List Building

It's a myth that marketers must have tons of subscribers in order for a mailing list to be worthwhile. Lists with thousands and thousands of addresses on them might sound impressive, but they're often less effective than smaller lists. That's because such large lists are rarely well targeted.

When building a list, it's important to keep your target market in mind. It's easy to fall into the trap of trying to appeal to a broad audience in order to get more subscribers, but that won't help you make sales. If the products you're promoting only appeal to a small market segment, having a lot of subscribers who don't fit into that segment does you no good whatsoever.

Obviously, you need to get targeted traffic to your opt-in page if you want to build a targeted mailing list. That can be accomplished with good SEO, pay per click ads and other promotional efforts. But it's also important to create a squeeze page that will persuade only the people who fit into your target market to sign up.

One way to accomplish this is to give away a digital product that will appeal to your niche to new subscribers. Free gifts will not only help you get subscribers, they will help ensure that those subscribers are interested in what you're offering. If you were giving away a physical product you might get some takers that only wanted the freebie to give to someone else, but not many Internet users will sign up for a mailing list to get an eBook or audio that is of no interest to them. And if they're not interested in the freebie, they're probably not interested in your niche.

When it comes to mailing list subscribers, quality is far more important than quantity. So don't spread yourself too thin and try to attract too broad of an audience. Stick close to your niche, and you'll get the right kinds of subscribers.