How To Create An Email Mailing List

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The most important thing in any business is a stream of customers who want to buy your product and since you are hopefully building a digital business the best way to make that happen is to learn how to create an email mailing list.

I can’t understate how important this is for the long-term success of your business. Yes there are other things which are important such as creating an attractive website, adding quality content which is optimised for search engines, making sure your pages load quickly, and adding links for affiliate offers.

In fact the only thing that comes close to the importance of an email list is creating your own products (which you can learn how to do from The Digital Marketing Launchpad book)

Why Is An Email List So Important?

Getting people to buy your products or click on your affiliate offers is hard work!

If a visitor comes to your website for the first time then they will almost certainly not know you or have any idea how genuine or trustworthy you are. They may well read some of your content to find out some answers to questions they may have. They might also take a look at any landing pages on your site such as sales pages and take a look at some of your product reviews.

However unless your content is unbelievably convincing or you have written some outstanding sales copy on your sales page, a new visitor is very unlikely to make a purchase on your site.

The simple reason, as I already mentioned is they don’t know you and have no reason to trust you. (Don’t worry – it’s nothing personal. I know you are a great person – but they don’t…. Yet!)

So how do you get people to know, like and trust you? That’s where learning how to create an email mailing list comes in. You see when you have people on your list you can write an email to them on a regular basis and get started on building a relationship with them. Sharing valuable news, tips and information will build their trust in you so that when the time comes for you to ask them to buy your products or check out an affiliate product you recommend they are much more likely to do so.

How To Create An Email Mailing List

The first thing that comes to many people’s minds when considering how they might go about creating their email list is how they are going to create some sort of funnel set up. That’s gotta be complicated, time-consuming and hard work – right?

Wrong! It doesn’t have to be complicated at all and you don’t need to overthink what’s involved. In fact, you only need 3 things to get started on creating and email list.

  • A Squeeze page (sometimes referred to as an opt-in page or lead generation page)
  • A Lead magnet (sometimes referred to as a free gift, free report or ethical bribe)
  • An autoresponder

That’s it! That’s all you need to get started.

OK, I’m guessing you still have some doubts and some questions so let me try to anticipate some of them and give you some answers.

1: What Do I Put On A Squeeze Page?

Here’s my perfect recipe for a highly converting squeeze page:

  • A Benefits Driven Headline
  • A professional image of the lead magnet
  • An image of you
  • Some bullet points to highlight the benefits
  • A clear call to action – Sign Up Here, Click Here To Get Your Free Report, etc

To illustrate these points let’s take a look at some examples. Let’s start with 2 squeeze pages here at The Digital Marketing Launchpad.

This one is for The Top 100 Affiliate Products: https://thedigitalmarketinglaunchpad.com/top-100-affiliate-programs/

This one is for 10 Proven ways to make money: https://thedigitalmarketinglaunchpad.com/10-proven-ways/

And here’s one from our friend Sarah that also converts very well: http://traffic101.sarahstaar.online

If you have a look at each squeeze page you will see that the headline clearly states what the main benefit is that a visitor will gain by signing up to receive the lead magnet. This is by far the most important part of the squeeze page and a good headline can make or break the success rate of your squeeze page.

The images are important to give the person a feel for what they will be getting for free. If it looks desirable and beneficial then they will be encouraged to sign up. An image of you helps to make a personal connection.

The bullet points help to drive home how beneficial this product will be to a person who signs up.

The final crucial part is the call to action. You can’t just have a wishy-washy link that says something like “Find Out More”. You need a big, bright colourful button that leaves the visitor in no doubt about what to do!

2: What Do I Offer As A Lead Magnet?

There are many schools of thought on this but whenever I create a lead magnet I always think to myself “How could I create something that will offer a quick win or a fast solution to a problem in my niche?”.

Spend some time doing a bit of research in your niche and look to see what problems people are looking for answers to. If you find one that you can provide an effective answer to then you have the basis of your lead magnet.

There are many forms it could take. It could be a short ebook or Report type product. It could be a video which shows you demonstrating how to resolve a problem. It could be a list of resources that people might find useful. Or it could be a cheat sheet or mind map that describes a solution or pathway to follow.

Remember – you aren’t creating a full-blown product here. Nobody is expecting a full ebook or training course for free. Just something that offers a desirable solution to a problem

3: Which Autoresponder Should I Choose?

There are many different autoresponders that you could choose and they all offer different features and cost differing amounts too.

You can get started for free with a service like Mailchimp which allows you to build an email list without any charge at all. The downside of most free services is that they don’t allow you to send emails which contain affiliate links. Breaching this rule can result in your account being closed down and loss of your email list which would be a disaster.

Our personal preference is Aweber. They offer great deliverability of emails and provide a simple and easy to use interface at a very reasonable cost. There is also no problem with sending affiliate links in your emails which of course helps with monetising your email list.

How Do I Get People Onto My List?

Once you have your squeeze page set up then your next priority is to start getting people to visit the page and sign up for your email list in exchange for your free gift.

There are many ways to send traffic to the page. Send out tweets, advertise it on your Twitter profile, place it in your signature file on forums and in emails, advertise it (paid and unpaid) on Facebook, etc.

And once you get started building your list, you’re going to find that it’s easy. It’s not the big deal you thought it was. And even better, it’s addictive because as you see more and more subscribers coming in, you’ll be looking for more ways to drive targeted traffic to your squeeze page just so you can watch those numbers increase daily.

