List building

One of my goals for 2012 is to build a decent sized list.  Not quite Frank Kern size but decent.

How has anyone here bult their list?  How long did it take?  I'd be interested to know what worked for people, and what they tried that didn't!   I've tried lots with limited success.

Forgive my ignorance, but a list of what?

People who are interested in your stuff.  A loyal herd.  You know all those emails you get from people and companies, because you entered your email address - you're on their list!  A good list is an extremely powerful asset. Imagine you've got 10,000 people subscribed to your list and you want some cash.... howabout you write a short how to book and charge a fiver for it... send out a great offer or a video with a few teasers from it and sell a few hundred..

List.  Need to build a really good one this year.

Lists are a massive part of marketing and can be very effective! They can take a long time to build though. Try offering an incentive, for example a free PDF guide on a certain part of sales. People have to put in their email addresses to get the guide.

Lists walk a tightrope every time you send an email out - it's easy to unsubscribe or press 'delete' or 'spam' - so you need to build them up carefully and treat them like they're your best friend.

Quite often a smaller list built round solid info and a personality can out-pull a bigger list.

Think of the list based emails you receive and model yours around the handful that you actuallly read on a fairly regular basis.

I'm interested in knowing what techniques have worked for people building their lists.  I've got a few squeeze pages and using popup domination for a free report "6 biggest mistakes that salespeople still make" when people hover towards menu bar etc, but it's not hauling in decent numbers.  

For me, a subscription box near the top of the right hand column of a page with a compelling offer - my first instinct is to close a pop-up box.

Squeeze page with targeted traffic can work and one of my sites gets sign ups that way but it's not easy to get ranked in Google for that kind of page so you have to send traffic in other ways such as articles.

On my "must try soon" list: a video split into two parts, part one ending in a cliff hanger and part two only available after sign-up. I've been hooked in that way personally.

Something like this?  http://www.salestraininghampshire.co.uk/salestraining  (that page isn't set to show, and I know - the CSS is all over the shop... if you've got web designer firefox plugin you can hack it to see without the flash header..)

Something like that but ...

Your autoresponder should be able to figure out first and last names rather than forcing people to enter them in separate fields.

Phone number: my instinct would be I was going to get a sales call. Give me some reassurance about what you'll do with it if you really need it.

Email opt-in headline is weak. I'd use something more related to the "double sales" start of the video.

Giving away something very cool that people would actually be willing to pay for ..

too many people just say 'I'll send you updates"  or offer a flimsy ebook of 3 pages in a very large font.

It's worth putting a tonne of effort into offering something excellent in exchange for an email.

Also be timely, (I have seen this work in my niche) let's say there is some new sofware coming out you know about, get ready for launch,

then when it comes out work solidly to create the first training course on it and create some buzz.

Let people have it for free for the first few days, and get them to tweet /fb it to get traffic then put up a barrier so arrivals can get one lesson

free but must give you their email for the rest (late arrivals will be keen to get it) , then later you can charge for the whole thing if you want.

I agree it's all about free goodies.

Post lots of free (no email required) information downloads to build trust, preferanbly using different media i.e. pdf, audio and video and then have a sign up form listed on each of the products and download pages. Once people have seen that the really free stuff you offer is good quality and genuine they won't mind giving away their email in return for more.

Many people take this a stage further, they give loads of info. away, loads more for free once people have signed up, then intersperce with a few cheap products, followed by membership to a masterclass or similar. All set up and sent by auto responder of course!

thanks, Jules that EVP2 looks good, I'm going to use that in future.  (not on that table built site!) How big are the lists you guys have built?

I've currently got a 7 day confidence e-course that I'm offering; there's a popup on the site. I know they can be annoying but my sign ups have increased massively since I added it. Also, having an email a day offering strategies seems to be something that potential sign ups like and it gets good feedback....definitely don't go for the 3 page "ebook" in large font...that's not even a handout...

PS, add a value to whatever you're offering. It may be a freebie but it took time for you to create it, so as a rule of thumb, work out your hourly rate and multiply by how many hours it took you to create your giveaway. The value of free stuff is nothing. 

They're not annoying.  The people who get annoyed by them won't buy your stuff anyway ( I think )