19 Costly List Building Mistakes To Avoid

In this post I thought it would be useful to share with you the list building mistakes that many marketers discuss about across the internet. This is a follow on from my last blog post where I wrote about how to build an email list which included 19 strategies to put in place to grow an email list organically. The current post is a collective summary of the list building mistakes that many new people make when list building. Where appropriate I have included the source of the site where I found the list building mistakes.? The reason why I want to share this premium information with you is that it took me far too long to work out why I was not growing my email list and don?t want that to happen for you.? So save this page somewhere safe and make sure that you avoid these 19 list building mistakes.? These list building mistakes range from the more simple to avoid to ones that take a little more effort and resources.? I am confident that if you avoid these list building mistakes then you?ll start to see positive returns in your list building.

1. Buying An Email List ? To any new marketer this sounds great in principle. It is sold to you so well and it can easily become the most attractive solution to a new marketer?s problems ? the problem of finding 1,000s of targeted leads. The trouble is that the leads don?t know you, they often didn?t get double opted into the database that they?re stored on and the leads are old and unresponsive. There is no quick fix in attracting subscribers. Building your list needs to be a deliberate thing and you need to have a controlled method of building your list. For more on this read an article on Aweber?s site buying email lists the ugly truth.

2. Adding People To Your Email List Without Their Permission ? Time and time again this happens to me. I have a brief exchange of messages on a social media site and before I know it I?ve been added to an email list or a business newsletter. What?s worse are those companies that simply collect my email address from an online directory (or my website) and randomly add me to their list. What on earth makes people think that this is a smart way to grow their email list? Like me you probably take one action ? unsubscribe! It?s a waste of time, does nothing for your reputation or credibility and it is the worst of the list building mistakes. Get over taking any short cuts ? growing an email list is part science and part art and takes months of testing and retesting to tweak, but when you get it right you will be unstoppable.

3. Using An Opt-in Form That You Think Will Work ? Ok we all have to start somewhere right. As far as list building mistakes go I have been as guilty as anyone for this. You see a great opt-in form on someone else?s site. They claim it works like gang busters and so you design a similar form on your site. You persist with it because you ?know? it will work ? after all it worked on the other site didn?t it? The simple truth is we know nothing until we have tested and retested and tested again. I recommend this article on AB split testing it was written in 2005 but is still relevant today.

You can track the success of your marketing by signing up for a free account at:
http://www.google.com/analytics/

You?ll hear many people tell you this and at first you?ll probably ignore them because it?s too much like hard work but you should only, ?change one element on your opt-in form at a time?. So don?t go changing the header, the image and bullet points all at once because you?re frustrated at low opt-ins ? slow down and take a more scientific approach to your marketing. As a minimum you should be aiming for an opt-in rate of 3%, but with targeted traffic and a free incentive you should be able to tweak it to >10%. I?m aware of some site?s that claim to get over 50% opt-ins. But I guess we?ll never know for sure if this is the whole truth until we try it out ourselves.

4. Single Opt-in ? Aside from whether or not you?re breaking some internet law or not, a single opt-in doesn?t make sense for most businesses. For me I?m fascinated in internet behaviour. From my studying of psychologist I know that an action that takes less commitment is less likely to be replicated in the future. In other words if a lead has the commitment to double opt-in to your email list then they are interested enough to take twice the action of someone who opted-in to a single opt-in email list. The more action a lead takes the more likely they will be to take similar actions in the future ? e.g. read your material and buy your products or services. I?d rather a smaller list of committed leads than a larger list of unresponsive leads, but I know that others will strongly disagree with this point ? it has something to do with list ego! Unlike the other list building mistakes this is more of a decision of whether your country requires double opt-in by law and whether you want a committed list.

