Monday, December 8, 2008

Secret Mailing List?

By Robert Alan Lamson

Have you ever wondered how the so-called internet marketing gurus can send out a single email and make enough money to buy some fancy car, or so they say?

Well, for most people that just sounds too good to be true. And kind of ridiculous to believe. But what the "gurus" don't tell you is that there is in fact a way to reproduce those kinds of results.

The secret is that they have a buyer list. It's a buyer list, not a mailing list. And there's a big difference.

A big mailing list will not guarantee big profits. The quality of the list is a lot more important than the size of the list. Because the bottom line is whether the subscribers on your list actually fork out the money to buy your product.

No buyers means no profit, so even if your list has a million names on it, so what? They are just taking up space on your website and probably wasting a lot of your time as well.

What is the real "secret" then? It's not really a secret at all, and it's not even complicated. It's having people on your list who want to buy from you.

Not knowing exactly how to build a good list is what stands in the way of reaching your sales goal. Most people get subscribers, not buyers. Did you know that the average response to a marketing email is estimated at only 1-2%?

If your list is really huge, a 1-2% response really isn't bad. But if you only have a list of 2,000 or so, and you only had a response of 1-2%, that would be dismal. But it becomes worthwhile if you can get at least 10% of them to buy from you.

The question is: Would you rather have a list of 25,000 people and hope that 1% buy from you, or would you rather have a list of 2,500 people who buy like crazy from you every time you send them an email?

The huge lists, in all probability, do not really pull in a 1-2% response. Who do they think they are kidding, anyway? A response of around 0.05% is probably more the norm. And who needs that? You'd need an even bigger list just to get 250 sales out of your mailing. Thanks anyway, but I don't think I'm interested in that, and I doubt if you would be either.

For most things in life, quality is more important than quantity. And that applies to building your mailing lists. So concentrate on the quality of your list, and you'll soon be reaping the rewards. That's when you'll be able to tell your own story of how you got rich.

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