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How To Create A House E-Mail List And How To Profit Once You Have It!

The Irresponsible School says, "Use bulk e-mail to disseminate your sales message. Don't worry about who's getting it. Just send millions out, to everybody whether they're interested or not."

The Passive School says, "Just put up your web site and wait and hope for someone, anyone to come by. There are 60 million people with access to the Internet nowadays. Someone's sure to come by. Someday."

Advocates for both positions are missing the boat. Bulk e-mail is, at best, a nuisance. If you're like me, you open your e-mail box every morning only to find 3/4's or more of the messages are from people you don't know, offering things you don't want, and forcing you to take your time to dispose of the trash. At worst, bulk e-mail is a hazard. If everybody used it, the Internet, already growing faster than the most optimistic industry experts predicted, would be brought to its knees, becoming nothing more than a super trash way.

On the other hand the passive school of thought doesn't work either. As enough commentators (including myself) in enough articles have already said, to have a commercial web site, where you expect to get prospect leads and/or sell products/services, without knowing where your traffic is coming from is daft, completely crazy. Yet, this is precisely where most business people on the 'net end up. With a site without traffic.

Fortunately, there is another way, and I'm here to introduce it to you: developing your own house e-mail list and using it to make money for your business.

A Look At Your Current Situation

Do you have a house mailing list? A list you've developed over time to which you send offers about your products and services? If you're successful, you do. No doubt you're very fussy about maintaining this list, making sure data is up-to-date and that you use it regularly, for maximum return. And rightly so. For most businesses a house mailing list is one of its essential assets, jealously guarded, zealously protected, assiduously kept current, and always sensibly augmented.

Problem is, most businesses do not have an e-mail house list. Which is absolutely crazy. Think of the advantages of e-mail over regular snail mail and even fax promotions:

it's cheap. Every piece of paper you mail or fax costs you money. Mail six sheets, instead of five, and your postage cost goes up. Fax two pages instead of one, and it costs you more. In traditional marketing, you often have to prune the message to keep your costs down. With e-mail, on the other hand, your cost is limited to your monthly access charge, generally between $10-$30. Pay this fee and you get unlimited usage!
it's fast. We all know the hazards of regular mail. How many times have you said (or heard one of your clients say), "I mailed that five, or even ten, days ago"? We hear it all the time! With the fax, there are different problems, like transmission difficulties, people who don't have dedicated lines, or machines that run out of paper. Why just today I had to call a client six times to get a fax through. Finally someone picked up on the fax line and said, "It's on the third floor, it's out of paper, and I don't feel like taking care of it just now. Call back!" So much for technology!
it's comprehensive. You can say what you need to say to make the sale. No more fitting the promotion to the communications medium. Instead, say what you need to say to make your point, and the sale.
it's perfect for follow-up and reminders. Think of the last traditional promotion you did. You sent a letter.

Maybe a brochure. But did you follow up? And if you followed up, how much time did it take... how much money did it cost? We all know that marketing follow up is necessary. But in the real world, it's time- consuming and expensive. Hence, just not done often enough. In the e-mail world, however, things are very, very different. You can follow up in hours... not days or weeks. In other words, bring home your benefits to your prospects NOW, rather than weeks from now when they'll have probably forgotten them. Obviously, the benefits of promoting through an e-mail house list are terrific. Problem is, most people aren't using this tool yet. Let's look at what they can do to take advantage of it.

List Storage

The first thing you've got to think about is where you're going to put your e-mail prospect data. Keep in mind that the reason a house list works is because it's targeted. Bulk e-mail goes to anyone, anywhere. You have little or, usually, no control over who's getting your information. With a targeted house list, things are, and should be, very different. You want to TARGET.

One easy way to begin is simply to enter data in the "favorites" category in your e-mail software. I use Eudora Light and enter prospect names and e-mail addresses under "nicknames," adding them to my permanent house e-mail list. I find it convenient to simply scroll through this list pinpointing just who will get each targeted offer.

