Today, nearly everyone expects an incentive in return for giving you his or her name and email address. It’s not enough merely to receive your periodic newsletter. After all, they don’t know the quality or content of your newsletter. So they expect something of value up front.

The typical product you can offer as an incentive is a free ebook or article.

To successfully get new opt-in subscribers you’ll need to offer an ebook or article that provides immediate benefits. That is, your product must solve some problems or answer some nagging questions of your target audience.

This week we’ll discuss the many ways you can leverage an ebook or special report that will boost your list-building experience and dramatically improve your earning potential. And it’s much easier than you think.

And of course stay tuned for our StomperTip and Stomper Intelligence Report to learn even more about ebooks later in the week.

Talk soon and enjoy the resources below!

Ryan Taylor

Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT:  Some of the resources shown are only available to members. With our all-new tiered benefit levels you can join us today for as little as $49.00and get instant access to the world’s largest SEO and Online Business community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to enhance your existing business or start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

Curriculum Resources

• Kool Kindle Kash with Dan Hollings
• Forum Post: Has anyone actually published a book/ebook for Kindle?
• Forum Post: eBook Format and Automate

New Media

• Is Self-Help Limiting Your Success? with Brian Ridgway
• What It Really Means To Be An SEO Pro with Lee Collins & the SEO Pro Trainers
• Post Panda Link Building with Freddie Brister

Faculty Office Hours

Wednesday Sept 7, 2011 at 7:00pm Eastern

How You Can Boost Your Business with eBooks – the 7 Secret Tricks You NEED to Know! with Staffer MJ Schrader and Coach Renee Corbett

Join MJ and Renee on this Question and Answer session as they discuss how ebooks can help your business. Listen in as they discuss some quick ways to get your ebook written and the variety of ways you can use them to grow your business. Tune in and find out how giving away THE RIGHT KIND of ebook could be the fastest and easiest way to boost your business!   StomperNet Members:  Register Here!

* Free Live Webinars This Week
THURSDAY September 8, 2011 ~ 3:00 pm Eastern

“So You Want To Write An eBook?” with Suzanne Roese-McGee

How To Go From an Idea to a Finished Product Even If You Are Not a Writer Register Now
*NEW* “StomperNet Open Forum” Fridays at 11EDT

We know everyone has questions about their business or different stumbling blocks. Well we invite you to bring them to the table during our Open Forum. With the combined training and experience of our Coaches you will get the direction you need to get you back on your road to success!

The next StomperNet Open Forum Call with our Professional Coaches happens next Friday at 11am EDT and we hope to see you there! These calls are intended to be live Q&A sessions and playback will not be available.

Special Announcements

SEO Pro Comes to San Francisco!

Stompernet Blog

The point is, emails are NOT a case of “Send it and they will come”. (Or really, what most people are looking for…“Send it and they will buy”.) You have to be very strategic in your email marketing to get your desired outcome.

It takes a well-written subject line, a compelling offer and much more. Certainly not just any ‘ole words in an email will do! If you want to make sure your emails are getting read and making an impression, read our StomperNet Intelligence Report on How to Design Your Email to Make Your Customer Open, Click and Buy.

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“It’s hard to target a message to a generic 35-year-old middle-class working mother of two.
It’s much easier to target a message to Jennifer, who has two children under four,
works as a paralegal, and is always looking for quick but healthy dinners and ways to spend more time with her kids and less time on housework.”
~ Elizabeth Gardner, Internet Retailer

Email Blastoff! Design Your Email to Make Your Customers Open, Click and Buy…

By Audrey Kerwood

HAVE A REASON TO MAIL YOUR CUSTOMERS

Here are some ideas that work well:

• A big fat discount coupon. This can be just for specific products or a blanket store-wide discount. You can set a threshold price for store-wide sales so you don’t end up losing money on your lower profit items, i.e. 10% off orders over $50.
• Buy one get one free. If you’re promoting a product with enough of a profit margin, buy-one-get-one sales are fantastic sellers. Even if you sell a product people wouldn’t necessarily need more than one of, you can offer buy one get one of equal or lesser value. If you can pull this off it’s a great sales tactic.
• Buy one get one ½ off. Same basic principle as the buy one-get-one, you just keep more of the profit while still offering the customer a deal.
• Buy one get a free widget. It works very well for anything that can be accessorized; it’s really one of my favorite promotions

Write a Killer Subject Line

It’s all well and good to have a great offer for your subscribers, but they won’t know about it unless they open and read your email, right? Subject lines aren’t just as important as content and design..they actually can be more important. Your customers probably subscribe to more than just your newsletter and they’re probably not waiting in anticipation for your next mailing.

