Email List = Audience = Influence = Revenue

We touched on email distribution lists back in Chapter 9. In that chapter, we identified three different types of email lists:

1. Your own list.
2. Joint Venture lists.
3. Email Distribution Lists.

In this chapter, we’ll talk about how you can use your intermediate content to develop your own email list. Obviously, one of the most valuable pieces of information you can get from people who find you is their email address. Once you have that, you can stay in touch with them far into the future.

Chapter 22 discussed leveraging your beginner content by using it in seven different ways on different platforms and catering to different audiences in different places. That’s one of the most powerful chapters in this book. Done properly, you can be more successful than 99% of your competition while working less. Sounds good to me!

But there’s one thing we didn’t discuss and it’s just as important as leveraging your content.

Wherever you offer your free beginner content, you must tell your audience what else you offer (your intermediate and advanced content) and include a call-to-action so they know how to get it. Your beginner content demonstrates your expertise, but your intermediate content is where your audience starts to interact with you. Your intermediate content is the beginning of your sales funnel.

Let’s say you have a 17-page white paper as your intermediate content. Maybe it reveals new trends in your industry. Perhaps it lists the top tactics to find new clients, grow revenues or reduce costs. One great idea is to do a survey and then compile the results into a report.

At the bottom of your blog post, you should instruct your readers to click a link to receive the report. When publishing your articles, use the Author Resource Box to tell people about the report and provide a link. When uploading a free ebook, make sure it has links to the report. When you record your podcast, tell your listeners about it. And in your YouTube video, be sure to mention the report and tell them where to get it.

All of your beginner content should point to your intermediate content. You’re building a sales funnel. You’re leading your prospects down a path. First, you tease them with some great complimentary information – whet their appetite. Then, you entice them with more goodies – more valuable incentives – to take action and interact with you.

Soon, we’ll be inviting them to spend money, but not yet. We still need to build our list. We want them to be soooo impressed that spending money with you is a complete no-brainer. We’ll get to that in Chapter 24.

The important thing is that the people who take the next step need to give you their email address (or perhaps their cell phone number for text message campaigns) before they get the promised intermediate content, and an email autoresponder makes that easy to do.

What’s an autoresponder? It’s a platform that can manage your email marketing efforts. You can upload prewritten emails that go out automatically when someone subscribes. The platform can also manage unsubscribe requests when people want to leave the list, all while maintaining the database of email addresses in a secure location.

I believe an autoresponder is absolutely essential to modern marketing and three of my favorite providers are Constant Contact, Infusionsoft and Aweber.

As you may know, this book began as a free email course on my Tactical Execution website. Those who subscribed got one email each week for a year, and it was all done automatically. I didn’t have to do a thing. The platform automatically sent out the emails according to a predetermined time-lapse schedule.

Using an autoresponder, you can quickly create a simple sign-up form and put it on your website. Believe me; it’s easy to do! Then, you can write the first email people receive when they sign up. You can also upload a PDF file and have the autoresponder attached it with the email. That means it can deliver a report or white paper (or whatever) all without you having to lift a finger.

What does this mean? It means you need to create your intermediate content first and then create a page on your website where people can enter their email address to receive it. And finally, you need to include a call-to-action with every piece of beginner content you publish.

Whether you’re using Constant Contact or Aweber or some other autoresponder, you can usually create as many lists as you want. If you already have an autoresponder set up, don’t worry. Just create a separate list and a separate sign-up form and you’ll start building a second list.

Some people will sign up for one or the other. Some will sign up for both. I have six different sign-up forms on my websites, feeding six different lists. And when I send out a broadcast email to all my lists at the same time, the platform automatically ensures nobody gets duplicate emails.

By the way, your intermediate content could also be a complimentary one-hour consultation or a property assessment or a portfolio analysis or website diagnostic or virtually anything. Take some time to think about your intermediate content. Start structuring it in a way where you can offer it to your prospects in return for their email address.

What are you really doing? You’re qualifying your prospects, that’s what! This is Sales 101. The people who request your intermediate content are demonstrating their interest in your expertise. They are demonstrating their trust in your knowledge. In Chapter 24, we’ll give them something to buy!

Author Bio: Patrick is the author of \”Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed\” (2011, Wiley) and a regular speaker for Bloomberg TV. Watch his video about building your email list with free content on YouTube.

Category: Business
Keywords: patrick,schwerdtfeger,build,email,list,free,content