You have your squeeze page and autoresponder set up – but what’s happening on the back end? If you have a catchy headline then you will get people signing up to your list, so what are you going to do to keep them on your list?
One way is to never send any messages to your list – most people unsubscribe if they don’t like the messages they are receiving – so if they never receive anything from you the chances are that they will stay. That’s pretty pointless and silly though – the main reason you build a list is to sell products or services to that list.
You may have read somewhere that it takes, on average, around 7 emails before someone will trust you enough to buy from you. I think it depends a lot on how much value you are providing in your email messages. If you are just sending out messages that have a few well known tips, or your emails contain information on what to do but not how to do it then it’s going to take a while before the people on your list see you as any sort of authority.
On the other hand, if you are providing information that people can use – information that isn’t found in almost every free e-book – then you are going to stamp your authority much quicker. You may say that you don’t know enough about the topic of your list. That’s a problem because then you are just pretending to be an authority. It’s easily fixed though – all you have to do is spend some time learning. You would be amazed at how many online marketers don’t take that crucial step of learning. It may be easy just to send out an auto responder series that someone else has created, but it also isn’t that hard to spend a few hours a week learning more about the topic or niche. You will find that in a fairly short time you will become an authority simply because you have spent those hours learning a little bit more each time and gradually becoming an expert in the eyes of others.
If you spent an hour each day on learning more about your niche you would have accumulated 365 hours of learning after a year. That’s the equivalent of over nine weeks of full time study!
Wow Rob, you answered my question right as I started thinking it. I think I’ll spend an hour in your blog this morning.
Good points on the value of taking the time to learn about your niche. I believe there are just too many people who are anxious to appear as experts by depending on information they’ve found in free e-books and there’s nothing wrong with that except that a lot of time it’s just regurgitated material.
Spending time each day on learning just one thing correctly will make a huge difference in establishing one’s credibility and expert status. Thank you.
Hi Rob,
So often you hear that the money is in the list….. as you pointed out if your list just sits there it is really no value.
I found it hard to write the auto responder series…but after reading a few email series I have received from other IMs I have now started writing my own… getting there slowly.
Thanks for the post.
Cheers
Bryan
Your messages doesn’t have to be long, send
them some tips on how to do something and
when you do try to sell them something, you
may have may things at your disposal only start
with your most valuable products.
When you send them a link to a FREE download,
it should really be FREE
Be Honest To Your List,
JimmySuccess