1 © Copyright 2015

LIST BUILDING PROFITS

BUILD YOUR LIST THE RIGHT WAY

Jonathan Leger

COURTESY OF LEARNFROMJON.COM - PRIVATE BUSINESS COACHING FROM A

MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR INTERNET MARKETER + ACCESS TO PREMIUM AND

EXCLUSIVE TOOLS!

2 © Copyright 2015

EARN MONEY BY REBRANDING THIS REPORT

THEN GIVING IT AWAY!

You read that right! After originally publishing this PDF (and

others in the email series) I received a great deal of feedback

from subscribers asking if they could share the PDF. I've

decided to allow sharing , but I've gone a step further.

I wanted to allow my subscribers to not only share this PDF

(and others in the email series) but to earn cash too!

All you have to do is click the link below, add your affiliate ID (instructions on that

are provided on that page), click a link and you'll receive a copy of this PDF, but

your copy will contain your affiliate link to LearnFromJon.com!

Ready to start making money with this report? Just click the link below:

Rebrand this Report with MY Affiliate Link!

Rebranding Terms: You may rebrand this PDF with your affiliate link through the link above. You will receive a download link for your rebranded copy of the PDF which you may share. You may not modify this report in any other way, nor share/publish the content contained within this publication in any other way.

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“The money is in the list.”

You probably already know that you should be building an email list if you're

doing business online. All marketers preach it (including me) because it's true –

but there's a catch. You have to be building your email list the right way, and you

have to manage and treat your email list the right way, or it won't do you much

good.

So how do you do that? What's the “right” way to build and care for a list so that

it pays off for you in the long run? That's the focus of this report.

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WHO WANTS A SKINNED CAT ANYWAY?

Another saying goes that “there's more than one way to skin a cat” (though who

would want to skin a cat, and what the purpose of a cat's skin is has always

eluded me). The same is true with how you build and manage an email list. Each

one has its pros and cons. I'll discuss the three most common ones. The last one I

discuss will be the method I personally use.

The three methods of list-marketing are:

1. Churn and Burn

This is probably the most common method used – and not just in Internet

Marketing, but by business in general. It involves sending nothing but

promotional emails to your list.

2. Slow and Steady

This method is the opposite of Churn and Burn. It's where you almost never send

a promotional mailer at all. Rather, the products and services you want to sell are

linked to naturally within informational emails that you send. This is probably the

least used method (you'll see why in the details).

3. Constant Quality

This is a hybrid of #1 and #2. You send out a lot of informational emails with

promotions in between. This one has been my go-to method for years, and for

good reason (more information on why in the details).

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BUILDING THE LIST

Before you can market to your email list, you have to have an email list. So before

I get into the details of how to skin the proverbial cat, let's talk about the methods

you can use to build up an email list first. There are multiple ways to do this, too.

I'll list the most common ones in order from the worst method to the best method.

1. SPAM

This is a very common method used for email marketing. It's illegal in a lot

of countries, and it's not very effective, but your SPAM folder likely attests

to the fact that it's very, very popular.

Back in the early days of the Internet, unsolicited email wasn't called SPAM.

It was just unsolicited. It was also very effective (much like the junk mail you

probably get in your mail box – if it didn't work companies wouldn't spend

the money to send it).

Now, though, SPAM is highly ineffective. I'm sure it still gets some results or

people wouldn't do it, but SPAM filters are just so good now (at least

Gmail's is—I can't remember the last time any SPAM email actually made it

to my inbox).

It may be tempting, but don't do it. Especially if you live in a country where

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it's illegal, all it will do is get you in a lot of trouble. Put your money and

effort into something that will work well long-term. You have been warned.

2. Rented Lists

Some people don't want to take the time to build an email list, so they buy

or rent one instead. There are some big problems with this method, though.

The first problem is verifying that the people on these lists actually opted-in.

How do you know that they really asked to receive these offers? You're

taking the selling company's word for it – but it's your backside on the line

(legally speaking) if they didn't really do that. So if you're going to do this

you better do your homework and make absolutely sure these are verified

opt-ins.

But let's say that all of the email addresses were, in fact, opted-in properly.

How do you know that those addresses are any good now? How do you

know if people ever check those email addresses? Honestly, if you were

opting into something for free information and suddenly got bombarded

with email from people you don't know with offers you weren't interested

in, would you keep using that email address? Probably not.

Even if all of the emails are opted-in and they are all verified as real, active

email addresses, how many people do you think are going to buy something

from somebody they've never heard of—especially since you have no idea if

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they're even interested in what you have to offer?

Overall, bad idea. It seems like a quick way to get started, but logically it just

doesn't make much sense.

3. In Exchange For Information

For most people starting out, this is the most common (and the best) way to

get people onto your email list. Give them valuable information in exchange

for giving you the right to send them email.

Having people double-opt in is usually best (that's where they give you their

name and email and you send a link for them to click to that email address

to make sure they really own it).

