hugoweaving: Why Building An Email List Should Be Your Number One Priority

Let?s talk about me for a moment (my favorite topic!).?I?ve been doing interviews with successful web designers and developers who run successful online businesses for the last couple of months.?I haven?t done too many interviews like that yet, but one thing caught my attention early on, and it seems that the more I analyze the web design/web development scene in blogosphere, the more my assumptions seem to be right.

Web designers and developers tend to leave a lot of money on the table simply because they don?t employ one of the most effective online marketing strategies out there: e-mail marketing.

Let?s take a closer look to this situation, shall we?

Two biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to e-mail marketing

In my humble opinion, it doesn?t matter which niche you are in (yup, even in online marketing), most people who run (or try to run) an online business make these two mistakes when it comes to e-mail marketing:

They don?t build an e-mail list at all.
They don?t make building an e-mail list their first priority.

Now, this is especially clear in niches where majority of people don?t know much about online marketing in general, such as, you have guessed it, web design and web development.?You can go through different websites of designers and developers, both personal and multi-author ones, to see that for yourself.

A lot of people aren?t building e-mail lists at all, and those who are, do it by putting up a barely visible opt-in form, and then use their e-mail list to simply send out updates to their subscribers.

Again, really, that?s A LOT of money being left on the table.

No. 1 regret that people who run successful online businesses have

You know, when I want to achieve something, I?m always curious to hear what people who have already achieved that same goal have to say about it, and especially about what they would do differently and what their biggest regrets are.

Now, since I want to build a successful online business, and I assume you want to do the same, I decided to share some interesting quote from a guy who actually runs a very successful six-figure online business:

Pat Flynn from?Smart Passive Income

When I started this blog back in October of 2008, I had made the newbie mistake of not including a way to accumulate email addresses. No newsletter, no opt-in form ? nothing. Over a year later, I finally got my head on straight?

Pat is not the only one though.

A lot of online entrepreneurs wish that they would have started building an e-mail list much earlier.

Here?s an another example:

Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs Journey

The biggest mistake I made when building my blog was waiting so long to start building an email list.

This is a recurring theme in a lot of interviews and conversations with people who are very successful online.

The question is, why the obsession with e-mail marketing?

The reason behind e-mail marketing craze: it?s pretty damn effective!

Hard data clearly shows that e-mail marketing works.

Here are some statistics:

The DMA puts email marketing?s ROI for 2011 at $40.56 for every $1 invested. The figure for 2012 is predicted to ?fall? to $39.40, when email will account for $67.8 billion in sales (reference).
72% of respondents to an Econsultancy survey in early 2011 described email?s ROI as excellent or good. Only organic SEO scored better (reference).
A 2011 MerchantCircle survey of over 8,000 local business owners in the US found email marketing cited by 35.8% as a Top 3 most effective marketing or advertising method. Only social network profiles and search engine marketing scored higher (reference).
A 2011 business survey by Ireland?s Marketing Institute saw 84% claiming email marketing was important or very important to their marketing strategy (reference).
In a 2011 Focus survey of marketers, the channel cited most often as the best performer over the previous 12 months was email (reference).
The ForeSee Results 2010 report on the effectiveness of social media found that promotional emails were the second biggest influence on retail website visits. The biggest influence was familiarity with the brand (reference).
In Datran Media?s 2010 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 39.4% of industry executives said the advertising channel that performed strongest for them was email. This was the top result (reference).

Well, when you see the data, you might wonder why doest this particular online marketing method works so well?

The magic ingredient: trust

My guess is that the reason behind the effectiveness of online marketing is that it is an excellent way to build trust with your readers, which means that if you do it right, they are sold on something long before you make the offer.

Reading blog, subscribing to an RSS feeds, or following someone on Twitter on Facebook is far, far less personal than giving someone your e-mail address and getting their e-mails straight to the inbox, with an option of further e-mail communication.

All of that allows you to build relationships with your subscribers, which later turn into sales when you present them your offer.

You might wonder what trust has to do with making money online?