If your subject is bland, it doesn’t matter how well-written the content is or how amazing the images of your products look, because most of your customers will delete your email without opening it. People are being sold to everywhere they go and it seems everyone is always having a sale so: “Big Sale at My Store” isn’t going to get you the open rate you want.

So what do you write? What will keep them from deleting your email and in fact, coerce them to open and act upon it? How can people decide if they are interested based on what amounts to nothing? Over-communicating is just as bad. For instance “Three Day Buy One Get One Free Sale On Modern Art Tapestries Handmade and Imported from Belgium For Stunning Home Decor.” Too long and it looks like spam.

You want a bite-size hook, not some long boring exposition that will be truncated by your customers email client anyway. So make your message clear and concise: adding a call to action doesn’t hurt either. Try “Three Day Buy One Get One Tapestry Sale”, or “Get a Rod with Your Tapestry Purchase”, or “All Tapestries 20% Off This Friday”. These all work.

Don’t use all caps, avoid extra punctuation, and don’t use more than one exclamation point if you must use any at all.

What Makes for Good Design?

Now that you’ve gotten your customer to take a look at your content, you need to capture their eye with your design. There are a lot of different elements and considerations that go into design so I’m going to start with the most basic and technically the only necessary one – product pictures.

Your products need to be the focus. Whether you’re featuring just one or a whole menagerie, your images have to be crystal clear and sharp. In other words, your products need to pop.

You can use in-context images or just simple product pictures. One layout I’m fond of using is an in-context image at the top either to the right or left of my offer text, then three to six regular product images in columns underneath. I’ve also had success with nine regular images in three rows arranged by category. But the design that works best for me may not work as well for your products and/or customer base, so always be testing new layouts.

Timing Is Everything

Scheduling is another very important factor in email marketing success. Just as sales ebb and flow with the days of the week, so does email response. There are a lot of different ideas and theories marketers have about the best day to mail but I firmly believe it varies by industry and customer type .This is just something you will have to test.

You need to get a feel for your customer base and how they like to do things. Look at your stats and figure out the day of the week and rough time you get the most orders. By rough time I mean morning, afternoon, or night and schedule your mailing to hit inboxes just before. That’s how you should begin and test from there. You should also test frequency of mailings. Your customer base, again, will dictate this..

If you put as much thought and care into designing your newsletters and emails as you do your website you will increase the value of your list and reap the benefits of repeat sales. Keep testing and digging deeper into the wants and needs of your customer base and you will create another income stream from within your existing business, it’s a wonderful thing.

STOMPER Speed Boost

To help you begin your Internet marketing success, we’ve created Stomper Startup, a 13-session course covering everything from just getting started to making advanced marketing strategies. No vague information here. Nothing has been left out. Only specifics that will make a difference for you! This truly is the only course you need to get the right business off the ground making a sustainable income!

Get the full story on Stomper Startup by clicking here.

SEO Secret Sauce

1. . Have a reason to email your customers.
2. Create and test different types of sales – Buy one, get one, Single product, Free accessory, etc.
3. Write an eye-catching subject line to describe your sale and subscribers want to click.
4. Test different email design layouts.
5. Figure out your sales cycle and schedule your emails to go out right before your highest sales period.

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Topic: Personal Productivity

FACULTY OFFICE HOURS NEXT WEEK:

WEDNESDAY, July 20th, 2011 at 1:00pm Eastern

Faculty Office Hour with Melanie Benson Strick.

Bring your questions for Melanie about increasing YOUR Personal Productivity! StomperNet Members, Register Now!

THURSDAY July 21st, 2011 at 7:00pm Eastern

Personal Productivity with Faculty Member Dr. Lisa Lang.