This method makes sense. The people who are getting on your list are doing

so voluntarily. They are targeted – they asked for information on a certain

topic so you know they're interested in that topic. Legally you're covered

because you have their consent to email them. They're expecting you to

email them!

The only downside to this method is that you get a lot of tire-kickers and

freebie seekers. They want what you're giving for free, but may not be

interested in anything else. Given how little it costs you to build the list this

way, though, it's a great way to get started (and something you should

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continue to use even once you're successful).

4. Contacting Customers

I am not an attorney – so don't take what I say in this section as legal

advice.

Emailing existing and past customers is by far the best way to build your

email list. In the United States (which is where I'm based) you have the right

to email anyone that has a business relationship with you until they tell you

not to email them anymore.

So anytime somebody buys one of my products or services they are

immediately put on my email list (the new autoresponder system I'm using

that will be available to LearnFromJon.com members for free makes it easy

to do that). I have the right to do that in the USA, and they can unsubscribe

at any time by simply clicking a link in the email.

Existing and past customers are the best list members because they've

already proven they're not just tire-kickers or freebie seekers. They've put

their money where their mouth is, so to speak. They obviously have a

degree of trust in you because they've bought your product(s). Getting a

happy customer to buy again is much, much easier than getting somebody

on your list who's never bought from you to take a chance and become a

customer.

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I see a lot of vendors who ask customers to opt-in on a thank-you page

rather than just adding them to their email list. They feel like it's “safer” to

ask permission. I used to do that, too. But according to United States law

they have already given you permission by buying from you (again, I'm not

an attorney). It's up to you, but I haven't had any problems. The vast

majority of people will simply click the unsubscribe link if they aren't

interested in what you send them.

So if you're selling products already but aren't immediately adding

customers to your email list, you're seriously missing out on your profit

potential.

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LIST MARKTING METHOD #1: CHURN AND

BURN

Once you've got a growing list, the next step is to market to that list. A very

common method of list-marketing is the “churn and burn” method. This method

is simple: email promotional material to the people on your list – and not much

else.

Does this method work? Yes, to a degree. It works a lot better if your list

members are customers and not just people who opted-in for free information.

You have some of your contacts' trust already, so they're more likely to buy.

The advantage of this method is that it's easy. You can just send promotion after

promotion without ever really getting to know the people on your list or taking

the time to build up helpful information. I can tell you from experience that being

willing to respond to emails from people on your list and writing up reports like

this one and the others you've received from me requires a lot of time and work.

The churn and burn method frees you from all of that labor.

There are a few problems with this method, though. The first problem is that you

lose the attention of our list members much, much faster. They learn quickly that

every email you send is a promotion. They also learn quickly that you're not

interested in their success – just your own bottom line. That means they won't

trust you much.

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With big corporations we expect that. When you get on an email list for your local

car dealership you expect them to send you emails about deals on new cars, and

when it's time for you to get an oil change or specials on other maintenance, etc.

You know that's what's going to happen. It's what you expect. And, of course, you

ignore the vast majority of those emails (or just opt-out). If one happens to catch

your eye, great for them, but it doesn't happen often.

The second problem with this method comes as a result of the first problem.

Because you lose your lists' attention fast, you have to continually work to add

new subscribers to your list as quickly as possible to maintain sales. That's

because you're not likely to get a lot of repeat customers. That's the “burn” part

of “churn and burn”.

You can make a lot of money quickly using this method, but as a long-term

method it doesn't work well unless you can continually add a stream of new opt-

ins fast. Some people can, and so they do well with it, but it requires a lot of work.

You'll have low open rates and even lower conversion rates.

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LIST-MARKETING METHOD #2: SLOW AND

STEADY

I like to call the second list-marketing method “Slow and Steady”. With this

method you almost never send out strictly promotional emails. Once in a blue

moon, sure, but mostly you just send a lot of

great information to people.

The way you make money with a list like this is

by including links to your products or to

products that you're an affiliate for within the

content of the emails you send out. This is done

naturally.

So, for instance, if your list is about gardening and you send people information

on how to care for a rose garden, you would use affiliate links to send people to

the various products that you use to take care of your own garden.

The benefits of this method are high open rates and long-term retention of the

people on your list. With the churn and burn method people are conditioned that

everything you send will be a sales pitch. With slow and steady they are

conditioned that everything you send will be helpful information. So naturally

people are going to open and read your emails much more often.

The downside of this method is that its short-term profitability is low. Since you

never focus people's attention on an offer, you only earn from the few people

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who click-through and buy from you. Even if 2-3% of people do that, you'll either

need a very large list or a very high profit margin on the products that you sell to

earn a lot of money.

There is an exception to this: memberships. If your product is a monthly

membership, then converting one person will earn you money every month that

they stay subscribed to the service. In that case a low conversion rate pays off

well in the mid-term (as long as the membership is good enough to keep people

subscribed).

