While you may have the greatest list in the world, and while you may be giving away tons of free goodies to entice people into joining your list, you may still have trouble getting people to signup for it.
The main problem is making the right people aware of your list, the ones who would want to signup for it. If your list is about low-cost business opportunities, then you can advertise on the various paid-to-click sites (the members of those are already working a low-cost opportunity). If your list is about Internet marketing, work the traffic exchanges (the members of TEs are looking for more visitors to their sites). If your list is about dog grooming, use forum marketing in appropriate forums.
Always direct visitors to a splash page. In that splash page, give the top couple of benefits to joining your list, and give a signup form. Do not provide any other links off that page. The visitor’s only choice is to close the page or signup. Quite a few will close the page, but some will signup.
Safe lists are another way to try building a list. The same rules apply here, link to a splash page. Your first hurdle in a safe list is to get the person to read the email, so the subject has to grab their attention. Stay away from extravagant claims, even if true, because 90% of the other emails have the same extravagant claims (“Make a million collecting bottle caps!”)
A new safe list just started that’s targeting list building. It’s called List Bandit. Unlike normal safe lists, List Bandit is built in a 3 wide forced matrix. You get to send emails to anyone below you in the matrix. Since it’s a forced matrix, even if you do no referrals at all you’ll get spillover from above you. I’ve been a member for a few days, and have 16 people under me from spillover.
List Bandit also has a random matrix. The random matrix is just that, a random rearrangement of members into a new matrix. You can send to anyone below you in the normal matrix, or below you in the random matrix. One day you might end up at the top of the random matrix.
You also get to specify a text ad that is displayed to all members when they log into the system. Members who click that text ad are saying, “I’m interested in what this person has to say”, and get put into your personal list, which also gets emailed.
What List Bandit gives you is the opportunity to sell your list to a constantly changing membership. Your entire job in your List Bandit mailings is to get the reader to opt-in to your real list. Since it’s a mailing, you need to follow safe list rules. Make the subject of the email grab their attention. Offer them something free if they join your list, but make sure the free item is on topic for your list, otherwise you’ll get subscribers who aren’t interested in what you have to say.
Membership in List Bandit is free, although they have the usual too-good-to-pass-up one time offer after you signup.
Great post Jay,
I have looked at many ways to drive traffic, build a list and market to various groups. I have to say that I did not know you should target specific traffic generation techniques for certain markets. And I never thought how important a splash page or squeeze page would be to list building.
Thanks.
You’ll see a big jump in signups just from using a splash page versus linking to your main website. Designing splash pages is an art in its own right, though, and you never know what will appeal to your target audience.
For example, on a recent series of splash pages I tested, I changed only the color of the headline. A nice pleasant green headline received close to 0% click through rate, while the others were around 5%. I rather liked that green, but apparently nobody else did!