When your house e-mail list grows beyond about 500 names, a good management program to use is

Adding To Your List

Do you ask people for their name, address, phone and fax information? Of course you do! Now you need to ask them, too, for their e-mail data. If you're not the person who gets these data, then you've got to train the people who do, secretaries, administrative assistants, customer service personnel. No one, customer or prospect, should go unasked about e-mail.

Make sure you've got a system for adding these data. If I'm online when a prospect calls, I enter the data in my system at once. If I'm not, I enter the data in my word processor for transfer to the e-mail program at a more convenient time. I prefer this method because my handwriting is not the best, and it's easy for me to misread it. Remember, an e-mail address is like a phone or URL number. A single digit wrong invalidates the whole thing.

Similarly you can add to your list by

ensuring that your e-mail address is included on all your marketing communications, stationery, envelopes, etc
adding a line on all written materials you send out requesting the prospect's e-mail address
asking people to e-mail responses to you (capturing their data)
posting in Internet newsgroups and adding the respondents to your house list, etc.

In other words, by assiduously setting about the business of asking everyone with whom you come in contact to provide you with this essential data.

Getting Ready to Use Your List: Brainstorming Offers

Far too many businesspeople are generally, even absolutely, passive in their marketing. For instance, most of the local service businesses in my neighborhood do nothing more to promote themselves than run an ad in the Yellow Pages and the odd page in the high school fund raising book. That's fine if you have very limited objectives, but if you really want to make money, you've got to MARKET... which means using offers to stimulate more and faster transactions. Remember, the objective of your business is to get in more money now while cutting the cost of doing so. Here's where a targeted house e-mail list really comes into its own... so long as you are making meaningful, motivating offers.

Here are some offer categories for you to consider:

act now to get special price
act now to get more of the product/service
act now to get special benefit
act now to get something extra
act now to get something that's limited in quantity.

Get the picture?

The offer is intended to get the prospect to ACT NOW! To use targeted e-mail successfully means brainstorming and using dozens, even hundreds, of offers. Here are some things that'll help you augment your offer file:

Snoop and snip. See what offers your competitors are using. Clip and save. Adapt and perfect.
Do the same thing with offers made by non-competitors. Mold what you see to your circumstances.
Craft your own unique offers in each of the "act now" categories above.

Don't stop until you have at least a dozen offers ready to use.

Note: these offers must present your prospects with real value. If you're not offering value, the offer's just not going to work. What's more, if you're not excited by how good the offer is, your lack of enthusiasm will transmit itself to the prospects, thereby killing the offer's effectiveness.

Store Your Offers

Offers are like gold. Thus, be sure to take care of your offers, because they're going to take care of you!

Start by listing all your offers in a special computer file. Ultimately, this file should contain

draft offers you're still fiddling with and perfecting
offers that you've used, including the date
results of each offer.

In other words, anything you do with offers should be easily accessible in just one place, your personal offer laboratory.

Use Your Offers

One of the big problems with e-mail marketing as currently practiced is that there's precious little actual marketing going on with it. Instead, people simply use the medium of e-mail to present data about what they're selling, essentially saying "Here it is. If you like what you see, get back to me." That's not marketing. It's merely the lowest form of content transfer.

Marketing is the art and science of

targeting a prospect you have good reason for thinking is interested in what you're selling
doing everything you can to understand and present the value of what you're selling, the client-centered benefits
shaping a motivating offer that gets the prospect to ACT NOW to acquire that value, those benefits, and
remembering that you must hit your prospect over and over and over (a minimum of 7 times) to ensure that the prospect has received, read, considered and acted upon this critical information.

Thus, as you see, you must go way beyond what the average lackluster Internet "marketer" does today... not just hitting your prospect once, but using the benefits of e-mail and client-centered marketing to hit your prospect over and over and over and over again with frank, candid, client-centered VALUE and the motivating OFFER that gets that prospect to take immediate action to acquire the value you're selling.