5. Content That Readers Don?t Want To Read ? Out of all the list building mistakes this is the greatest single reason why someone would unsubscribe from your list. This list building mistake shows a lack of understanding of your customers? needs. Many people try to focus on themselves ? on what they have to offer and what services they can offer ? rather than connecting with the interests of their customers. Matt Bacak claims in his article the top 10 list building mistakes that poor content is one of the top 10 list building mistakes and he should know as he was internet marketer of the year for 2010. It is estimated that less than 25% of people probably are reading opted-in emails (which is the average readership of online newsletters according to MailChimp.com). To check on the success of your email campaign use html emails, add links to key content in your message and track who is taking action and on what emails. You might be surprised by your findings.

6. Frequency Of Emails ? Strangely this is probably more frequently than you think. Your subscribers have asked to be sent an email from you. Whilst there are no precise statistics on this, it is considered a list building mistake to email less often than once every month. Less than once a month and your subscribers will wonder who it is that is contacting them and hit the dreaded unsubscribe link. On the other hand some marketers send emails every day. You know the ones that offer no value other than the affiliate percentage that goes in their back pocket. There needs to be a balance between the two with value at the heart of the system. Vance Sova claims in his article 3 email list building mistakes you want to avoid that you need to build a relationship with your audience rather than sending pitching emails too frequently.

7. Email Is Dead! ? No, just kidding. But many people marketing their sites have a perception that email is dead. This perception probably comes from the high usage of social media sites ? and it?s probably true that people spend less time reading emails than they did in the past. But it?s one of the most foolish of the list building mistakes as I bet that your email box is still the 1st, 2nd or 3rd destination when you log on and it will be for your customers too. An interesting survey was conducted by Aweber on what teens really think of email. The good news is that over 44% think that email will live on. There are other surveys that indicate similar findings. This suggests that email will remain a significant communication tool in the future and lends support for focusing time and effort on email list building.

8. Not Giving Your Email Leads Anything ? I can?t tell you how many blogs I?ve seen where there is a newsletter opt-in form which does little to entice people. There is no offer proposed in exchange for an email address and no reason to opt-in. The opt-in forms do not stand out. To get email leads you need to have a free gift tailored to your market. The opt-in form needs to stand out by saying subscribe to my Newsletter and receive an eBook or video series, or access to a membership site. Here?s an example of an opt-in form that really stands out ? I dare you not to subscribe to it http://bloggingcasestudy.com/ Did you subscribe? If you didn?t I bet you considered it. As an alternative check out Cathy Sucker?s home page http://www.sellingbooks.com/ this is a more subtle style of marketing, but I bet it works well for her list building.

9. Preformatted Opt-in Forms ? You can tell these list building mistakes a mile away. Someone makes the good decision to go with a premium autoresponder company and then chooses to use their preformatted Opt-in forms. On their own they look pretty but often they don?t match a websites theme. They stick out like a sore thumb. An opt-in form is the doorway to your email marketing system and is worth spending some time, money and effort on. You want people who come to your site to have great value, but also you want them to take one action ? subscribe to your email list. So make sure your opt-in form is prominent and matches your overall website theme.

10. Not Selling The Giveaway ? David Risley in his article The 3 Big List Building Mistakes Bloggers Make (And How To Fix Them)? discusses the mistake of not selling the giveaway. The best way to sell a give away is to present it well in the title, to show it to your audience e.g. thumbnail of video or picture of ebook. Many people use a give away so you?ll need to tap into the mystery of specific problem/solution. To overcome these list building mistakes you?ll need to over power skepticism as it takes more and more each year for people to give up an email address.

11. Doing Everything Yourself ? OMG this was my greatest list building problem. It was not the money for me ? it was more that I?d have an idea at 8pm after my dinner and I?d want to execute it by 9pm. So I?d get to work on it and find out that it takes way longer than an hour. The end product wasn?t that bad but I could have outsourced it and been working on creating something of value for my email list. Many of my earlier list building mistakes could have been put right if I had paid between $30-$35 to get someone else to create a ebook cover or design a landing page.

