Last week, we did a series on a "new" way of thinking about link-building. I mention that because we're going to continue with some of the ideas I introduced there. You can catch up on that series in the archives you missed it.
Now, onto the topic at hand - "Lists".
Last time I wanted you to stop building links, and start building CONNECTIONS. If you focus too much on building links for SEO benefit, you can forget that the real audience we want is made up of PEOPLE, not search spiders.
That same kind of "blindness" can happen when it comes to building and managing lists in our business.
We all know the refrain, "The money is in the list". We know about squeeze pages, and reverse squeeze pages. We know we have to double opt-in, and we know we have to avoid certain words, and keep our eyes on blacklists, etc.
NOTE: If you DON'T know the above stuff - if you're a list-building newbie - just stick with me until the end and I'll include a resource you can use to get started.
So what I'm getting at is that yes, the money IS in the list. But so many little moving parts and tips and tricks go into building and messaging that list, we start to forget about that human element again.
We send "traffic" to our squeeze pages, where some of that "traffic" becomes "opt-ins". We send autoresponders to those "opt-ins" until they buy.
We start to think about our lists as if they are just a machine. We start to think of the subscribers as just a number that we plug into a formula.
Part of that has to do with the powerful nature of direct marketing to a list. You don't HAVE to be good at it to make money at it. That's the primary reason we have such a huge problem with spam.
Some dummies will buy ANYTHING, and some jerks will send mail to ANYONE until they find those dummies.
You and I are smarter than both the spammers and their victims. Most people are (I hope)!
And that's why when it comes to list-building in your business we don't get fooled by the seemingly mechanical nature of lists and the almost magical results they provide.
We need to make sure we NEVER FORGET that those lists aren't just a bucket full of "stuff" called "leads".
Lists are not a bucket - lists are PEOPLE.
Each one of those people is an individual. They work for a living, and they have desires and needs. They joined YOUR list because you can help them get something they want. They have INITIATED a CONVERSATION with you.
More so than any other visitor to your websites, you need to treat the people in your list with the UTMOST respect and care.
IF you want to experience a TRULY profitable, long-term relationship with them, that is.
Sure, if you want to follow the "bombardment" formula - where you just email and email and email until they buy or un-subscribe - that WILL work.
But just as when you focus your link-building to please search spiders - it's a SHORT TERM success. You must constantly keep adding more subscribers to replace the ones you annoy into leaving. If you don't, your list's "bucket" just leaks and leaks until you have no leads left.
That's just setting yourself up for more and more work. That's creating a grind when there wasn't one before.
If you create PEOPLE-centric practices when it comes to list-building and messaging, you're going to be building a valuable long-term asset for your business. You'll keep subscribers for YEARS and they'll buy from you over and over again.
In the last series, I talked about how you can think of the online communities we service as "tribes" - let's stick with that analogy.
When a marketer tries to go into a tribe "cold", he does so at a tremendous disadvantage. Because such a marketer is on the "outside" of the tribe, he gets a lot more resistance. When he DOES get some subscribers out of a tribe, they're always going to be "cold" leads. They'll always just be "trying it out" - they're waiting for that marketer to "mess up" so they can un-subscribe, or worse, file a spam complaint.
It's a well known cognitive bias that people have a very strong desire to be proved right. If they join a stranger's list, they're going to be coming into that list with pre-existing skepticism. They subconsciously want their skepticism to have been true. That's no good for business.
However…
If you've been active in your chosen target "tribes" (as we discussed in detail in the last series), you should already be considered a valuable and respected member of those tribes.
At the very least, you should be recognizable - if a member of that tribe is searching for you, they should find you in multiple places for those keywords.
NOTE: If you're following my advice from last time, that part is easy.
So in THIS scenario, when you're building a list of tribal members who already recognize you, you have a TREMENDOUS advantage over anyone trying to build lists with a "cold" method.
They aren't throwing in with a stranger this time. They probably have already heard of you, and hopefully, the positive reputation you've been cultivating precedes you. They aren't just adding themselves to your "bucket" of leads.