Decisions ARE Productive. Learn how to make crisp, clear decisions with Dr. Lisa and the Theory of Constraints. StomperNet Members, Register Now!

Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue.

Post Your Comments Here

Stompernet Blog

Just the other day something happened in my house that convinced me snail mail’s days were truly numbered. I mean… we all know e-mail has taken a huge bite out of the old “rain, or sleet or dark of night” squad…

But part of me also felt snail mail was here to stay, at least for a little while longer. I mean… Sears catalog… Dear John letters… and, of course, birthday cards from Grandma. These are things that could never be duplicated online, I thought.

So… just the other day I’m engaged in a task that has become a semi-annual tradition for me… I’m filling out my Publisher’s Clearinghouse “prize packet.”

If you’re not familiar with PCH, think nationwide direct mail contest on steroids. Stamps to place on cards… boxes to check… magazine titles to peruse… envelopes to choose, seal, and mail back.

Then you sit back in anticipation that your block would be the block you’d see the “prize patrol” drive to during half time at the Superbowl. And your house would be the house they approach with the balloon bouquet and oversized $10,000,000.00 check.

Okay… I’m over-explaining this, but only for Stompers who may be from a country that doesn’t have a Superbowl, a prize patrol, or oversized checks.

Anyhoo…

Like I said, I’m filling out the packet, crossing “T-s” and dotting “I-s” when my wife walks in and this scene takes place…

(NOTE: I decided to write this next little section like a screenplay for no apparent reason.)

MARIA: Whatchya doing?

ME: (nonchalant) You know… filling out Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

MARIA:(Incredulous) Why don’t you do it online like I do?

*I stand there, not really sure what to make of this news.

ME: (dumbfounded) Onli—, What the— When did— Huh?

End Scene… Bow… Enjoy Applause… Soak Up The Love.

It turns out, for the last few years, while I’ve been filling out packets and sticking them in the mailbox, The Clearinghouse had already jumped into e-mail marketing!

I mean… come on… what’s next, an online Sears Catalog? Um… well, yeah Vin… turns out Sears has had that for a decade now.

So I sign up for the online version of PCH and start to get e-mails. And truth is they’re doing a great job not only getting me to open their e-mails and click on their links, but they’re also doing great at duplicating the offline experience.

Click here to transfer this stamp to that box… check this area to see more magazines and other items for sale… choose whether you want your prize in a lump sum or doled out over 30 years…

It’s all there. I fully expect if I win I’ll get an e-mail from Paypal with a subject line that reads, “You’ve got money!” I’ll open it and continue reading… “Hello Vin Montello. Just thought you’d like to know Publisher’s Clearinghouse has just sent you $10,000,000.00.

So… I always thought e-mail was great before, but there is no longer any competition. I now think when it comes to snail mail, the fat lady is warming up her pipes.

So… I decided this article is going to help all you business owners discover the awesome power of e-mail marketing… and learn a few secrets to getting it right the first time.

(Hint: The biggest secret is already buried in the text above. If you haven’t figured it out, don’t worry… I’ll get to that in a minute.)

Make Sure To Respect Your Potential Customers…

Put an ironclad spam free policy in place and follow it to the letter. That means you never, ever sell, rent, or lend your list to anyone for any reason. Your list will reward you for that loyalty with their own loyalty. Always use a double opt in system to collect your e-mail addresses. This means whenever someone signs up to receive e-mail from you, they get a confirmation e-mail they have to click on in order to agree to the opt in. This way there can be no misunderstandings.

Only send e-mails related to what you promised when you got them to opt in. If they sign up for a newsletter about dog grooming, and later you decide you’re also in the pizza recipe business, it is not okay to e-mail the dog owners to try to sell them a recipe book.

Always include a simple, easy to find “unsubscribe” link in every e-mail. When your list knows you’re not afraid of them unsubscribing, they’re less likely to hurry to unsubscribe.

Make Sure Your E-mails Get Opened…

Try to e-mail on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Mondays suck, so everyone’s in a bad mood. Thursdays and Fridays everyone’s already thinking ‘Weekend… Woooo hooo!” If you hit them mid-week, you have a slightly better chance of them being open to your pitch.

