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Email marketing is a great way to keep current customers informed on what’s new as well as a great way to build sales from prospects.

But first of all, you have to have a list of people to send your emails to. But how do you go about that? It’s one thing finding the addresses of physical homes, but finding personal emails is a different game entirely. You could buy a list from another company, or rent one out for a price. But this can be expensive and there is a huge flaw in that you have no idea how many of the prospects will be interested, and your emails may go straight into their junk mail.
The only real way to go about starting off an email marketing campaign is to compile your own list. Here are some tips on building an email list for your online business:

Home Page Sign-up – have an area on the home page of your website dedicated solely to enticing people to sign up for something. Having a regular newsletter to send is always a good idea, but you can also ask people to sign up for information on new products, promotions or special offers. Whatever it is, it needs to be of value to your customers, not just to you.

Ask to Add – when you attend networking events, meetings or trade shows, wherever you are likely to meet potential new customers or are gathering business cards, ask those you meet if you can add them to your mailing list, to send them a newsletter or special offers.

Association Lists – if you are a member of any trade or community organizations, ask if you can have access to their membership list. Many offer membership lists to members for free; some are available for a fee.

Sign-up after the Sale – if you have an ecommerce site, add a check-off box that encourages customers to sign up for your newsletter or special offers as part of the online checkout process. If you take telephone orders, provide guidelines for employees to solicit email subscriptions after the sale.

Reciprocal plugs – find other newsletters that you think your customers would enjoy and ask if they’ll promote your newsletter if you do the same for them.

Buy a List – there are quite a few online resources that offer lists for sale sorted by postal code, demographics, income, lifestyle interests, buying behaviour, etc. You can purchase a really targeted list based on your products or services and use it to test a variety of promotions or special offers.

Does it Work?
Like all things in internet marketing, it depends how well you do it. Email marketing is such a great technique because you end up with a list full of hot prospects. These are people who have shown an interest in your niche area, and they are therefore much more likely to pay for something.
But here’s the most important factor: they will only pay for something if the free report or information that they signed up for was really of a high quality. If it wasn’t then you can hardly expect them to pay for more of the same. With email marketing you need to start them off with something really great, and then offer them even more for a price.

Building an email list that will help you drive traffic and sales is an integral part of a well-rounded online marketing program, one of the many helpful tools you’ll find in Pathways. Check it out!

This is a guest post written by Dave Crew, if you would like to be considered for a guest post contact me.