One of the best things that I did early on in my internet marketing career was to build an email list of customers.

In this post I want to share with you some of the best tactics that I have used to grow my email lists in the various niches that I am in, so that you can copy my success and grow big email lists as well.

Before I discuss how to build an email list, it is important that you understand the very basic concept of a squeeze page. In case you are a newbie, a squeeze page is a basic page that is designed to get the visitor to leave their name and email address, so that you can move them onto your email database.

Squeeze pages can come in many shapes and sizes, a few being flying popovers, exit grabbers, videos and standard pages. The key element is that you must make sure you are giving the visitor a good reason to leave their details. Giving away a free mini course of some type is a great thing to do.

I am not going to go into the do’s and don’t’s of a squeeze page now, but I encourage you to spend some time learning how to make a great squeeze page, because it is a very valuable skill to have.

Now I am going to outline 7 strategies that work for me, however keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list, but these tactics work well indeed!

How To Build An Email List

1.) Forum Signature Links

Forums are a great resource for internet marketers, as this is where your target market hangs out online, and they are ideal places to find candidates to join your email list. The best way to do this, is to have a link in your signature that goes to a squeeze page. The more you post in the forum the more your signature link is placed, and the higher the likelihood of someone clicking the link and signing up.

The great thing about forums is that people use them to search for answers, and Google indexes them quickly, so the more your get involved, the more traffic you can get to that squeeze page through your signature link. This works exceptionally well in the Internet Marketing Niche.

2.) Blog Commenting

Blogs can be a great way to get a back link to your website for SEO, if of course the blog has the no follow tag switched off. However even if the no follow tag is switched on, if the blog is a high traffic blog, then this is another chance for you to leave a link with your comment, that goes to a squeeze page. Once again these are relevant leads and cost you nothing to gain, except your time.

A good way to find out how much traffic a blog gets is to use Alexa.com, and analyze the sites stats there.

3.) Content Network

You can of course pay for traffic to your squeeze pages, and this works for me, however I’ve experienced the best results when using Google Content Network. The volume is large when you are using the Content Network, however if done badly can actually be a disaster.

With that said, if you use the Google Placement Targeting feature, you can tell Google what sites you would like your ads to appear on. Then all you need to do is search in Google on high volume keywords, look at the first page results for each one, and take note of the ones that have Google Adsense on them.

These sites obviously get traffic, and you are choosing the keywords, so if done well the result is higher CTR (click through rate)
which means lower CPC (cost per click) and more leads onto your list.

One last point to note is, make sure you track what you are doing, by placing Google’s tracking code on the page a visitor reaches after they have left their name and email and clicked submit. You can also set up reports within Google to track what websites are giving the best conversions.

4.) Buy Products In Your Niche

This tactic works better in some niches than others, nonetheless one tactic is to purchase products in your niche market that have active forums for members. By doing this you can get involved in the forums and once again have a link in your signature to a squeeze page. The great thing about this tactic is that you are getting ‘Buyer’ leads onto your email list, which is worth gold.

5.) Twitter

I’m pretty sure a vast majority of the people reading this post will have a Twitter account. However a great way to gain even more leads is to have a link to a squeeze page in an auto-reply message that people get when they follow you.

Alternatively you can have a link to a squeeze page above the bio field in your Twitter profile, like I do.

6.) YouTube

More and more people are using Youtube every month, and an easy way to gain leads is to create  a video in your niche that has a strong and very obvious call to action. The video can either direct the user to click the link to your squeeze page on the right, or go to the page directly, with a very easy URL to type into the browser.

7.) Free Traffic on Longtail Keywords

One simple way to drive traffic to your websites and blogs is to continually be getting new content indexed that is optimized for longtail keywords. Longtail phrases are less competitive and therefore little SEO is required in some circumstances to get a high Google ranking.

If you do this regularly, and have a sign up method on the pages, then you will also gain leads this way too. Although the traffic on longtails is less, of you regularly add more content then it will add up.

That’s all from me, I hope you have learned some valuable tricks on how to build an email list.

I would love to hear from you, so please feel welcome to share your own tricks or simply comment below!!

It’s no secret that building an email list is a very wise thing to do in your niche, that is of course if the niche you’re in responds well to email marketing.

With that said there are some common mistakes that I regularly see people make with their emails (sometimes myself) so I thought I would provide the top 7 things from my experience that have greatly increased my commissions through email marketing.

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Top 7 Email Marketing Tips

1.) Headlines: Your email headlines play a big role and will be the crucial deciding factor of whether your emails even get opened and the desired action be taken. A great headline will have a strong benefit, but that benefit must remain blind. By this I mean don’t give away what the email is all about so there is no need to read it.

Let’s take an example:

A.) Firstname Learn Why Talking About Yourself In Emails Can Drastically Reduce The Responsiveness Of Your List

B.) Firstname Are You Making This Crucial Error In Your Email Promotions?

The first example gives away what the email is about and can cause the reader to think that they don’t need to read anymore. Where as the second one arouses curiosity.

2.) It’s Not About You: When you write your emails remember that your reader, as sincere as they may be, are not interested in hearing about what you have been doing and everything about your life. The underlying question that people ask when they open, or even consider opening an email is – what’s in it for me? So make sure that you don’t ramble on about yourself.

3.) Powerful Copy Writing: I can’t stress enough how important it is for any internet marketers to learn the skill of copy writing. The is widely considered amongst the top marketers to be one of the most valuable skills that any marketer can acquire. If you learn to write powerful copy in your emails you will get a much better response from your readers.You can learn a lot from Gary Halbert if you are looking for great advice.

4.) Video: I have found that using video has increased my email response significantly. I saw a huge increase in email opens and a huge amount of positive feedback from my subscribers when I sent links to educational videos. Video is growing extremely rapidly across the internet and I think that websites are going to take on the form of infomercials, which to be honest is already happening, check out a lot of Clickbank’s high seller’s sales pages!

5.) Don’t Go Dormant: It is really important that you stay in regular contact with your subscribers, and don’t make the mistake of going dormant and not contacting your list for a few months. It really doesn’t matter how large your list is, what matters is how much response you get from them, and not contacting them will ruin the responsiveness.

6.) Review Products: There may be a huge number of products that you could promote to your email list, and new ones may be coming out all the time. However although it may be easy to make sales out of newbies on your list, I strongly warn against doing this. I always review products before I recommend them to my list, this way I know that what I am recommending is quality and my credibility will not be adversely affected in anyway. Your focus should be long term relationships and not quick wins.

7.) Clarity: When you do write emails to your list make sure that you keep the goal of that email clear and do to make the mistake of introducing multiple ideas and confusing the reader. The entire email should point towards one action which is clear and easy to execute, such as click here and do this.

Some of you may think that this is obvious but you would be amazed at the amount of emails I receive, where I am left wondering what I am supposed to do next and why I should do it!

Thats all from me,

See ya!