Mail consistently. Find the sweet spot for your market. Is it daily? Three times a week? Or just once or twice? No two markets are the same. Find your sweet spot and stick to the schedule religiously.

Ask your subscribers to add your e-mail address to their address book. This effectively “whitelists” you, keeping your e-mails from being seen as spam by the filters.

Work hard on your subject lines. This is your entire pitch to get them to open the e-mail. It’s like a teeny, tiny sales letter selling them your e-mail. Put yourself into your readers’ shoes. What would get you to open the e-mail? And stay away from dollar signs, the word “Free”, all capped subjects, and any punctuation that isn’t a period or question mark. That’s another way to keep yourself clear of the spam filters.

Make Money With Your E-mails…

Put your e-mails on a diet! Basically… make them skinny. Testing shows e-mails that are between 30 and 50 characters wide get the most click through response.

Use a compelling story that will lead you into the topic of your e-mail. Let’s say you’re selling—oh, I don’t know… let’s pretend it’s a book on e-mail marketing. You could start by telling a story about filling out the Publisher’s Clearinghouse prize packet, when you learn from your wife that they’re now doing e-mail marketing, etc… (Sound familiar?) Stories help your list see you as a real person, help you set up real world problems that your product solves, and even build a friendly trust with your list. Then you just transition from the story to the product you’re looking to sell, and you’re golden.

Use a real “call to action.” Just as in a sales letter, you want to tell your reader what to do next. At the bottom of your e-mail (maybe even a few times before the bottom) you want to put the link to your sales page, with words that literally say something like “Click here to learn more…” “Click here to read on…” or even “Click here for the rest of the story…” As long as your story dovetails nicely into the product, you’re guaranteed to start hearing cha-ching over and over again.

Well… there you have it: My quick and effective ways to conquer e-mail marketing. Use them wisely and religiously, because e-mail marketing is not only here to stay, it’s here to make you big stinking wads of dirty, sexy money, which reminds me of another tip…

When writing e-mails or any direct response marketing, you want to use hard-hitting, distinctively sensory words when describing things. Whenever you can, you want to show it, not say it. And that doesn’t mean use a picture. It means paint one with your words.

Oh… and one last thing…

Just today my Grandmother sent me an e-card with a digital Amazon gift certificate as a birthday present.

You know… I think when it comes to the future of the post office, the fat lady just started the second verse.

Until next time, Stompers!

By Vin Montello

Vin Montello is a former Hollywood television writer that brings his 20 years experience as a story-teller, to every direct response sales letter he writes. These days Vin’s responsible for crafting some of the most successful online marketing campaigns, and has earned the nickname “The Millionaire Maker.”

Vin invites you to his wildly successful marketing blog at Marketing Clambake.com. You can also learn more about him at Montello Marketing.com .

THURSDAY July 14th, 2011 at 3:00pm Eastern

Infusionsoft Email Marketing Tips That Will Save You HOURS of TIME! with Faculty Member Nicole Munoz.

As an avid user of Infusionsoft for the last few years, Nicole will teach you some of her time saving and organizing tips for creating a top notch email campaign in Infusionsoft. Don’t have infusionsoft? No
worries, you will learn how you can apply some of these same techniques with other providers such as Aweber and Icontact! StomperNet Members, Register Now!

How We Boosted Revenue with Simple Beef Ups to Email Marketing

by Eric Shannon

FLV

If you enjoyed this post and want more, give TNE a try!

You will get great tips like this…and more…every month – and you can start right now for just $1.00!

Stompernet Blog

Email marketing is a KEY aspect of keeping your customers and getting them to buy from you again. Building a loyal customer base is one of the goals of any effective email marketing campaign.

Don’t we wish that it were as easy as writing excellent copy that the customer is happy to read each time! Although that IS a PART of email marketing, so is tracking open rates, bounce rates and making sure you have adequate opt-ins. How often do you email your customer base? What’s too often? What’s not enough? And what about the message? Do you just want to deliver content and information, or do you want to offer promotions as well?

If you’ve ever had any of these questions, you’re in luck. This Week In StomperNet our focus is Email Marketing. Make sure you make it to Eric Shannon’s webinar tomorrow night and Nicole Munoz’s on Thursday afternoon.

