Build a List for Free Using Social Media

Building a list is one of the top priorities for any Internet Network Marketer. You can buy lists or rent lists. But building your own list is by far the best way to go. When you build your own, you have your own customers, or potential customers, not someone else’s.

So, where do you start?

Old-School Network Marketing List Building

In the old model of Network Marketing, you can buy leads from other people’s lists. There are some obvious problems with this approach:

* It’s gets expensive
* You’re not necessarily getting "hot leads"
* Cold-calling to people who may or may not want to talk with you

What’s the solution?

Internet Network Marketing List Building

There are lots of free ways to attract leads to you on the Internet. The benefits of these attraction marketing methods are:

* They’re free
* Your leads are already interested in what you’re providing
* You’re calling people who would welcome hearing from you (and may have requested that you contact them).

How exactly is this done?

"How I Built My First List"

Mike Klingler’s three-part video series "How I Built My First List" demystifies the list-building process by showing you step-by-step how he built his first list of 1,172 Prospects in 3 Days days when he was a newbie by using methods that are free and available to everyone.

Central to Mike’s approach is applying the concept of "leverage" to developing content that grabs the reader’s or viewer’s interest.

In the videos, Mike shows how he used the following techniques to generate interest and list members:

* Leveraging a social movement
* Leveraging timely content
* Leveraging a well-known person

The most useful part of the series is that Mike breaks down how you can use these same methods to build your own list.

Use Social Media to Build Your List

Mike focuses in detail on social media as a means of list-building: Articles, Videos, Twitter, social networks.

"How I Built My First List" takes you beyond the obvious "socializing" aspect of social media and reveals the specific ways to use attraction marketing techniques to create an online presence that attracts prospects to you and build your list.

Video #3 is my favorite one. Here, Mike outlines how to use Twitter to develop relationships and potential prospects. He provides a wide range of specific examples of the type of tweets that attract prospects, how to create an "attractive" online presence, and how to leverage that presence into leads for your list.

The power of using social media to build your list is that even before someone joins your list, they have developed a relationship with you and vice-versa. They’re not just a name on a list, but a person that you know. More importantly, you are someone that they know. And that relationship strengthens your ability to market to that person over time.

The Value of Your List

"How I Built My First List" is probably the most comprehensive tutorial on free list building available.

Building a list by first developing relationships is powerful and will give you added leverage in marketing to that list over time.

As you continue to add people to your list, you will be continuing to develop those relationships. As your list grows and the relationships strengthen, you’ll have an increasingly powerful tool that will enable you to market effectively to an ever-growing number of people.

Want to fast-forward your business and your list-building efforts?
Then "How I Built My First List" is the video series for you.

Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp

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Autoresponder Email Deliverability Tips

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

* http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

By Tom Kulzer
CEO, AWeber