They are essentially coming to you and initiating a CONVERSATION. Instead of the prospect sporting an adversarial "show me what you've got and it had better be good" attitude, you get the "I'm interested in what you're saying - please tell me more!" attitude.
And when you deliver what these tribes are looking for - if you just keep giving them cool stuff, they stick with you for the long haul.
Even when you make occasional offers and recommendations, it never smells like selling or marketing. Especially if you promote GOOD products, and give GOOD f'ree line content.
NOTE: It's important that you don't make the mistake of NEVER making offers. If you aren't going to make offers, you're never going to make money with a list, but some people fall into the mindset of needing to really push f'ree content before making an offer. Don't wait too long!
If you don't get your subscribers accustomed to offers, they'll balk at them when you send them out. But if you always have them in there, your subscribers will "learn" that offers are part of the package along with the content.
Another thing that's great about this "tribal" communication model is that you never run out of topics or timely events to write about to your list. You're always knee-deep in their niches because of your "connection-building" link strategy.
This allows you to really SERVE this tribe and not just SELL to it.
From talking to other readers and colleagues who follow this model, I know that there's another pleasant side effect as well.
It helps crush that "fear". We've all gotten it. It's part writer's block and part stage fright. "What the heck will I say to these people?" "What if they don't like it?" "What if they don't like ME?!" *GASP*
See, with the tribal model, you don't have to worry about it. You're already putting your stuff out there, and these people are coming to YOU because they already like you. They already want more.
Instead of just building a big old squeeze page and saying "Hey! Come get into my bucket so I can sell you stuff!" - you don't even have to fight for attention.
YOUR list can be different. Your list is just MORE of the same kind of content you're blogging and posting to article directories, comments, and forums. You're just allowing people to come directly to the SOURCE and drink from the tap.
Does that make sense?
You don't have to be afraid of writing, or wonder what you're going to say. If you commented on 2 blogs today and wrote one post on your own blog - EMAIL THAT! This stuff is easy, right?
NOTE: When you get to the point where you're building a list in your target "tribes" (like, right at the beginning) - you need to start keeping some really good content for your subscribers. Give them goodies and freebies and extras. You can even frame your offers as exclusives.
One of the real "secrets" of making a lot of money with lists is that you can get your subscribers to feel as though they are a "tribe-within-a-tribe". John Reese is very good at this, for example. People have the perception that his lists are exclusive and his emails are rare and infrequent. So even though all the people on his list are in the "internet marketing" tribe, "Reese's List" is another smaller tribe inside of the larger one.
If you can manage to develop that kind of feeling in your subscribers, your offers magically become an extension of your content, and not something so clumsy as an "affiliate offer" or "advertisement".
See, just as with link-building, you need to shift your perceptions about list-building as well. Lists aren't just "buckets" of "leads" to throw offers at.
A list represents the members of your target tribe who have raised their hand when you asked "who wants more?" - so give them MORE than they are expecting, and they'll naturally want to reciprocate when it comes time for you to make an offer.
And that's it for this time!
Next time, we'll actually get into some nitty-gritty on list building and I'll give you a breakdown on the anatomy of the video squeeze pages we used for the SMARTS launch at the beginning of this year.
We've already seen imitators using our templates (how flattering!), because they know they WORK.
Until next time,
Keep Stomping!
~Andy Jenkins
P.S. Listen, if you're new to all this list-building stuff, I mentioned a resource a few weeks ago that I'm going to repeat now. (I also mentioned at the beginning of this newsletter that I had a resource for beginners - this is it).
Shawn Casey and Tellman Knudsen have a site up called "ListBuilding.com" and though they're building up to a product launch, their free-line stuff is going to give you every basic building block you need to make a list TODAY, from scratch. I'm talking from having your idea and buying a domain to actually getting your first subscriber.
In fact, they did a challenge on their blog where over 300 of their subscribers did just that: built their first list-building squeeze pages - using ONLY the fr'ee video instructions there. You can get at those videos yourself by opting-in if you like what they have to say.