Check out the resources we have below! There are some of our best webinars and forum threads we’ve had on the topic. Believe me, it’s a topic that comes up often!

Talk soon and enjoy the resources below,

Ryan Taylor
Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT: Some of the resources shown are only available to members. Not a StomperNet member? Join us today for just $1.00 to get access to the world’s largest Internet Marketing community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

Curriculum Resources

• Incubator Day 9- Autoresponders & Email Marketing: Planning and Following Up

• List Building 301- Do you want Email Addresses or Do you Want Sales?

• Email Marketing: The Good, The Bad and The Best Practices for Customer Acquisition AND Retention

FORUM POSTS:

• Relationship Link Building and AutomationNote: This would be a GREAT post to get some additional feedback going on this week!!!

• What’s a list of 100,000 worth?

New Media

• Way Cool Test Results with Andrea Warner

• Internet Consulting on Steroids with Howard Tiano

Faculty Office Hours

TUESDAY July 12th, 2011 at 7:00pm Eastern

Autoresponder Best Practices for eCommerce with Eric Shannon.

Eric is one of the most highly-sought Faculty members when it comes to all things autoresponder related. His autoresponder series for his own eCommerce website is fantastic. Who better to learn from than one of our own Faculty members who literally practice what he preaches?!? You don’t want to miss this one!! StomperNet Members, Register Now!

THURSDAY July 14th, 2011 at 3:00pm Eastern

Infusionsoft Email Marketing Tips That Will Save You HOURS of TIME! with Faculty Member Nicole Munoz.

As an avid user of Infusionsoft for the last few years, Nicole will teach you some of her time saving and organizing tips for creating a top notch email campaign in Infusionsoft. Don’t have infusionsoft? No
worries, you will learn how you can apply some of these same techniques with other providers such as Aweber and Icontact! StomperNet Members, Register Now!

Stompernet Blog

This is a continuation of the previous email on list-building, so if you missed that one, it’s posted in the archive.

Now, as promised in the last issue, we’re going to talk a bit about squeeze pages, and how we’ve used them for StomperNet and SMARTS.

If you don’t know what a “squeeze” page is, let me take a second to clarify.

When you’re building a list, you need a destination where your visitors will arrive and find your opt-in form, right? You can really put an opt-in box anywhere on the page: build it into the navigation, put it in-line with the copy, put it in a pop-up…

The list goes on.

But a “squeeze” page is a specially designed web page that makes an offer to provide certain information to the visitor ONLY if they opt-in to your list. It “squeezes” the visitor so they have only two choices. Join the list and get the information they want, or leave without it.

It may seem harsh, but if you’re giving away valuable information at no charge, the least you should ask for is an email address to follow up, right?

Well since their inception, the “squeeze” type page has become the standard of list-builders and marketers everywhere. It’s simple, it’s direct, and it’s effective.

In fact, it’s a 99% probability that you’re reading this now because you opted-in to a squeeze page for one of our launches. We use them as our primary lead-generation platform.

We put a modern spin on the old fashioned squeeze page in a number of ways.

First, we use VIDEO – we’re really hammering home the importance of video for the Stomper members in 2008. In fact, in addition to my own video tutorials, we’ve brought on two more video faculty to handle the subject with the depth and scope we wanted.

But I digress.

Video is now, and video is the future when it comes to marketing online. We use it with great success as our “squeeze” mechanism.

Now, we certainly aren’t pioneers at using video for a squeeze mechanism.

It’s been done before, but most of the time, visitors were shown a “teaser” video, and get SQUEEZED for an opt-in in order to watch the rest. Now that’s a VERY powerful squeeze method, and I’d still use that with an appropriate product or service.

The human mind just can’t stand an incomplete story, and having a visual “cliffhanger” in your squeeze videos can be just like on television. They simply can’t resist finishing the story! Only online, in order to catch the “next episode”, they need to provide a contact email address.

For the StomperNet and SMARTS launches though, we decided to do something a little different. We combined the video squeeze with another method called the “reverse squeeze”.

