As someone doing business online, you might have heard people talking about their lists. But just what exactly IS a list? And how are you supposed to get it started?
Building a great list is one of the most important parts of building and nurturing your audience. Do it well and you will have a consistent and constant stream of warm leads lining up to do business with you. Don’t do it and you run the risk of losing your audience in an instant.
Here’s why I think it is SO important that you start building your list.
What an email list is (and what it isn’t)
Whenever someone talks about an email list, they are talking about a collection of email addresses given willingly by the address owners to someone else for the purpose of receiving content.
Email lists are important because they are the only audience you truly own the data for, as opposed to your lists of social media followers and content subscribers where the data is owned by the respective platforms.
And when you don’t own your data, anything can happen… like the time my Instagram got shut down. You just cannot afford to invest all of your time building an audience that can be taken away from you like that!
The crucial part about building your list is that they have willingly provided their data to you. What I mean is, it is totally possible to build a huge email list simply by purchasing contact information from a third party. There are loads of shady (and sometimes legal) businesses out there that make their money by collecting private data from various sources, then selling them to similar businesses as possible leads.
However, this is not the way to build a useful list.
Instead, build your list by gathering data from consenting parties who want to receive your content. If they are willing to say “yes please!” to something you’ve created and turn over their email addresses in exchange, these are the people you want to be in regular contact with.
The important concept here is consent. If they hand over their data freely, you want them on your list.
Getting that easy yes
So how do you get someone to willingly hand over their data? With a juicy freebie that shows them they can’t live without your content!
When you’ve created a freebie worthy of downloading, and you put it in front of your target audience, it becomes a no-brainer for that audience to hand over their data willingly to you.
And once you have their data? Then you can service your list over and over, with more juicy content, knowing that their data is safely yours unless they unsubscribe – and the juicier your content, the less likely that is to happen.
Want to know more?
I have put together the List Building Party just to help you get started with building your list. If you are ready to own the attention of your audience, the List Building Party is the perfect way to get you on your way to having a great list of people who want to hear from you.
To learn more about the List Building Party, click here.
