Many Internet marketers believe the most difficult part of email list building is getting people to sign up in the first place. However, my belief is the biggest challenge facing new home business owners online is keeping people interested and maintaining them as members after they sign up.
People sometimes have short attention spans as well as short memories so you must keep your enterprise in the fore front of their thoughts or you will eventually lose them as subscribers and as customers.
Here are 5 techniques you can use to hold your list members attention and sustain their loyalty as subscribers to your business and to your email directory:
1. Keep your messages short and to the point. People are normally very busy and don’t have the time to read long winded, hype filled diatribes and they won’t. If they continue to receive such letters it won’t be long before you begin receiving unsubscribe notices from your members.
Make your paragraphs no longer than two or three sentences each which will make your message easy to scan quickly. A bullet type format is also very effective with each sentence highlighting the content of your memo. Also keep it simple and make it easy to understand which will also save people time.
2. You must provide valuable content for your readers in your email messages. If your list members are used to receiving value from you they won’t hesitate in opening your letter. However, if you’re continually trying to sell to them and aren’t paying attention to them as clients or as valued customers then you’re headed down the wrong path if you want to keep them as subscribers to your business.
3. Perhaps one of the most effective strategies for getting your email read is to provide downloadable content in your text. For example, send your text message email containing a link to a downloadable file such as a PDF which perhaps contains a newsletter or maybe you’re providing a course via a drip feed system which they will have to right click on and save target as in order to save it to their desktop. This delivery method demonstrates a business owner who’s making an effort to provide value to his members and who’s making an effort to keep them as subscribers.
4. A great way to stay on the cutting edge and to keep your readers interested and involved is to use audio and or video in your messages. The best way to accomplish this is to send your email with a note informing your readers there’s a message on your website for them and of course include the link. Embedded audio or video in the email will only annoy your recipients so, as with the downloadable message, it’s better to add a link to the audio or video presentation.
5. Without warning and on a regular basis give your subscribers a free gift. People love surprises as well as freebies so you’ll be killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, by using this tactic. This will demonstrate your appreciation of your list members and will help to maintain their loyalty to your home business and to you as the owner.
Building a responsive email list of hungry buyers is the most important thing you can do to ensure the long term success of your Internet marketing career and your home based business online. However, maintaining and nurturing this list is more important because unless you pay attention to your members it won’t matter how many of them there are because they will never buy from you again.