Here’s why building an email list is important, not just for affiliate marketers, but for any business owner. (You can also download this article as a pdf document here: email marketing pdf.) With a website, you can attract traffic to your business. But on a website a visitor will generally only stick around for a few minutes. After that, they are gone, perhaps forever! If you have an offer on your website, which allows visitors to turn into email subscribers, a longer term relationship can be built.
Once someone is on your email list, you can communicate with them for days, weeks, months and even years! On a website, you have less than 10 minutes to make a sale. With an email list you can offer value from your emails over a much monger period of time. If you bring your subscriber a lot of value in your email messages, they are much more likely to get to know, like and trust you.
Why Building An Email List Is Important
Attention is the scarce resource in today’s market place. With hundreds of thousands of websites online, catching someone attention on your website is a short term affair! But if someone signs up to your email list, you have captured their interest (and attention). If you continue to provide useful information through your emails, your subscribers will start to develop more trust in you. Once this happens, they are more likely to make a buying decision. Plus, you extend the time period that this can happen with an email list.
With a digital affiliate product or training of some kind, an email list is all the more important. It’s obvious what physical products are and customers often know if they want a physical product or not. But with a digital product, it can take a little more persuasion to show someone the value in what you are selling.
Customers also take from 6-8 “touch points” in order to make a buying decision. They simply don’t buy from a website straight away. A touch point is where you connect your customer with a product, or through your emails. So from a website, they only get one touch point. But on an email list, they have several. Assuming they open your emails once they have joined your list, they are much more likely to purchase from you than from a single website visit.
Why Building An Email List Is Important
Customers who may otherwise have forgotten about you and your offerings are reminded about you through email marketing campaigns. With an email list, those customers who are most interested in your products/service will be kept informed of any discounts or updates to your offerings. You can also communicate your product’s value more effectively over a longer period of time.
Email lists can grow into the tens of thousands too! With a small email list, you won’t see huge growth in your business. But as your list grows, you should see more of your subscribers making purchases. As an affiliate marketer this is particularly important because in the early days it’s a tough ride! As a new affiliate marketer, building a list is one of the best things you can do for your business and motivation. Many affiliates quit far too early because they don’t get the traction they want. When there’s nothing to see in returns, it’s hard to keep going.
An email list can help compound your efforts over time. As an email list grows past 1000 subscribers, you are likely to see older subscribers taking action. Older subscribers who joined your list months ago, will have received an ongoing email campaign for a lot longer than newer subscribers. If your messaging is congruent with your offer, (and what your subscribers want), this can help massively to grow an affiliate business.
Without an email list as an affiliate you are relying on website traffic alone to close the sales for you. With an email list you have the compounding effect of building longer term relationships with potential customers through email.
Know, Like And Trust
There’s millions of websites on the internet which are trying to sell you something. The most trust worthy sites have become more popular over time. Sites like eBay and Amazon are those which have earned people’s trust because they have been around a long time.
Sellers have reviews which customers can check out before making a purchase. Despite the growing trust in online purchases, the cheap cost and convenience, some customers remain cautious of buying online. This is rightly so because there’s still plenty of unscrupulous scammers after your hard earned money! Unfamiliar websites and products are therefore met with scepticism which can be overcome with the power of email marketing.
Once you start to receive useful information through email marketing, which is helpful and informative, you begin to trust the person sending those messages. With spammy messages who’s only aim is to sell, you’re much more sceptical. So if you design your email marketing messages to be helpful and genuinely offer value, you have more chance of building a longer term relationship with your subscribers. Build first, sell later. Don’t sell first because you will lose your subscribers trust immediately, and they’ll unsubscribe.
Summary
So you should now now why building an email list is important. Whether you are in business for yourself, or have an affiliate business, an email list can help you grow and increase your income by connecting more regularly with more people. As your list grows, you should notice more of your leads are making purchases. Your email messages should be congruent with your offer, of course. So whatever you use as a lead magnet to get them to sign up, should relate to your email messages and the products you sell.
If, after several thousand subscribers you don’t notice an up tick in purchases, there’s something amiss and you should look at your marketing funnel more carefully to see what is wrong. It could be your marketing efforts are targeting the wrong kind of subscriber! See how to know your target market. Or, your messaging might not resonate with your audience for some reason.
For more training and help with growing an affiliate marketing business, including if you’re starting from scratch, check out this free video series.
