“You don’t do marketing in order to build an email list…You build an email list to market to.”
-David Neagle
It took me a while to wrap my brain around David’s words, but I finally got it.
Many home-based business owners engage in random, haphazard “marketing activities” that don’t lead to sales. Meanwhile, they do nothing with the email lists they’ve built up.
The point isn’t to do marketing so that you can build a list… You build a list to market to.
In other words, getting a high number of people subscribed to your list isn’t really the end goal. The end goal is to create a list that you will consistently make offers to.
Having a list of 20K subscribers — but never making them any offers — is just as useless as having a list of 0 people.
When you look at it this way, you understand that online sales come from marketing consistently to your email list. Period.
I would suggest hand-writing that statement 10 times or more on a sheet of paper, so you can ingrain it into your thinking.
The more you market to your email list — and the more EFFECTIVELY you market to your list — the more sales you get. Period.
This touches on both quantity and quality of marketing.
But the bottom line is — your focus should be on consistently sending messages to your list. Not spammy, overly promotional messages — but interesting, entertaining messages of real value that plug a product at the end.
And if you don’t have a list? Start building one. Make sure every marketing action you’re taking is driving people to add themselves to your list.
When talking to business owners who say they’re not making sales online — or not hitting their sales targets — I always ask, “How often are you emailing your list?” The answer is usually: “Rarely or never.”
Instead, they’re wasting hours on Facebook or Twitter each day…or attending conferences and networking events and not making a single sale…or worse, signing up for some cheesy social media course that teaches them how to master social media.
Earlier this year when I interviewed Abby Epstein (director of the forthcoming “Sweetening the Pill” documentary), she explained how she and Ricki Lake raised $119K in 30 days using Kickstarter.
“These campaigns revolve around getting access to mailing lists,” Abby stated. “Direct email is the best way to attract backers.”
Amen!
In other words, the Sweetening the Pill team reached out to people who had already built email lists, to spread the word about the documentary-in-production, and to solicit donations.
The STP created “a large network of ambassadors in the women’s hormonal and
holistic health field about 6 months before launching the campaign.” Each of these ambassadors already had email lists that they’d taken the time to build up.
That was key.
If none of the ambassadors had email lists, the campaign would have likely gone no where…or it would have taken much longer than 30 days to generate $119K.
Capitalizing on their ambassadors’ existing email lists, the STP team raised a nice chunk of change in a short amount of time. The money came from email subscribers.
This should highlight the importance of having an email list that you consistently market to.
Without it, you’re really shooting blind.
Your list is comprised of people who voluntarily handed you their email address…so why WOULDN’T you send messages to them on a consistent basis?
This slight shift in perspective can be the difference in making $0 in online sales…or making $119K or more a month in sales.
The people I know who are making that kind of money ($119K+/mo) are doing it by constantly making offers to their email lists. They prize their list above all else, and have cut out all the extraneous crap that doesn’t lead to sales.
Would you like to be one of those people?
Shoot me a quick email with your website, store page URL, and your online sales goal for the next quarter…and I’ll show you how to hit your target.
Talk soon,
Michelle
Michelle Lopez Boggs is a copywriter, copywriting mentor, and author of "The Anti-Marketing Manifesto: How to Sell Without Being a Sellout." She's helped her clients sell millions of dollars' worth of products and services online by using the MEI(S) principle — motivate, educate, and inspire, and sell. 