Responsive Email List: How To Build Responsive Email Lists Part 2

Build Responsive Email Lists

This post is continuation of Part 1. Be sure to check out part 1 of post before reading this >> Responsive Email List: How To Build Responsive Email Lists Part 1.

In the previous post I discussed

what is a responsive email list, and
why it is important to care about having a responsive email list in the first place.

I talked about

dead weight (unresponsive subscribers in your list),
why you should pay attention to open rates and
all that stuff.

In this post, I am going to discuss how you can really build a responsive list – a list that is

clean,
serves the purpose and
connects with you (assuming that you connect with your list).

Use double optin

This is simpler to understand, right? In fact this is pure common sense. If the subscribers in your list did not give their consent by clicking on the confirmation link you sent them, you cannot expect them to be responsive!

So what is double optin?

Let’s say you have a wonderful squeeze page offering an e-book or a free course in exchange for the email address of your target audience. Or let’s say you silently add everyone who leaves a comment on your blog to your list (by ticking a check box that says “join my list” by default).

Now whether your target prospect himself gave the his/her email list or whether you added him/her doesn’t matter. You need to ask your subscriber once again to confirm whether you have his/her consent or not.

This can be done by turning on double optin – most email autoresponder services like Aweber, GetResponse etc. have this option. Simply make sure that you have turned on this option. And the rest will be taken care of.

Turning on double optin has two benefits –

You can reduce the number of spam complaints. People who have given their consent to accept your email will not report your mails as spam (mostly).
You can expect your subscribers to actually open your emails and take action if they have shown some sort of interest in your beforehand; and clicking the activation link (double optin) is a nice indication of this.

Turning on double option doesn’t take more than a couple of seconds actually.

On a side note, I agree that there’s a lot of debate on whether single optin (where the subscriber doesn’t have to confirm and the list owner can already send him/her email) or double optin – I am not going deep into that. Both of these options have their own pluses and minuses.

But if you want to build a responsive email list, you should turn double optin on.

Make sure your subscriber falls in love with you BEFORE they subscribe

There are various ways to get people to enter their email address into a form and yes you can add anyone as your subscriber by silently keeping that subscribe button ticked (wicked).

But it boils down to this:

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink

If they don’t fall in love with you (even before they leave their email address with you) they won’t be responsive.

How can you make your readers fall in love with you and then subscribe? Offer them something valuable! That’s it.

Its simple, but not necessarily easy as it takes some hard work and smart work to get there.

You need to first identify your target/potential subscribers (ahem).
You need to find out what they actually need and what their problem is.
You need to do some background research to find out the solution to their problems.
…And of course come up with your way of saying things and helping them.
You need to do this in a consistent manner.
You need to go the extra mile and help them outside your blog.

In short you should build an empire of people who religiously love and listen to you – not just a list!

You may provide this content in the form of blog post, free tutorials, free ebooks, whitepapers or in any form you prefer.

All this may sound overwhelming. But they’re worth it – coz these steps will absolutely help you to build a list of loyal readers or I can say fans!

Interact and connect

The future of internet will be (and is almost already now) connections. We connect with real people and do not put up content on webpages simply for the sake of it.

We write blog posts, email newsletter, ebooks, white papers, tweets and Facebook updates to communicate with people. We ultimately want to interact and connect with people.

Your content should have that element which helps you to connect with people and successfully interact with them effectively. In other words, your content should be in-depth and as much informational as possible while at the same time be entertaining, engaging and lively.

Write for your audience and write as you speak to them. Speak with your voice (do not adapt or copy someone else’s voice).

If people know that you’re a real person who reads and responds to their emails, who is open to connect and who can help, they will surely respond by being responsive to your emails as well.

Build Responsive Email List: Takeaway

Here you go – 3 simple, yet effective ways to build a highly responsive email list. The size of your list doesn’t mean anything except the money you have to pay to your email autoresponder company to own that list. Apart from that, the numbers really don’t matter.

All that matters is how interested your list is to what you share with them.