Online and Offline marketers have found a way to quickly build Success lists and monetize on their email subscribers. Follow up email lists are a critical tool for any marketer. Lists of 10, 100, 10,000 or 100,000 people are all valuable. A short term mistake is focusing only on the size of the list. List size does not produce results; we must learn and understand the strategies and programs it takes to build and monetize a list. We begin with laser focused lead generation; targeted challenges, effective opt-in boxes and value driven follow up content for subscribers. These paragraphs will summarize four email marketing list building strategies and show you how to build a successful email marketing list.

Step one is targeted market or niche objectives. Business success comes from focused attention to a specific market’s needs. What are you trying to achieve? What service do you provide? What problem can you fix? Look at the big picture of your business and then plan effective marketing programs, timelines and milestones to accomplish predetermined goals. Develop a series of messages to lead your target audience to your offer page. We accomplish this with traffic methods.

Step two is niche targeted and focused traffic generation. Traffic or people reading your content are the base elements in the Internet marketing world. That’s seems simple. What is not obvious is what needs to be done to attract this traffic.

For example, there are search page results, Adwords, affiliate incentives, and many Offline ways of generating online traffic. Some marketers spend $15,000/month in Google Adwords, some attract with high percentage affiliate commissions and some hire teams to create and post content. If you are an Internet marketing novice, the vast array of differing methods available can be overwhelming. So start with one and get good at it. In the end, traffic and email marketing depends on how much available time you have, how big a budget you have and how effective a manager you are.

Step three is well placed lead captures or “opt-in” boxes. We create a steady stream of readers. Then our opt-in box gives people the ability to request more information. To increase our opt-in numbers we use incentives to coax prospective clients to leave names and email addresses. The more value you give away the high the opt-in and the more you get in return. Help other people get what they want and you will get what you want.

Step four is follow up with subscribers. Again value is key. After subscribing to your list, people are going to look for valuable knowledge, feel good entertainment or relevant information about what you are doing and how they can benefit. When your prospects perceived benefit his higher than they’re perceived monetary value then they will be willing to purchase whatever it is you have available for sale.

Experienced marketers differ in how many messages to send to a list in a given week. Aggressive marketers or guru’s send several times a day. The downside is that this practice causes rapid list burn out or churn. Consistent and valuable information is key. Emailing valuable information two or three times a week cuts down on churn and increases reader interest. Longer periods tend to decrease retention and your list will get stale.

The four steps we talked about are the basis of a profitable email marketing plan and key to building a valuable business. Follow up lists are the elementary building blocks for any Online or Offline business in todays business environment. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where the diamonds are. Each and every subscriber is a profit center so treat them as if they were real live people and you are speaking to them in person.