Thus, you might start by e-mailing your offer early in the morning. If your offer involves motivating with a scarce quantity of value units (offers should never be unlimited), send a follow-up 12 or 24 hours later, indicting that there is now less of the offer left... how many people have taken advantage of it... how close the offer is to being exhausted. In other words, continue to present value... but make sure this value is diminishing, thereby increasing the pressure on the prospects to take immediate action, or miss out altogether.

Continue this tact until the original offer is used up. Remember, unlike traditional marketing, this constant follow-up COSTS YOU NOTHING. Your basic transmission costs, the nemesis of traditional marketing, are already paid for!

Two notes

1) Don't feel you have to rewrite your entire marketing communication for subsequent e-mail contact

Use the same document... just alter the message at the top, the message that delivers news about the diminishing value units and the necessity for faster prospect action. In other words, keep the basic client-centered components the same... just change the opening, the grabber, to ensure that prospects can never assume what you're going to say and must constantly read your client-centered message.

2) Just before the offer is exhausted, send a "last call" message, indicating that if the prospect doesn't act immediately, the value units in question will all be done and the prospect will miss out altogether

Stress value, as usual, and stress the fact that this value is soon to be gone. Both are essential motivating elements. You will find that this "last call" message is one of the most motivating, hence the most lucrative, in your offer arsenal, and that e-mail is ideally situated to deliver it. When the offer is exhausted, send a message saying so. Part of what you're doing is training prospects, saying, in effect, my offers are so great, so client-centered, that they go fast. And if you miss them, you'll lose out. SO ACT IMMEDIATELY WHEN YOU GET ONE!

E-Mail Copy Tips

E-mail copywriting is different from traditional copywriting because e-mail doesn't offer you the chance to use graphics, color, or other copy enhancing devices. E-mail is about transmitting unlimited amounts of text.

As a result, I've heard moans from some marketers saying that they can't get their message across through e-mail. That's rubbish, of course. The job of a good copywriter and marketer is to seize the prospect's imagination and for that the written word remains supreme.

E-mail is immediate, intimate, a poke into the private world of the recipient. Treat it accordingly.

Never apologize for sending e-mail. One of the silliest things going on with e-mail these days is all the messages you get saying in the most abject tones, "Pardon me for intruding into your life." First of all, we all know the message sender isn't sorry; second of all, it's just plain stupid.
lead with your offer. What people want, what they have always wanted and always will want, is meaningful value. Well, don't beat around the bush. Give it to them. Lead with the most motivating offer you've got. "Hey, bub, look what I've got for you!" When people are interested in getting value, all they want to know is what you've got for them. Not phony apologies and meandering verbiage.
Hammer home the benefits. An offer is your lead benefit. Follow with subsidiary benefits in priority order. Start each sentence with the magic words, "you get..." Again, let your prospect know how much you're offering... everything you're offering. And make it exciting, focused, entirely client-centered.
Sprinkle client-centered testimonials in the text. People want to know that other people just like them have used what you're selling successfully, that they got VALUE. Make sure your testimonials, signed by real people, deliver that message!

Are you selling something that is best seen with graphics? Then by all means direct people to your Web site. But only direct people away from your e-mail message if you absolutely need to. Remember, the object of your e-mail message is to make an immediate sale (thus, you'll need to include order form and all follow-up particulars) or to get the prospect to contact you immediately and so identify herself as a qualified prospect. Telling people to go elsewhere for more information only slows the process.

Last Words

In case it's not obvious, I LOVE e-mail marketing. When people ask about who's making money on the Internet, my hand shoots up like the enthusiastic sixth grader who knows the answer to the question. When you use targeted e-mail marketing, work assiduously to build your house e-mail list and truly perfect and use client-centered offers, it doesn't matter whether anyone visits your Web site or whether you ever send a piece of untargeted (and very annoying) bulk e-mail. You're still going to make money from the 'net. And when you think you can do all this, sending unlimited amounts of client-centered material, for not more than a buck a day, you'd be crazy if you didn't institute a concerted effort to build your e-mail house mailing list and to use it every single day. When you do, you make money. It's as simple as that.