The quantity of email subscribers isn't as valuable as the quality.
Want to know what’s more important than a great big mailing list?
The relationship you have with them.
It’s true. You can have 100,000 people on your list, but if they don’t know you, and worse, if they don’t trust you, then that great big list is worth next to nothing.
Internet marketing expert Connie Ragen Green wrote in her book, “Huge Profits with a Tiny List,” that she earned more than 6 figures one year with a list of just over 600 subscribers! So if your list size is not (yet) where you want it to be, don’t let that hold you back from creating and marketing products to them. Just be sure you’re spending time building your relationship, and they’ll reward you with the profits.
Stay in Touch
This is likely the biggest mistake new email marketers and coaches make when it comes to their list. Sure, you have great intentions, but somehow sending emails just doesn’t feel so important when you only have a few hundred people on your list. So you procrastinate.
Days turn into weeks. Weeks become months. Pretty soon you realize it’s been 187 days since you last sent an email. Yikes! That’s no way to build a relationship.
Make it a point to mail your list at least once per week, just so they don’t forget who you are (and why they subscribed in the first place).
Always Keep Their Best Interests in Mind
Making money is great. Ultimately, that’s everyone’s goal. But hammering your list with endless offers is not the best way to go about it.
Remember, you’re building a relationship, and that means always asking yourself, “Is this in the best interest of my subscriber?” When you email with a genuine desire to help your reader, it will always be well received.
Remember, They Need You
Here’s another all-too-common mistake newer list owners make: assuming “someone else has already done it/said it/mailed about it.”
Which could not be further from the truth, and here’s why: Your subscribers count on you to give them the information they need. They’re looking to you for advice. They need your insight into the right training and coaching programs, which software to buy, what blogs to read. And it doesn’t matter if other coaches are talking about an offer or new product or have developed an eCourse that’s similar to yours. Because for some people, the message will only make a connection when they hear it from you.
The bottom line? As with most things, quality trumps quantity when it comes to list building.
Just because you don’t have thousands of subscribers is no reason to avoid mailing them, and it’s definitely not an excuse for back-burnering your coaching programs and training courses.
Remember, your subscribers are counting on you.