12. Neglecting Your Email List ? Letting The List Run Cold! ? This is one of the most interesting list building mistakes. Many people get excited when they finally start to make progress with their list building. But when they start to get a good number of subscribers they start to over think things. They worry about whether the content of an email is offering value and worry that too many emails will lead to people unsubscribing. We all have to move past these feelings and focus on nurturing our lists. Think about it this way these people subscribed to you in the first place because they wanted what you have to offer! So keep on delivering value and you?ll find that a hard core of fans will remain whilst others will unsubscribe because they have changed their mind or are not convinced that you have the answers to their problems or they simply are not in the same position as when they first joined your list.

13. Not Using A Professional Autoresponder ? I?ve spoken about this in many of my previous posts. I?ll not say much other than a professional autoresponder service such as Aweber will make a huge difference to your list building campaigns. It will increase deliverability of your emails and will assist you in segmenting your list so that you can identify the beginners in a topic from those who are more advance or separate those who click on money links from those who do not ? your tracking capabilities are endless. As list building mistakes go, this one is more about not being willing to invest your money in the right place! It is claimed by www.affordable-internet-marketing.com in their article Six List Building Mistakes and How To Turn Them Around that smart marketers are those who build a list using a professional autoresponder

14. You Don?t Partner To Build Your List ? Point 7 of Robert Middleton?s 7 Deadly List Building Mistakes? is a mistake that all new marketers make. Robert talks of avoiding many of the list building mistakes mentioned here. However, building his subscriber base over the years, he missed an important strategy that have may have been the most powerful one of all and that would have added thousands of new subscribers to his list.

That strategy is called co-promoting with a partner. What you do is find a partner who is also list building and who also has a high quality product. You send an email to your list offering their product and they send an email to their list offering your product. Easy to do and very effective. It doesn?t get much simpler than that. At the beginning, when you don?t have a huge list, you?ll be partnering with those who also have smaller lists. But as time goes on and as your list grows, you?ll partner with people with larger lists.

15. Not Having A Sales Funnel ? It is a mistake ni to have a sales funnel, because at the end of the day money will motivate you. It?s OK not to ask for money straight away and to be frank most ethical and wise marketers know that you need to develop a relationship first before you sell. But at some point in your system you need to get over your fears and identify something of value that you can sell to your list. If not your own product or service then a product in your niche that you love and can get a commission for selling. If you don?t understand what a sales funnel is then you?re not alone as most new marketers don?t understand the sales funnel or how they would monetize their online business. I can recommend Seth Godin?s blog post on the sales funnel

16. Being Too Broad ? This is one of the list building mistakes that many people find themselves in if they have not sufficiently focused in on what they want to communicate to their audience. Lynn Terry of Clicknewz.com on http://www.nicoleonthenet.com says that the best thing you can do when building a list is get specific. Know exactly who you want to subscribe to that list, and why, and know exactly what you are going to send them.

17. You?ve Set No Goals! ? I have saved my favorite out of all the list building mistakes to last. Now if there is any secret to this list building malarkey then it is this ? having no list building goal will lead to lack of action and poor results. If you set goals and monitor them on a daily basis then you will end up focusing on them most of the time. The things in you?re life that you focus on most of the time end up being the things that you make the greatest progress with. Of course along the way you will experience barriers but these can be overcome ? check my post on conquer those nasty barriers to your goals.

In addition, to the above I have just found out from Shawn Casey?s article on the top 3 Newbie List Building Mistakes You Should Avoid? is that too much advertising can be a reason why people do not subscribe to your list.

OK this is another mammoth post and if you have made it this far then well done!? I know that you are sufficiently motivated to succeed and avoid these list building mistakes. If want further tips on how to build an email list then check my ultimate guide on that.

I?m sure that you have made your own list building mistakes when you started growing your list and I?d encourage you to share your own experiences with my readers.

To Your Success,
Howard Clemence
Professional Internet Marketing Coach

Author of How You Can Generate 50-100 Leads Per Day
http://tinyurl.com/3okcd9z

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