How Big Does Your List Have To Be??

by noah.whitmore

Posted: 14 years ago 16 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Just a quick question.

I see 'gurus' all over the place that talk about sending out a single e-mail ad to their list and getting thousands of dollars in sales overnight. I've done some list building in the past, but I have never made that much money in one shot.

I know that there are a million factors that would affect this answer, but as an estimation, how big does your list have to be before you can expect those huge sales figures?

Yell at me if this is a dumb question, but I just want to know if it would ever be within my grasp to try to get to that level.

-Noah Whitmore

#big #list

Not So New 14 years ago

I really think it depends on which market you are in and how well you treat you list. If you are always sending sales emails then they will probably be less responsive than if you provide alot of value.

The size doesn't really matter, it's the quality.

Sid
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Troy_Phillips 14 years ago

300,000 list members :-)

Honestly this really depends on how responsive your list is . How the list was set up to begin with.

I had a list that only had 104 people on a pre-sell list . 97 of them bought the course .

I have sent emails to a little over 27,000 and made as few as 12 sales . I almost didn't admit that in a public forum but it is the truth.

This term pisses a lot of people off but you really need to train members in some niches .
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- RMC 14 years ago
  
  I've made as much with high and low priced offers, big, and small lists though so it's kind of one of those questions that can't be answered very well.
  
  Lack of conversions can be overcome by volume, and or price.
  
  But the ultimate answer...if you haven't done it yet with your list, you need a bigger one, or better offers.
  
  Thanks
  
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impulsell 14 years ago

I agree with the comments about quality. If you have a well targeted list and you product and copy are good enough then you should be aiming for a double digit conversion rate.
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JennSpencerIM 14 years ago

How much money do you want to make? That's really the question! It is going to depend on quality of your list (as mentioned above) and how much your list keeps growing. I tend to see that the most responsive people are the ones who have been on our list the shortest amount of time. Then again there are some people who wait around to see what you are going to give them (and to get to know you) before they buy! Keep building your list with quality contacts and if you're like me, you'll never think you're list is big enough!!
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dawnpeterson 14 years ago

Hi Noah,

Good question! First, when you mail your list (assuming they like, know and trust you) You'll get about a 10% open rate, then your click through rate depends on your email and then your conversions for your product. If it's killer, it can be from 3-10%. If it's average, it will be around 1%.

This means, if you have a list of 10,000 people, 1,000 will open it. (Let's say your ctr is 50%, which should be very easy to do) that means 500 will see your offer, so if it's average, you'll get 5 sales. If your commish is $500, then you're making thousands with one email. If it's $27, you better start working on higher ticket items and building your list!

Best!

-Dawn.
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Scott Murdaugh 14 years ago

The size of your list is a tiny part of the equation... I know a guy who did $500k+ last year with a list of 5k.

The reason why people sign up, the offer, the quality of your messages, your overall strategy, your niche... All of that stuff plays a HUGE role.

I could go scrape 100k emails and blast them and not make $20 (I wouldn't, but I could).

-Scott
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noah.whitmore 14 years ago

Very good thoughts everyone. I knew that no one would lay out a specific number. It's true that it's all about quality. Thanks for the replies.

-Noah Whitmore
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gottahave 14 years ago

Its all in the name: internet marketing.

How often you see marketers trying to sell a product in a niche to a list whose interest is in a totally different niche. Target your product to the niche.

Neil
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- All Night Cafe 14 years ago
  
  Hey Noah, if you study marketers back even
  to year 2001, they have always said no matter
  the size only about 20% of there list buy.
  
  So looking at that figure it really hasn't changed
  in all of these years later.
  
  It depends on how you market to them and
  how many times you ask for the sale.
  
  Give plenty of value first and always. Build
  trust.
  
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CurtisN 14 years ago

It depends on factors like:

-the price of what you're selling
-responsiveness of list
-size of list
-quality of what you're selling
-email subject line and copy
-product's sales copy

...and more, of course.

But if I had to give you a number, I'd say about 89153 subscribers. Btw, it was a bad question...sorry. I hope that after reading all the responses on this thread that you'll realize why.

Ok, I'll tell you: it's exactly because there are a million factors. Why ask if you know the answer could be anywhere between 100 and 1000000000 subscribers? Forget what the gurus making and focus on what they're doing to make that money (i.e. how they build their lists, what their sales funnels look like, etc.)

Curtis
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Toby Lewis 14 years ago

On the topic of email promotions - you should have an idea of how responsive your list is, so if I do a JV with someone that sends me X number of sales, I'll choose a list to try and match those sales. No point giving them 10 times more than they give you, or sending them too few sales and loosing your reputation.
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newton 14 years ago

In relation to making money, the size of the list has sooo many factors to be considered.

The main one is the relationship you have with the subscribers. If you are mailing out a new offer every few days, you won't get many of them opening your emails. They will just unsubscribe.

But if you follow people like John Reese, who only mails out for offers from people he personally knows and can verify how good the products are and will genuinely help people who buy it, then you'll make far more sales.

Size isn't as important as the relationship and trust you build with your subscribers.

Tony
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- oneplusone 14 years ago
  
  Lists are all about QUALITY not QUANTITY
  
  A poor quality list of 20,000 can produce a 0.25% conversion rate which is 50 sales
  
  A high quality list of 1,000 can produce a 10% conversion rate which is 100 sales
  
  I don't bother wasting time creating big junk lists.
  
  I only create high quality lists which is why I get 10-25% conversion rates consistently.
  
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zoobie 14 years ago

Good questions, but they are already good responses there as well.
But I guess what you can do is to run tons of WSOs and get a good
quality list then you may solve this low response rate problems I guess.
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