If you’ve had any exposure to Direct Marketing or Internet Marketing, you’ll know that the most successful marketers put a lot of emphasis on building up their prospect lists. Why? Because it is much easier and much more cost effective to send offers to people who have already had contact with you than to keep advertising to total strangers.
Successful Direct Mail Order Marketers have large lists of past customers and prospective customers to whom they regularly mail out new offers. Internet Marketers find it easier and cheaper still because they build lists of email addresses rather than regular mailing addresses. In fact the ‘Success Mantra’ of most Internet Marketers is:
“The Money Is In The List!”
But how do you build that list?
Direct Marketers keep tabs on their past and present customers and every enquirer is added to the list whether they buy or not. They also buy or rent mailing lists from list brokers or exchange lists with fellow direct marketers.
Internet Marketers are somewhat limited in that it is not advisable to buy or rent email lists due to Anti SPAM legislation and the risk of their website being shut down because of SPAM complaints. However, they do have other ways to build their list. Just like direct marketers they have past and present customer data as well as enquirer data. The successful ones also make sure that they have a subscription or ‘lead capture’ box on their website.
By far the best way for the internet marketer to gain subscribers to their list is by giving away something valuable in exchange for the website visitor’ name and email address. This usually involves setting up a lead capture page with a ‘Special Free Offer’ on the website home page linked to the lead capture page. Some marketers even have the lead capture page as their home page!
This page is teamed up with an email program called an AutoResponder which collects the data and stores it in a databse for subsequent follow-up – the follow up mailings can even be automated by the autresponder. Needless to say, it costs money to set this up and run the autoresponder service.
However, I’ve just come across a Free List Building Service that will enable you to generate not just any old data capture page, but a video lead capture page attached to a sequential autoresponder service, completely free of charge. This service launches next week but in the meantime they are giving away a few instructional videos to teach you how to use list building to build your business. There is an upgrade to a more powerful paid for version which helps you to build multiple lists. But the free one is great for anyone just starting out with list building and who needs to do it on a very low budget. You can get it here:
