List building and email marketing are important parts of our online businesses – or brick and mortar businesses for that matter. They help us stay in touch with our target audience, get to know them better, and of course continue to bring them back to our site or store again and again. Since you’re reading this report, I’m assuming that you already have a list and that you’ve been sending emails to them on an at least somewhat regular basis.
Chances are that you set up your list and your first few emails quite a while ago. You’re comfortable with the entire process – maybe even a little too comfortable – and overall, things are running smoothly. Why then is it important to take a look at these “forgotten tasks”? I alluded to it in the introduction, but wanted to take a closer look at what they are, how they came about and why it’s worth your time and effort to go back and work on these tasks.
When you think back on the last time you set up a new list or opt-in funnel, you realize that there are a lot of “set it and forget it” type tasks. You go through the process, set something up (like your opt-in page, or the welcome email that goes out to your readers for example), and then move on with everything else you have to do to grow this new list and the run the rest of your business. How often do you take the time to go back? Do you even know what it says in your welcome email for a particular list of subscribers?
Or what about a specific opt-in page or form on your site? Do you know what your opt-in rate is and are you actively working on improving those conversions? Are you looking through the reporting available through your auto-responder to see what email has the best open rates, and which one causes more readers to click the unsubscribe link? This is all important data, but we often forget to review it regularly and then act on the information provided by the data.
Let me ask you a question. How often do you go back and check on the links you sent out in your emails and your auto-responder messages? Products and content becomes unavailable and you don’t want to rely on your readers to let you know about dead links. You also want a chance to go back and review the offers. Maybe things have changed and what you’ve promoted is now outdated. Or maybe you’ve found something even better since you wrote that A/R message two years ago.
There are lots of moving parts and bits and pieces that are easily forgotten. You’ve spent some time coming up with and creating sales funnels that have a lot of automated components to them. They are great for leverage and growing your passive income, but they will continue to work much better for you if you take the time to review them regularly.
We are all learning and evolving as online marketers. Along with that our niches evolve. Think about weight loss tips from ten years ago vs. what you would recommend today for example. It would be quite different, wouldn’t it? And the same holds true in just about any other niche. There are fresh ideas and new products to share with your readers. You find new ways to improve what you’re doing already.
And your audience changes right along with you. I’m sure the people who signed up two or three years ago for your list are very different today. And the new subscribers you’re attracting are different from the people who signed up for your list when you first got started. We all evolve and change right along with the world around us. That’s why it’s important to stop from time to time and re-evaluate. Ask yourself if you’re still serving your market to the best of your abilities. If not, it’s time to make some changes and those changes should reflect through your list building and email marketing.
Why Does It Matter?
This is starting to sound like a lot of work isn’t it? The good news is that it is very doable as you’ll see in the next two chapters. As a whole, it may seem a little overwhelming, but if you take it step-by-step and work on a little project or a quick task here and there, you’ll hardly notice the extra work. What you will notice rather quickly is the results, or why tackling these forgotten list building and email marketing tasks matter.
Let’s start with the obvious. When you make small improvements in conversion and fix broken links the first thing that goes up is you income. You can increase your profitability here and there with little tweaks. Any single one may not make a huge impact on the amount of money coming into your business, but combined they can add up to quite a nice chunk of change each month. That means that you don’t have to work as hard on things like getting new subscribers, creating more content, finding fresh offers etc. Instead, you focus on making what you have work harder for you. Trust me, that’s a good thing and not only will it give you more money in the bank, it also gives you more time to for the fun stuff like spending time with your family, or taken some much deserved time off.
But it isn’t just about you. By taking the time to review your list building funnels, you have a chance to serve your market better. Over time you can learn a lot about your readers and customers simply by listening to them. As you learn more about their goals and what’s holding them back, you get a much better understanding of what they need from you. As a result your business and the products you create and recommend will evolve over time.
By going back and reviewing some of the old auto-responders and lead magnets for example, you can make sure what you’re sharing with your audience is up to date and reflects your current knowledge and views. Your subscribers and customers are the most important part of your business. Without them, you have no business and there’s no money to put food on the table, pay the rent, or have that fun vacation. Your first priority should always be to take care of them and one of the ways you do that is to make sure the information you provide them with is correct and up-to-date.
Doing this will do more than help out your readers and customers. It will also protect your reputation. Let’s face it, when your readers encounter dead links, or worse buy outdated courses and programs it makes you look bad. If on the other hand you make an effort to keep everything up to date and working, your audience will notice and they’ll be that much more likely to recommend you to others.
This in turn will help you grow faster. Word of mouth advertising is a powerful thing. And it doesn’t stop there. Fixing all those little broken links, improving conversions on your opt-in pages and emails, and making small improvements in quite a few different places will add up quickly. As a result you’ll grow faster. You’ll take better advantage of all the traffic that hits your site. You’ll get better at “speaking directly” to your people, your target audience. They will notice and start sharing what you have to offer around. This is why paying attention to these forgotten list building and email marketing tasks matters.
Now that I have your attention and have you properly motivated, let’s get to work. I’ve broken the remainder of this report into two chapters. One focuses on list building, the other on email marketing. Since the two are so closely related, feel free to switch back and forth between the two as you start to work on your list funnels and your emails. First though I recommend you read through the rest of this report to get a good overview of what you’ll be working on and what little leaks you can fix throughout your online business.
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