The Money is in the List!

If you have been on line for any length of time and been looking through the Marketing sites and blogs you will have seen a recurring phrase “The Money is in the List”

If you haven’t been online for very long don’t fret because that’s what this Blog is all about…helping you to overcome the fear of dipping your toes in the water without it taking a decade or shortening your lifespan in the process!

What does this mean? The Money is in the List?

Well …do you want the Short answer? the Smart answer? or the Long answer ? We’ll go for something in the middle for starters I think!

The List is the Subscriber base you have built up, which enables you to contact your site visitors on a follow up basis…and heaven forbid “sell them stuff”. Ooooh no one said anything about selling or follow up…isn’t that really difficult?

Please relax and read on!

How do you build up your Subscriber base and create this “Magical Mystery List”?

It’s really quite simple actually. In real terms you have to persuade Site visitors to give you their E Mail address so that you (a) know who they are and (b) can contact them again and again and again…over time you understand!

Isn’t this sounding rather like a lot of hard work cranking out e mails to your subscribers? What if I have a hundred subscribers or even a thousand?

The Autoresponder Works its Magic

This is where Technology comes in and plays its trump card! With a suitable Autoresponder account, which is the second most important part of your marketing arsenal, you will be freed of the drudgery of replying or contacting all your subscribers individually.

An Autoresponder account which doesn’t cost the earth, will do all the contacting for you All you have to do is to create a sequence of suitable replies or recommendations and these will be sent automatically to your subscribers at whatever interval you deem appropriate.

There are several really good Autoresponder companies out here but the one with the best reputation and the one that we use along with most successful marketers is A Weber. They have great flexibility, great staff and as many features as you need for a successful operation.

We are not in the business of sending floods of email every day or even every other day. Some marketers do however and if you subscribe to too many lists (there we go again) you will regret it and probably become a little peeved in the process. So be warned! We will talk more about how many subscriptions are sufficient and how many is too many in another post.

Next question is how to you persuade visitors to part with their E Mail address?

What’s In It for Me?

Simple …you have to make it worthwhile. You know the WIIFM adage. What’s in it for me? If you can satisfy this primeval desire with perhaps a newsletter subscription offer or better still a freebie of some kind you will be well on the way to your first 1000 subscribers.

We’ll talk about the kind of freebie that gets visitors clicking and parting with their e mail addresses in the next post. Read each part of the equation and understand it before moving on to the next.

In each section we will give you a link to a site we recommend that will, when all the parts are integrated, add up to your Marketing Information Start up Strategic Toolbox  or  MISST for short.

Now go get a Coffee …you deserve it!

P.S Here is another Boomer Site we recommend.

Go check out Rosie’s excellent:-

www.bloggingforboomers.com

P.P.S  getting an account on Twitter could be a very useful strategy as you start to build your Blog.Go take a look:-

http://www.twitter.com/RobinPiggott

Your target market will dictate to a certain extent your choice of language and this is O.K up to a point. But suppose you are trying to educate that market and move them a few rungs up the ladder to a higher understanding of your subject matter. Are you going to leave them behind if your piece takes on a different hue? What is it going to take to pen an effective contribution?

That’s a dilemma that has to be faced and perhaps a compromise is called for. Either way the time spent in crafting your article or report, needs to be justified by not just hoping for a response but aiming to achieve an objective. You may be attempting to inform in a general sense or educate in a more detailed fashion.

Start off with a focused objective and this will aid your choice of words and sentence structure.
Getting visitors to read what you have to say and come back again to your site or blog is not such an easy task to accomplish. Looking at your web site statistics will very often give you quite a shock when you discover that vast quantities of people come and go in the first 30 seconds!

Here’s an Article penned a few days ago on a subject about which the author knew very little and was preceded by 45 minutes of research.The objective was to inform about the basic facts and not drift off into dreamland with flowery verbiage! Straight forward facts and figures get to the point and provide value to a reader who wishes to gain a quick insight into the main benefits of this important Vitamin.

So here’s an approach to informing an audience with very little personal author comment added.

What are the benefits of Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is produced naturally in the body as a result of exposure to the sun. If you happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere with long dark winters then Sun is going to be absent and therefore so will your production of Vitamin D!

It is the exposure to UVB rays (short wavelengths) produced by the Sun that triggers the production of Vitamin D in the body

Vitamin D is typically found in many of the oily fish group therefore providing a readily available source for those living in Sun deprived areas either through consuming the fish directly or via a supplement.

Each sector of the population has factors that it must address in order to ensure sufficient production of this essential vitamin.

Breast fed Babies are known to be deficient in Vitamin D so therefore Health consultants recommend an additional supplement.

The over 50’s are also likely to be in need of a Vitamin D supplement since skin at that age has greater difficulty in producing the vitamin.

Post Menopausal women who are at risk of osteoporosis, a disease where bone structure deteriorates, are a group that should consider a Vitamin D supplement. This supplement will help the body to absorb the Calcium needed for healthy Bone tissue.

It was recommended that women in this group should be taking a level of 1100 Units of Vitamin D (International Units or IU) per day.

Recent medical studies have shown that people with higher levels of Vitamin D in their bodies were deemed to be at significantly less risk from Breast Cancer. Figures of between 50 and 60 per cent less likely to contract the disease were uncovered during special trials.

It was suggested that following these studies, a daily intake of 2000 Units of Vitamin D (IU) would be suitable to reduce the risk of contracting this disease.

In other scientific studies recently, it has been found that Vitamin D can be instrumental in helping blood vessel and immune system functions which can obviously improve general health standards.

The proliferation of recent scientific studies and their results give a very clear message to the population that production of substantial levels of Vitamin D is not only advisable but essential . If natural sunlight is not available, then taking a suitable supplement at recommended levels is extremely advantageous.