Opt-In List Marketing

The only things that matter in real estate are location, location and
location. The only things that matter for your web site are traffic,
traffic and traffic. Just because you launched that spiffy looking new
web site or you’ve created some sharp autoresponders, there’s no
guarantee that someone will find you. You must drive traffic to your
site. More specifically, you need to funnel prospects and clients into
your autoresponder or steer people to your web site on an ongoing
basis.
One method to acquire email addresses is referred to as the opt-in list.
This is where someone has voluntarily given you her/his email address
in exchange for some free or low-cost item. Or maybe they responded
to an ad you placed somewhere on the Internet. Or maybe that person
attended one of your presentations. Maybe, as we’ll see in just a bit,
that person has come to you as a result of some affiliate program you
are a member of. The key is to get the email address.
Over time, as more and more people volunteer their email addresses,
you are building a database of names that are of like-minded people.
That database is the opt-in list of names of people that have given you
permission to stay in touch with them. This will form the basis of what
I call permission-based email marketing (see number 2 below).
My opt-in list is composed of people who fit into one of four general
categories:
1. Business owners and professionals, or anyone who wants to build or
enhance their personal, interpersonal and electronic networking
skills.
2. They want to learn how to use those skills to grow their career or
business, or to market themselves more creatively and effectively.
3. They want to generate multiple sources of income.
4. They are interested in leveraged or residual income, or they
currently make a living via residual income based activities, e.g.,
insurance salespeople, bankers, real estate investors, web site
owners, etc.
Many times, these categories overlap. Marketing 101 dictates that you
define your audience before you set out to meet their needs. This is a
key reason why there are far more dot-bombs than winning dot-coms:
too many sites searching for a market. Each of the following two
diagrams contains a step-by-step flow chart of the stages you would
go through to acquire email addresses. The first Opt-In List Direct
diagram illustrates how you will get leads directly as a result of your
advertisement. The second, Two-Step Opt-In List, is basically the
same procedure, but it allows you to make some money along the
way. These serve as “templates”, and you can even use them to get
paid simply for the act of acquiring the leads. Won’t that be nice!?
Let’s see how they work!
By the way, before we review the templates, a word about SPAM.
SPAM is unsolicited email that has not been requested by the recipient.
Never, never, never, never, never, NEVER SPAM!!!! I cannot
emphasize this strongly enough. Always get permission from the
recipients of your message before you send the email.
If you send to a list that you bought, obtain written permission from
the list vendor as to the permission rights of the list. If the vendor will
not provide that permission, don’t do business with them. If someone
voluntarily opts into your list, ensure that the autoresponder, or
whatever other service you’re using, provides an audit trail as to
where, how and when that request came in. If you are using leads you
got from, say a speaking engagement, retain the written record of the
request to be added to your list.
And one last piece of CYA (cover your assets) advice. If you get a
listing of names and email addresses from an organization, e.g., the
membership list of a group for which you made a presentation, make
sure you retain the permission letter or email message attached to the
list. If someone goes to your information service provider (ISP) and
gets temporary amnesia about how you got their name, you just pull
out the piece of paper that has permission on it. Some ISPs have
become very strict, with little to zero tolerance. They can and will shut
you down! So don’t chance it. Get the permission!