Email List Building - It's Benefits And How To Start Building An Email List In 5 Minutes With MailChimp

Email list building, how important is it to your online business success? how do you start a successful list building? Where can you set up an opt-in and start building an email list immediately without spending a dime? All these questions is what this article discusses.

The Importance of Email list Building

You must have heard the saying many times: "The money is in the list". It is probably even sounding like a cliche now in the Internet marketing business. But is it just another cliche or is it true? Yes, it is right to say the money is in the list, but this is depending on how you use your list. But we will get to that in a beat. If you have never saw the importance of building an email list, there is great importance. One great importance of email list building is that it allows you to build deeper relationship with your audience and trust, because through emails you can talk to them as if you were one on one facing each other. You can send them exclusive tips about your topic and sometimes you can get personal too and talk as friends. You build trust, and once your audience trusts you, you can get them to do anything that will benefit them but that will also benefit you. I'll itemize the benefits of an email list building below.

The Benefits of having an Email List

• You build relationship with your subscribers.
• You have a targeted responsive audience to create awareness for an affiliate product you are promoting or your own product you are about to launch.
• You easily generate sales from your list without spending money on advertising.
• Send updates about new content on your site and develop long term visitors
• You have subscribers who trust you enough to promote your site and any new project you have coming up to others for free.

Having an email list is great but not everyone who has an email list is maximizing its benefits. How do you start a successful email list and maximize its benefits?

Things you need to know to start a successful email list

If you just put up an opt-in box asking for people's email because you see others doing it, it's likely you won't get much benefits if any for the list you create, that is even if some people subscribed to the list. To start email list building you must have a clear purpose for the list and what you intend to do with it. I explain this better below.

Purpose: Why are you building a list and what will you do with the list? It is unlikely that people will just opt-in to a list without knowing why they are opting in. Will you ask them to opt-in with the promise of sending them a newsletter or you want them to opt-in to get an ebook download without any actual promise of what you will do with their emails?. Whether you promise a newsletter or just opt-in for a free download, you will get subscribers. But you will maximize the benefits of having a list if you can plan to regularly send your subscribers helpful emails in a newsletter form. It's only when you regularly contact them with free helpful information that you will build trust. If you just collect emails and do nothing with it until you have an offer and then blast it to them, your subscribers would have even forgotten about who you are then, and just delete your email as spam. So that is why I said earlier that the statement "the money is in the list" is right depending on how you use your list. If you just blast offers, then your list, no matter how many thousands of subscribers you have, will be almost useless.

If you decide to start a newsletter or an ezine you must decide on the following before putting up an opt-in box promising people a newsletter.

Who? :Who are your target?

Why? : By serving a newsletter what do you hope to gain? Do you want subscribers to revisit your site and click on ads or do you have a service and want them to retain it?

What? : What benefits do you hope to deliver to your subecribers with your newsletter? A tip of the day? Will you digest news in your field down to a small number of snippets? Will you be sending out just updates about your site? Or will you write an original article with value information in every newsletter?

How often will you publish?: Weekly? bi-weekly? Monthly? This depends on how much time you think you can spare preparing newsletters, especially if you want to be writing original content each time. Weekly might be too tasking, monthly is ideal for a beginner.

Once you know all these, your invitation page to your newsletter sign up will have a clear message and visitors will be more likely to subscribe.

Email List Building - How to Start Building a Mailling List Free with Mailchimp

You need an an email marketing service to start collecting the data of your visitors. There are many Email marketing services but the 3 tops are Getresponse , Aweber and Mailchimp . You can use any of the three effectively for your email marketing campaign. But if you are just starting out and on a tight budget then use Mailchimp. Mailchimp allows you to build up to 2000 subscribers for free before asking you to upgrade. You can send up to 12,000 emails per month.

How to Use Mailchimp to Build a list

Go to Mailchimp and sign up for free. You won't be asked for credit card or anything.

Login to your dashboard and follow the steps there to create a list. Then set up your opt-in form and paste on your site. Directions to create your list and set up your opt-in form is provided at Mailchimp in your dashboard. Follow the directions and in 5 minutes you will start your email list building.