Now the “reverse” has been around a while for copy-based landing pages, and the idea is that you take what would normally be the “reward” for opting in, and you offer it UP FRONT for the user. Then, at the end, you ask for the opt-in. “If you enjoyed this report and want to hear more from us in the future, sign up here!”

This relies on a different psychological trick called “reciprocation”. That means that simply by offering something of obvious value, people will be compelled to reciprocate in a fair way when you ask them to.

It’s a legitimate marketing technique when used ethically, but it’s another seductively powerful trick. It’s often employed by hustlers and outright crooks – again, because it’s EASY and it WORKS.

But back to the analysis, the idea of a reverse squeeze went hand-in-hand with what Brad and I were trying to do with StomperNet. It was all about moving the “fre’e line” and giving people massive value and asking nothing in return. We did that in an effort to PROVE our claims by giving REAL VALUE, and we did it to trigger MASSIVE reciprocation.

Remember, the rule of reciprocation is that it triggers the desire to provide FAIR compensation. We knew StomperNet was going to be somewhat pricey, so we had to give something away of equal value.

So, the StomperNet squeeze pages took a complete, self-contained educational video and put it right up there at no charge. They were lengthy, they were FULL of content with no fluff, and they were direct. They weren’t designed to SQUEEZE anyone for the whole story.

Instead, we stretched out the concept of what the SQUEEZE was. We didn’t squeeze you for the full story of that single video. We squeezed visitors if they wanted early notification of the NEXT video, and to see all the videos that came before.

We wanted to prove that StomperNet and SMARTS were a FAIR VALUE for the price we asked, so we gave AWAY something of great value. In fact, we wanted to give our visitors a whole series of deluxe, killer tutorial videos, and all we wanted in exchange was your name and email.

Does that make sense?

We simply took the basic concepts of the video squeeze, the reverse squeeze, and moving the fre’e line – and we combined them all together into a single, killer lead generation strategy.

And I hate to keep bragging on it, but it resulted in two of the top 3 launches in our industry’s history.

And we owe that success to the lists that we build with that mechanism and strategy.

Allowing our affiliates to send leads to that mechanism proved to them that it worked, too. That concept of the “reverse video squeeze” has become a very popular format since our successful launches.

Frank Kern used it for “Mass Control” and Jeff Walker used it for “Product Launch Formula 2.0″ – Eben Pagan, the guy who taught Brad and me about the fr’ee line concept, used video squeezes for his recent info product course as well.

To continue on what I talked to you about last time, YES! If you’re involved in internet business of ANY KIND, you need to be building and messaging your lists.

If you aren’t already DO IT. It’s a MUST, it’s as simple as that.

It’s one of the oldest forms of online marketing. It’s one of the most widely abused, too. It worked back then, it worked last year, and as we proved at the beginning of 2008 with SMARTS, list building STILL works.

Sure, we put a fresh spin on it, and we used the newest technologies we could – but that was really just about capturing attention in a crowded marketplace.

I didn’t give you all that “inside” information to discourage you if you lack those resources. You really don’t need that stuff to get started with lists, or to succeed with them.

You just need to put the basics in place and just DO IT.

Be yourself, use all the Web 2.0 services you have available to you, and just put your messages out there. Socialize, build connections, gain followers – but NEVER FORGET – markets are PEOPLE.

We call it a “squeeze” but maybe the harshness of that word is what makes people avoid it…

Maybe we should call them “massage” pages. Or “back rub” pages. Yeah? Come on!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed getting a peek into the thinking and design behind StomperNet’s own list-building and squeeze strategies, and I REALLY want you to go out and use these ideas in your businesses – starting TODAY!

Until next time,
Keep Stomping
~Andy Jenkins

P.S. If you need some help getting started, again, I recommend the beginner videos over at Shawn Casey and Tellman Knudson’s Listbuilding.com. If you aren’t building a list in your business right now, you ARE wasting time. Go check it out, it won’t cost you anything, and HUNDREDS of their subscribers have already met the challenge of building a squeeze and starting their lists. All you need to do to get the tutorial videos is opt-in.

P.P.S. Pay special attention to what kind of landing page that is. Seem familiar? That’s right. Video reverse opt-in. This stuff must be working pretty well.

Stompernet Blog

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.

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