My LearnFromJon.com membership is an example of this kind of success. I've

gotten two dozen new LearnFromJon.com members in the past 7 days just by

sending out these informational emails that are branded with that name. Two

dozen new members is around $750 in net profit. At that rate I'm looking at about

$3,000 a month in new memberships if I can sustain it, so that by the end of one

year the new members coming only from the informational mailers will be

earning me close to $40,000 a month.

So memberships can work very well. But again, the membership has to be able to

convert readers into buyers and then retain those buyers as members long-term.

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LIST-MARKETING METHOD #3: CONSTANT

QUALITY

The marketing method that I personally use is a hyrbid of the first two methods. I

send out a lot of quality information that lead people to LearnFromJon.com and

also periodically send promotional emails.

I'm leaning more heavily toward sending out the informational emails lately

simply because I have a lot of paying customers on my list and I would like them to

become members of LearnFromJon. LFJ is my focus this year, and that's proving to

be a very good move, but I'm still sending promotional emails as well.

To me this hybrid approach makes the most sense. Yes, you can and should earn

the trust of your list by sending quality information that they can use. Yes, you

should avoid pitching products very hard in those emails. But if there's a product

or service that you really believe in and that you have proven works well, it's a

benefit to your list members to tell them about it and get them to buy.

Will you lose subscribers that way? Absolutely, and that's the downside of this

method. But you'll mostly lose the tire-kickers and freebie seekers – as long as

you're providing quality information in-between. This is the method of list-

marketing I have always used because it has always made the most sense to me.

I get people who don't want to seem salesly or pushy. That makes sense. But if I

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needed work done on my car and my neighbor knew somebody who was an

awesome mechanic I'd want him to tell me about it – and I wouldn't care if that

meant he got some kind of benefit from the mechanic for referring me.

I don't promote anything I haven't seen first-hand results with, either personally

or from a member of my senior staff who I asked to evaluate it. We have to prove

that a tool or service has value before I'll ever offer it to my email list. I don't want

to lose credibility by sending out emails about stuff that doesn't work.

Of course not everybody is going to use a tool or service properly, and not all

products work well in all situations, so sometimes you're going to lose some

credibility anyway with certain people on your list. For me, though, that's where

always having an iron-clad money-back guarantee comes into play. If people know

they can get their money back if something doesn't work, they're much less likely

to hold that against you. So be sure that anything you decide to promote does

have a guarantee like that.

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PROOF THAT MY METHODS WORK

Like I said, I always like to prove that what I'm telling you is true, so let me give

you some screenshots that demonstrate that my list-building and list-marketing

methods really work:

This is the same image from the title page of this report. It shows you my recent

activity in my custom-written autoresponder (which LearnFromJon.com members

will get for free).

You can see that I get a lot of opt-ins. I also get a lot of opt-outs (though much of

the opt-outs shown here came from recently importing all of my paying

customers and some of them deciding they'd rather not get additional emails

from me).

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This back-and-forth tends to keep my list size at around 60,000 individuals.

Obviously I know how to build a list.

But is my list responsive? Do they open the emails and click the links? Take a look

at another screenshot:

In the last 30 days 21,322 different people have opened the emails I've sent (that

number isn't the total number of opens, it's the number of people on my list that

opened at least one email). That means that about 37 percent of my list members

have read at least one of my emails in the last 30 days. That's incredibly high! (I

just started using my new autoresponder system in the last 30 days, which is why

the 60 / 90 / all time numbers are the same as the 30 day.)

In addition to the 37% open rate, about 24 percent of people are clicking-through

to the offers I'm linking out to or to the PDFs I send. Again, that's incredibly high!

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When I do promotions for other people's products they're always amazed at how

well I do just by sending a few emails. That's because I work hard to earn the trust

of the people on my list. Churn and burn is not for me. But then, neither is never

sending promotional emails to my list members for products and services I

believe in.

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WHATEVER YOU DO, DO SOMETHING!

It's up to you to decide how you're going to build and market to your email list.

But whatever you do, do something. I can't believe how many people write to me

and say that they haven't “gotten around to” building a list! You're robbing

yourself of profits every day that you're not building a list, and you're preventing

people from benefiting from the knowledge you can share with them as well.

People join and stay on email lists because it benefits them. You need to create

and market to an email list because it benefits you. It's a win-win situation. People

who disagree that it's win-win will opt-out – but you have to give them the chance

to do so by having a list to begin with.

So get busy building your list and winning their trust. In fact, don't send any

promotional emails to new list members until you've sent them a lot of quality,

useful information first. Build the trust in advance of a promotion and your

promotion will do much, much better.

Here's to YOUR list-building success!

Jonathan Leger

COURTESY OF LEARNFROMJON.COM - PRIVATE BUSINESS COACHING FROM A

MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR INTERNET MARKETER + ACCESS TO PREMIUM AND

EXCLUSIVE TOOLS!