Combating List Building Frenzy: Take The Time To Promote

It is an accepted fact among the experts now that online
marketing succeeds only with a quality, highly targeted
permission email list in place. As a result, the multi-level
marketers have pounced on this and everywhere you look another
"matrix" lead generating system springs up.

There is no doubt that these are powerful techniques offering
the advantage of building your subscriber base while basking in
profits simply from growing your list. This is a best-of-both
worlds sorts where the very thing that you are promoting is one
in the same with what you are building -> your list.

For "newbie" marketers, it is easy to get caught up in the frenzy
since one is desperately hungry to build a subscriber base and
actually see the first profits rolling in. However, with working
on an initially limited advertising budget, the monthly charges
to stay in the "matrix" can take a substantial bite out of other
advertising resources.

What is one to do? Can you build a list with highly targeted
subscribers, subscribers who are craving for your information, at
relatively low cost? The answer: yes, but it takes time.

For those just starting out this is a double-edged sword. You
want profits soon, but also want profits to continue to come in.
The problem here is that the two are contradictory. They straddle
two opposite sides of the fence so to speak.

*Consider the following scenario:

Suppose you have a large subscriber base that trusts your
opinions and judgments. On Friday you send to your list a
promotion for which you either own the product or are an
affiliate. Now suppose that your list is 3000 subscribers in
size, your conversion rate is 5% (pretty good) and your profit
per sale is $99. That amounts to $14,850 in sales from one
campaign! Not bad, not bad. I could easily live with this kind of
return.

Now lets take another scenario. You are just starting out,
understand that building a list is of utmost importance, but
really want to start making profits quickly. You purchase 600
leads advertised as "quality double opt-in MLM". You then quickly
blast away your promotion. Approximately 0.5% (note that this is
an order of magnitude less than the first example!) actually make
the purchase - 3 out of 600, which is not a very good conversion.
But hey, you paid $100 for the leads, made $297 in sales, for a
$197 ROI! Just starting out, you become giddy and sort of
euphoric at the profits you have just made.

All excited, you blast away another promotion the following week.
But this time you only receive a single sale. Uh oh! What's going
on? So in a panic you only wait 3 or 4 days and try to re-
promote. But, over the next few days, not only do you see no
sales, over half of your subscribers cancel their subscription.

*Question: What happened?

Your subscribers don't know you. In all likely hood the sales you
made were nothing more than pure luck. Within your list you will
undoubtedly have a few people who are really serious, perhaps
a bit frivolous with their money, and will buy immediately. But
you have absolutely no relationship with your subscribers. They
simply looked at your second promotion and said "I don't know who
this is, but they keep sending me emails", and cancelled.

What has happened here is the marketing analogue of the
biochemical "quick fix" you get when eating a candy bar to curve
your hunger. It works great initially, but you crash hard shortly
after.

*Solution?* Take your time building your list!

One thing that I cannot stress enough is the time between sign up
and first contact. When you buy lists, although sellers usually
advertise only a few days old, you get addresses of people who
don't even remember what they initially signed up for. I don't
know about you but if I receive emails from people that I don't
remember, it gets canned immediately. Being that over 150 million
people are on the internet today, and are constantly hit
with advertisement after advertisement, can you really be
surprised that after a few days they really can't remember what
they signed up for. The information age has catapulted us from
one extreme to the next: information no load to information
overload. So, you absolutely must make contact immediately after
sign up.

There is another very important reason for the quick follow up
after sign up - building credentials. People will be much more
likely to stick with you if they think "hey, I signed up and
immediately received a response. This person cares." And you
should care. If your serious about developing an online business
you should care about your contacts and you should supply them
with valuable information. To succeed first take the time to
promote and build a quality list. Profits will come in due time.