16 Easy As Pie Ways To Grow Your List
So you think you want a list? Well, let me say, “you MUST have a list!” Unless you are one of that rare 1% that has perfected the system of using everyone else’s list without offering your own, building a high quality list should be your number one project. Once you have your list, your number one priority should be building and maintaining that list and new lists!
I said a high quality list – not a huge list of useless names and emails you buy from those ‘leads for pennies‘ sites. Stay far far away from those people. They’ll get you into trouble quicker than you can say, “Federal Trade Commission“!
A few ideas:
There are tons of ways to build a large and responsive list. Of course at the top of the list are Ezines/Newsletters and then membership sites such as safelists, forums and niche sites. Affiliate programs are great and don’t forget Joint Ventures. Give away things, offer a free card send service, ask for referrals, send to a friend forms, free website content, articles – well, you get the point. The options are endless and I recommend you use, track and perfect as many as possible.
Tips and examples:
Set-up multiple squeeze pages (lead capture pages).
Use multiple sites if you have the resources.
“16 Easy As Pie Ways To Grow Your List”
1. Start an Ezine: Ask visitors to subscribe to your ezine. Consider giving them a freebie when they subscribe as an incentive.
2. Give an ebook: Have your site visitors sign-up to download a free ebook. Write your own or give-a-way someone else’s if you have their permission.
3. Free membership: Give subscribers a free membership or an upgrade to your membership site. A membership within your niche can be very appealing. A forum is very easy to set up and you can have a special section for ‘Members Only’ as the upgrade. Keep in mind that you’ll probably build a list even without the special section.
4. Contests or sweepstakes: Hold a free contest or sweepstakes. Ask them to register to enter. Don’t cheat – give something of value and follow through. The last thing you want is to hurt your reputation or even worse get the authorities on your butt!
5. Free consulting: This one certainly isn’t for everyone but it can be very rewarding for those that have the time and desire. Offer your members free consulting via phone or e-mail. You could setup a call-in time on certain days of the week. Another cool idea would be to record the calls, with their permission of course, and give away or sell the calls as an e-course. This is pure gold here – remember where you read it 
6. Online polls: Hold interactive polls on your site. Require visitors to register first or e-mail you their vote. Another option would be to allow visitors to vote but ask them to register to be emailed the final results.
7. Web site awards: Start a site award program in the same niche as yours. You will require their contact and web site information.
8. Survey: Allow site visitors to fill out an interactive survey on your site. On the survey setup the ‘name’ and ‘email’ sections as required information. Giveaway a free gift as an incentive to complete and submit the survey.
9. Free service: Do you have a unique service within your niche to offer? It should be of some value yet not take up a lot of your valuable time either. Require visitors to register with their contact information to sign-up for the free service.
10. Guest book: We’ve all seen these guest books for years. I bet you’ve signed them too! Ask visitors to sign your guest book. Offer them a free link or a free gift in return.
11. Affiliate program: Starting an affiliate program is not that difficult. When launched and promoted properly they can build a huge list of responsive customers and promoters in a matter of days. Simply look in your inbox for examples.
12. Free classified: Free classified sites are great for building large lists. Many marketers have even taken advantage of forums to run their free classifieds.
13. Auto-responder: Offer a free course or a series of reports sent via autoresponder.
14. Free software: Offer your visitors free software to download. You can add the download link to your welcome letter of even setup a locked area of your site and give the password in your automatic welcome letter. If it’s your own software you can require they register to gain access to an unlock code.
15. Mini Joint Venture: One great way to add to your list is by offering other newsletter publishers a quick and easy joint venture. You probably are already subscribed to several great newsletters in your niche so just contact the ones similar in size. Offer them a free solo ad, article or ezine ad in exchange for the same on theirs. In your free ad, offer their readers an incentive to try your publication. You never want to simple exchange names. You want your new subscribers to opt-in to YOUR EZINE.
16: Customers: I was guilty of letting this one pass me by for years and it’s a huge mistake. Whenever you sell something you should ask them if they would like to be informed of new product offers and future specials or something to that effect. Then setup a separate list for your customers only. Think about it, you have someone that already trusts you enough to buy from you and if you treated them fair and gave them a nice deal then you’d be crazy to let that relationship end there.
Just a couple final notes worth mentioning:
1: Always treat your list of subscribers and/or members with respect and never share their information. Let them know that their contact information is safe with you.
2: No matter what which tactics or methods you use to build your list always states clearly what they are signing up for. If you are giving away a free download, membership, upgrade, etc. in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter be sure to tell them that BEFORE they complete the form. Something like, “By accepting this special offer you are subscribing to our newsletter”.
You see it everywhere. Don’t use this or that email address and here’s how to ‘white list’ our emails and on and on. How many hoops do you want your subscribers to jump through to join your list?
3: Always use a reliable third-party list management company. I use and highly recommend AWeber for all of my list management and Autoresponder needs. Unless you are a professional list manager with the appropriate software, servers and resources, you will do yourself a huge disservice trying to handle the task of mailing your list on your own. Many will never be delivered, most of them will not be opened and eventually you’ll have more spam related issues that you can handle. You’ll also look unprofessional when someone opts-in but never gets the verification email because the spam traps filtered your email before it even gets to anyone’s inbox. Then you’ll find that every email from your site starts getting ‘banned‘ through many different email services. You see it everywhere. Don’t use this or that email address and here’s how to ‘white list’ our emails and on and on. How many hoops do you want your subscribers to jump through to join your list? Trust me, spend the twenty bucks or so. It’s well worth the investment and you’ll get your money back many times over in sales to a responsive and well maintained list.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:21 am
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
November 8th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Thanks Chris, I appreciate the comment.