List Building - Collecting Contact Info and Making the Best of Your List

For people who are entering the world of online marketing, there is nothing as important as list building. When people talk about this function, what they are referring to is your development of a contact list. If you have any experience in sales or marketing, then you understand that a salesperson is nothing without his or her contacts. Contacts are how you find even more contacts. They are how you find out what it is going on in your industry. To some degree, you could say that your contact list is your lifeline.

In the world of online marketing, your list is going to have a slightly different function, but it is just as important. You can't grow until you learn about to build a list.

So, in the conventional business world, when you have a list of contacts, normally what you have are names, phone numbers and specific tasks or characteristics. In the world of online marketing, however, your list building is going to be made almost entirely of email addresses. This means that in order to get started, you are going to need to have a way to get the addresses of your prospects. Once you contact these prospects' email addresses, you have a way in, and these prospects become contacts. This won't lead to immediate sales, but it will indeed lead to sales. The world of online marketing is about developing relationships with clients.

Squeeze Page and List Building:

For a person who is serious about list building, there is nothing more important than the squeeze page. You may have heard this term before. Basically, this is a page where your prospects can opt in for subscriptions. In other words, if you do your job correctly, your prospects will look at what you're offering, get excited, and give you their email addresses, this way they can stay in touch. They might not buy your product right away, but you have their interest, which is more than half the battle.

Making the Best of Your List:

There are a few list building points that you need to keep in mind. For example:

• You need to make sure that you are clear on your squeeze page about what you are selling and why it's important, but don't give too much away.
• Once you have a list, you are doing well, but it's not the whole story. On the contrary, you need to make sure that you keep up the interest of your contacts. Let them know about sales, offers, and relevant general information.
• You might want to give away freebies, this way your contacts can see what you sell and how it can help them.