How to build/manage my list

Congratulations on making the decision to build a list.
It's one of the best things you can do for your Internet
business.

At a minimum, you'll want to run two lists: a prospect list
(for people who haven't yet bought) and a customer list
(for people who have bought).
The content you place in the e-mails to your prospects
should move them towards knowing, liking and trusting
you and more importantly - wanting to buy your products.

So, work backwards from your product, and decide what
you can use to tempt people into buying the product.
If you decide to go with AWeber, they have an automatic
feature that does this (unsubscribe-on-subscribe):

Can I Move Subscribers From One List to Another? :: AWeber Knowledge Base (no affil.)
In the follow-up e-mails for a customer, give them
useful information to help them consume and benefit
more from their initial purchase.

Also, think about the next product in your funnel that
can help them get even better results and promote that.
The frequency with which you send e-mails depends
upon your target market and a host of other factors.

You can always test two different e-mail frequencies
and see which one your particular market prefers given
your current e-mail marketing skill level.

I hope that helps you.

Dedicated to mutual success,

Shaun

Yup, you should have, but kudos for taking the steps now!

When I was in Somalia, I saw some people using toothpicks to fix truck engines.

AWeber is certainly your best choice.

You create separate lists within AWeber. You can even set it up so that a when somebody on your freebie list buys something, they automatically get transferred to your buyer list. AWeber support can help you with this.

The helpful sort! And by helpful I mean helpful to them and helpful to you! Give them more info on the subject matter, direct them to related blog posts, and make offers for related products (affiliate or your own).

See above.

Try starting with a thank you.

It's impossible to answer this. Some list owners provide awesome information every day and the subscribers love it. Some list owners send crappy emails daily and the subscribers hate it. Do your best and you will find out what you need to tweak as the feedback (or unsubscribes) come in.

Geeze, Shaun, are we sharing a brain or what? I was typing as you posted!

I would add this:

don't be afraid to test things like "how often should I mail".. you can make multiple lists, set each up with a different frequency, and see for yourself what works best for your unique situation.

You have got some excellent answers and these helped me too.
I was thinking to build list for my business but don't know where to start..
Searching for some point to start list building.

most people go for 2 lists 1 free list and one paid list!

Hey Ben,
You know, I've seen some pretty technical toothpicks in my day! haha

But seriously, it sounds like you are on the right track. I personally use Aweber and am really satisfied. They are really great with customer service too.

The first few posts really answered your questions very well. There are a few things I would add however.

4) when a customer has bought, what sort of follow up email shall I send? And at what point shall I try to sell them something else? I don't want to appear like I'm trying to milk their wallets.

The best way to not appear as though you are trying to milk their wallets is not try and milk their wallets! I know it may be contradictory to what you might be hearing. The facts are if you focus on providing value first, the money will follow.

5) how often should I send emails?

How often do you like receiving emails? I think the best indicator of how often one should send out emails is by how often they like getting emails. Just my opinion.

It's good that you are asking these questions. Just remember, there will never be a "perfect" time to get everything out there. As soon as you have something that resembles something that could possibly pass for a business, get it out there. You can always work out the bugs later.

Good luck,
James

Many of your questions can be answered by...

Go out and look for products in your vertical (go wherever you advertise or plan on playing).

Go through their funnels and see how/what they're doing. Do your research.

This will explain much of what you just asked and will be timely to your market.

4) when a customer has bought, what sort of follow up email shall I send? And at what point shall I try to sell them something else? I don't want to appear like I'm trying to milk their wallets.

You want to talk to them just as if you're talking to a friend. You don't write to friends and sell them stuff all the time. Rather, you give them good recommendations. Friends will trust you because of the relationship you have with them. So if you can develop that sort of relationship with your list, the shift away from selling to providing value, you will be so much more ahead than so many marketers who abuse their lists.

building a list is one of the hardest things for up and coming marketers because it relies almost entirely on your squeeze page getting traffic. Forget about traffic exchanges and safe lists. If you want to build a list quickly you are going to have to use PPC to drive targeted visitors to your squeeze page offer. Then its just a matter of testing your offer and optimizing it.