Most people don?t buy something online the first time they see it. It?s much more likely that they read some content first, maybe leave a comment, follow that person or company on social media, subscriber to their e-mail list, maybe even exchange e-mails with the person/people behind the website, and only after that they make a decision to buy something. This is a long sequence of actions which express an increasing level of trust and eventually lead to sale. Honestly, it?s very hard to sell something to someone who didn?t go through at least some of the steps in this sequence.

The level of trust your audience has in you is one of the most important factors that will determine whether your business will thrive or go bankrupt.

Too bad so many people scammers don?t see it that way, but oh, well, what can you do..

Anyway, back to e-mail marketing..

Make building an email list your first priority!

Image Source

I didn?t realize the importance of building an e-mail list for years, up until I watched this video with Derek Halpern.

Yes, I?m going to through another quote at you, this time a really long one.

What are some thing that haven?t caught on right now? The one thing that actually much to my dismay is the importance of building an e-mail list. I got a lot of people to start building e-mail lists, but they?re not focusing on that as their main goal. They?re really doing themselves a disservice.

They?re promoting their social media profiles, they?re talking about things like Pinterest, they?re talking about things like Twitter..And yeah, these things are great, they send traffic, but you don?t need to build your following on these particular outposts (I think that?s how Chris Brogan calls them) to get traffic from them: if your audience is on that particular network, they?ll share it for you. Yes, having a network on your own helps, but if you got an e-mail list, you can build a?Facebook?page over nigh.I got like 2700 likes on my Facebook page, there?s not one link on my blog anywhere. The reason I got 2700 likes is I focused on building an e-mail list and then said ?Hey, guys, by the way, I have a Facebook page? and I got a 1000 likes in 5 minutes. Focus on the e-mail list.

Now, why don?t people focus on building that e-mail list? Well, this comes down to psychology. When people start a blog and you start writing posts, it?s very disheartening in the beginning. You?re not getting very much traffic, you?re not getting any blog comments,you?re not getting much of anything and it feels horrible. It makes it feel like no one?s reading your hard work. You?re not getting any positive reinforcement for all of your hard work.

People promote social media on the other hand because they do get that reinforcement. They?ll send out a tweet, they?ll get one reply.They?ll see someone else?s tweet, they?ll reply. That conversation feels great, it lets people know, let?s the person who?s running their social media account know, that they actually exist in the universe.

Now, I do a lot of research, a lot of people e-mail me with what they?re struggling with, that?s another thing I focus on. A lot of people actually said this exact word, I?m running a blog, and I feel like I?m invisible. So, no one wants to feel like they?re invisible. They want to have recognition, they want people to acknowledge the fact that they?re putting hard work into their blogs. So I believe people aren?t building e-mail lists because they?re getting that positive reinforcement of conversation on social media and they?re not ready to focus on e-mail list because e-mail list is more of a long term play, it?s kind of why do people eat sweets today, but want to lose weight in three months. People can?t look at the long term. That?s why I believe e-mail list building hasn?t taken off as a main focus.

..And it also helps that there are many people who say ?Build social media followings!? and these people have never built social media following. So, that?s another issue.

The way Derek explained this made a light bulb appear above my head.

My conclusion was..

E-mail list first. Everything else second.

You might get very confused when experts tell you that so many things are ?very important?: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus,?YouTube, etc.

The problem is that most of these people don?t have a clue what they are talking about.

I suggest you to get that nonsense out of your head as soon as possible in order to prevent depression and suicidal thoughts that might come as a result of so many voices in your head.

Don?t over-complicate it:

Focus on building an e-mail list.
It?s really that simple.

What is the next step?

I hope I was successful in my attempts to convert you into the e-mail marketing religion.

Now, you know how there?s this popular saying in online marketing circles, ?Money is in the list!?, right?

Well, that saying is actually a very misleading one.

Here?s a more accurate description of the situation:??Money is in the list, unless your list doesn?t give a shit!?

You won?t be rolling in the dough if your list doesn?t give a damn about you or your offers.

You have to build a list and maintain it in the right way if you want to go and lay in the beach in Thailand sipping cocktails while the money is rolling in.

Now, don?t you worry, being the kind and generous person that I am, I will explain how to do exactly that in the coming few articles!

See you there!

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