You’ve heard the marketer’s mantra a million times: “The money is in the list.”

Listen, that’s NOT entirely true.

If it was true, then anyone could build up a big email list and soon retire to a private island.

But it doesn’t work that way.

The Money Is In The Relationship With Your Email List

People still believe it, however. You’ll see newbie marketers focusing on building up big lists quickly – a few thousand in a just a week, tens of thousands in a few months, 100,000 strong in a year. They start having visions of a $1 per subscriber per month rolling in.

When the money doesn’t materialize, they’re baffled. Worse yet, sometimes new marketers are shocked to discover that their conversion rate is at or near zero. You can see how frustrating this is to folks who believe that all you have to do is build an email list and watch the money roll in.

Now, a list can be profitable. But in order to see those profits come in, you need to do two things…

1. Build a Targeted, Responsive List

If you’re selling dog collars, then you should be building an email list of people who want to buy dog collars.

Building a list of cat owners, people who like rose gardening or people who want to learn how to cook French food aren’t good candidates for your list. Your subscribers need to all be interested in what you’re selling. Period.

Secondly, your subscribers must WANT to be on your list. If you offer a freebie (like an eBook) in exchange for an email, your subscribers better know they’re going to get a newsletter from you. If they join a contest, they better know their registration puts them on your email list. And so on.

The point is, use whatever means you want to get them on your list – but make sure they’re equally as excited to read your newsletter as they are to get your freebie.

2. Build Relationships With Your Subscribers

As mentioned, the first step in building a responsive list is to make sure you’re only attracting targeted subscribers who want to join your list.

The second step is to build relationships with your subscribers. As they begin to know, like and trust you, they’ll start buying more and more from you.

Here’s how to build those good relationships:

a) Communicate Regularly:

Think about your personal relationships – how often do you talk to your best friends? Chances are, the people you know, like and trust the most are also the ones you talk to regularly.

And likewise, the best way to build up a relationship with your subscribers is to communicate regularly. If you’re only sending them emails once per month, they’re going to forget about you in between emails – and they may even forget your name and report your emails as spam.

But send out emails regularly – about once or twice a week – keeps your name in front of subscribers and gives you a chance to share quality content and offers.

Which brings us to our next point…

b) Create Quality Content:

Your subscribers signed up to your list to get solutions. And in many cases, that means they want information.

If you can solve their problems (by providing quality content), you’ll earn their trust. And that makes it much easier for you to sell your offers.

c) Choose Solid Offers:

The way to provide solutions to your prospects’ problems is by recommending products that solve their problems.

However, just as you need to provide quality content, you also need to recommend quality products – honestly. To do otherwise means risking your reputation as an honest marketer.

Here are a couple guidelines:

If you wouldn’t recommend it to your best friend or your mother, don’t recommend it to your email list.

Review the product honestly, flaws and all. Indeed, revealing a flaw creates trust between you and the prospects, and this trust spurs sales.

This will help you by showing your subscribers that you have their best interests at heart, and that you are there to help them to get to their goals.

Use these guidelines and you will end up with a responsive list that will open, read, and act on the messages you send. To your online success...