Always be sure to carefully target the people you send to your squeeze page. For example if you are in the weight loss niche then be sure that the people you refer have actually expressed an interest in losing weight.

Your squeeze page might be giving away a report that allow a quick win – eg “How to lost 7lb in 7 days”. You can also start to monetise your squeeze page by adding an offer (your own product or an affiliate offer) to the thank you page.

Making It Self-funding!

You see people think they have to give their best stuff away for free to get subscribers. That’s not so. Give away a quick win and then you might even turn an immediate profit if someone takes up the offer on your Thank You page.


Not a huge percentage will buy at this point, but if it’s a good offer for a good product, you’ll get sales. And the money you’re making from those sales can actually PAY to send traffic to your squeeze page.

You might decide to reinvest your profits in paying for Facebook ads or Solo Ads and thereby roll out your list building efforts to another level! It even makes it an almost automatic process when you have it all set up. Your squeeze page and autoresponder gathers up the email addresses to build your list and your ads send a stream of targeted prospects to your squeeze page!

What’s not to like!?!?

A quick warning – don’t be tempted to buy bulk email lists or co-reg lists. These are packed with junk email addresses and will get you marked as a spammer!

That’s why you want to build your own list of people who get to know you and who open your emails just because they see your name and they want to know what you have to say today. Build this and you’ll have a real asset. In fact, in online marketing I don’t know if I can think of a better asset than a responsive list, because you can go to that list anytime you want and send them an offer or even ask for their help on something and they will respond.

Free Traffic

One of the first places I would go to for finding people in your niche is Twitter. You can search for people who are interested in your niche, follow them, interact with their content and build relationships. When they follow you back you can add a link to your squeeze page to your profile Bio and invite people to check it out

Another good place to go is forums. Just go to Google and search for “Your Niche” forum (eg weight loss forum). Add a link to your squeeze page into your forum signature and then start interacting with discussions in the forum. Avoid the temptation to just tell everyone to visit your page – that will just annoy people. Instead, just focus on making quality contributions and people will start to see you as an expert and click on the link in your signature to find out more!

Being genuinely helpful on both Twitter and the forums will get you noticed and recognized as an authority figure. People will see you as someone who might be able to help them and so will want to know more.

These leads will be highly targeted and if you look after them well within your business then they could well pay you a good income for many years to come.

Try to become good at one or two traffic methods to begin with and then when you have got leads coming into your business regularly you can move on to other methods to try to scale it up.

How To Create An Email Mailing List

The important thing is to get that first squeeze page built. Create a lead magnet that gives a quick win for your potential customer. Drive traffic to the page and see if you can monetise it quickly with a good offer on the thank you page. Once you have people on your list you can start building a relationship with them which means they get to know, like and trust you.

That’s when they will start to buy your products or click on your affiliate links to check out the products you recommend.

You wanted to know how to create an email mailing list – well now you do!

I hope you agree that its actually easier than you thought it might be. All you need to do now is get started and create that email list that will earn you money for years to come!

Have a great day

Dave

PS – If you have any questions on anything or need me to explain anything more then please just leave a message below and Heidi or I will get back to you as soon as possible!

 

6 thoughts on “How To Create An Email Mailing List

  1. Many thanks to you for giving us such a beautiful article and i got an opportunity to discuss a very nice topic through your article .I have been affiliate marketing for a long time and I often collect email for my website and I get traffic for my website via email. You have explained very well how to collect email and how to get traffic through email. After reading your article, many will find out about email marketing. May I share your article on my social media? Because after reading your article, many people will know about email marketing .

    1. Hello Shanta

      Thanks very much for your feedback and yes you are very welcome to share the article. I hope there are many people in your audience who can get benefit from it.

      I’m glad to hear you are already building your email list and hopefully I have given you some more ideas to help you too,

      Thanks

      David

  2. I am glad to see your article. I have been working in the online world. Your article caught my eye. I have learned a lot from your article. Thank you so much for sharing a beautiful and helpful article. I’m still looking for ways to How To Create An Email Mailing List. You have put here some very helpful steps that can be useful for anyone who wants to create an email mailing list. A very good article with useful information, one of the best I have read, I will certainly try this method. Thank you so much for sharing with us such a beautiful article.

    1. Hi Sabrinamou

      Thank yo very much for your feedback and kind comments. There is so much written about creating an email list that it can become confusing so I hope you found my method to be more easy to follow,

      You will definitely enjoy the benefits that come from building your own email list.

      Good luck

      David

  3. Oh yeah, the money is in the list! I have read several articles that claim that the money is in the list. Having a responsive list, a list that is very much interested in my emails and have trust for me would be one of my biggest asset as a blogger and affiliate marketer. My website is currently in maintenance mode and I have made preparation a long time ago to launch with an autoresponder along side because I know the importance of a list.

    You have truly given me so much insight on how to achieve success in setting up my lead or squeeze page, what to write on it, including a lead magnet and even how to get traffic for my lead pages. I checked those lead pages and I must confess that they’re truly lovely. Thanks for sharing this David.

    1. Hi MrBiizy

      I can definitely agree with everyone who has told you that the money is in the list. There is no better customer for your business than one who you have built a relationship with and shared you knowledge and ideas with. Selling something to someone who trusts you is so much easier than selling to cold traffic.

      I’m glad you liked the examples of squeeze pages. They are all highly converting so you are welcome to use them as a template for your own.

      David

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