List Building Profits

List Building Profitsby Jonathan Leger

www.LearnFromJon.com

“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.

Page 1 of 14 List Building Profits www.LearnFromJon.com

http://learnfromjon.net


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).



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 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 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 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.

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.




List-Marketing 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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).

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 (it's on the next page).




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!

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.



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

www.LearnFromJon.com


