each list. It's more work, sure, but I prefer the micro-list approach vs. the general list model. Twitter's a good niche, though. It's very popular and there are many ways to monetize such a list. No reason you can't build a list of thousands and find many ways to make money from it.

John

When your list is targeted, you will get results.

If you go general, you just waste your money paying for autoresponder.

All marketing is based on targeted niches. If someone is interested in golf and you send that person email talking about dog training, what can you expect to happen?
(Unless that person has a dog...and in that case you are only lucky)

Once you decide you niche, focus on that. Otherwise you will most likely fail.

-Lauri

Mine's a bit broad but to be honest it was more about getting started and tidying it up later so further down the line I'll try to funnel subscribers towards their interests and make sure new subscribers go somewhere tighter.

Good post I dont think many people even realise the significance!

Just build a list focusing on Twitter, nothing else. Then your offer, later on after you have provided great free content, should be an easy sell.

This is indeed a good question which in my view is never or almost never discussed. The reason is many don't know what to tell you because they don't test that kind of thing at all or because they don't think it applies to small time business owners. But I disagree, I think it applies if you decide to stop being small time or even if you're small but want to fan out and do generalized "marketing" like a micro-google or a mini-facebook (locally or internationally).

So, here's my UNTESTED take on it, I only speak from experience here watching the big players as well as a user... I may one day test this out myself, but for now, enjoy...

1. First you gotta decide why you need to build that list. What this does is it helps you stay focused on what you will be delivering. Whether or not you're a mini or maxi amazon and you have such a wide range of audiences, you still need to have focus to excel.

So, lets say you're amazon, you can decide you will build a list, but here's the thing, it can't be one giant list with everyone and their enemies on it, unless of course all you will be focusing on is sending out GENERAL updates or other relevant GENERAL stuff about amazon, otherwise you're going to be wasting some good time and energy and probably ticking off some folks.

Now, let me make this a little clearer so we don't LOSE focus...

1. Amazon and google actually keep lists, yes they do, even though they don't ask for names and emails the way we do, they take the time to build you a profile by asking you to register for SOMETHING or the other. Now, they don't mail out to their lists as far as I can tell I have not got any mails from them, the reason is they don't need to, their sites are natural magnets filled with content that people will want at some point or the other later down the line so they will come back when they're good and ready.

If they don't come back, it won't really make a dent because these sites cater to such a large crowd going into the multi-millions and perhaps 1% or more of those are regulars, so they don't need to run as tight a ship as say someone who only has market share as little as 1% and gets a max of 100,000 visits a year or even a month. These kinds of sites NEED to call back people to do business or they will eventually die.

Big sites that have large market share don't need that stuff. They may use it one way or the other but they don't really need it. For them the money will come because they have now built solid reps and massive continuous flowing traffic so they don't need list marketing like we would do.

Now, back to how amazon uses list marketing, cos they do use it, so by the way do twitter and facebook et al...

These kinds of sites use list marketing to notify users of specific information that applies directly to the user, otherwise they feel they will wasting their time and resources.

A. Amazon uses list marketing without actually sending emails (there are ways to market to a list without sending one single message), the way amazon does this is to WAIT for the list members to COME to them. When you visit amazon after subscribing or leaving behind traces of your visit (involuntarily via cookies or voluntarily because you don't mind being followed around like that), you get spoken to in a personalized tone with personalized features and personalized info such as... What you last searched for and what else you might be interested in based on your current or previous searches and so on. Amazon actually does this better than we smaller companies because that stuff actually works and gets people buying far more than they would normally buy.

We IMers can learn from that. Instead of recommending only things you and your "good friends" just cooked up or stuff "you find interesting", take the focus back to where it matters, to the customer the guy you want to take money from doesn't care about you or your so called buddies they care about themselves and while they may still buy and you may still make cash, there are better ways to get what you want, while giving them what they want too...

Use what I call the Amazon-mendation technique... This simply means recommend whatever it is that prospects will want that is related to stuff they searched for on your site (to know this you gotta go high-tech which may not be necessary for now), another way is to simply recommend stuff to them that is related in some way or shape to what they subscribed to get free or what they bought from you.

While you may think you already do this with OTOs and so on, you really are not, what you're doing is forcing people to take notice of stuff you want to get sold.

Try this...

Someone comes to your site and buys designer socks. Great. They pay. You ship. Cool.

Now, rather than send them a OTO selling whatever it is you THINK they will jump at, THINK first exactly what directly would really interest them such as... people who bought designer socks also bought.... designer shoes then show them pics and links to that.

You get the idea, Amazonify your recommendations and see if that will improve your results from a general-type site.

You can also use google's strategy... This I call the Google Fairy...

The GF does a lot of stuff that you never pay much attention to without sending a single email. Yet they HAVE you on a LIST... excuse me if you've got GMAIL you're on google's list, if you've got an adsense or adwords account, ditto the list thingee. If you signed up to get any other google product, you've got Googlistis...

But here's the thing... Google NEVER asks for names or emails for many of their products, just the ones you really need personal accounts for, the others like Google Chrome and co, they just let you get a download -- like I say they are huge and the product WILL be downloaded by millions which just makes them feel great cos they don't sell ad space in it or anything, plus, it kicks competitors asses and also, it builds they street cred so that next time they have a new cool gadget out you will be one sure fire sucker, urm I mean customer who will come for it

So anyway back to the Google Fairy...

The GF is in terms of getting your hands on content that matters most to you... so they build iGoogle and build search history and so on into their site.

What this does is actually cooler than what amazon-mendation does...

They don't ask you for money, but they MAKE you use their sites and get addicted to getting easy solutions to your search for more info, then, then, then, then they do the thing most people have tried and tried to do but failed woefully, they make advertisers pay them to reach you... See, much like TV and radio only better.

If you have a generalized site, you can decide to track users (with their permission or using cookies if this doesn't break any laws or spook them to near death experiences, now once you know what they like, serve up some more, keep them high as kites on the best dope in the market, that is your market, not the actual dope market now...

Once you can accomplish this and make people want to come to your site because they get a high from using it, then you know they will come for regular fixes maybe even daily fixes, multiple times per day or even per hour or per minute.

Then, guess what, you've Google Fairyed them so now it's time for fairy dust--get the advertisers to send you money to be seen by your dopefiends You clean up without having to make consumers spend money they don't have or don't want to spend. Let the greedy, desperate marketers handle that part of business for you

Now while this is not easy to do, it's not impossible. So it's an option and before you go thinking only Google can do that, take a look around you, where are you now? That's right in a kind of dope city of your very choosing... The warrior forum has been built or luckily grew into the one stop spot to find anything marketing info related. It stayed around longer than all those that did the same back in the 90's, now it's time for it to clean up when greedy desperate (ok and really generous marketers want to sell to you via WSO's

There's a lot more to break down but this should get you going good and proper.

Best of luck,

Kunle Olomofe