People that grow a responsive email list flourish. Building that list can mean the difference between scraping by and earning 6 to 7 figures a year.

Building your list is important for a few reasons: bringing people into your offer funnel, making the first product sale and most importantly for the backend. The backend is what you share with your customer after the first sale. Many marketers completely overlook this area but it can make all the difference to your business success.

Let's go over a few things you will need to have in order to build a successful email list.

Quality Over Quantity

A responsive list is so important. Don’t just go for a list of 1000's of people who never buy. Wouldn’t you rather have a list of 100 hungry prospects than 10,000 unresponsive ones? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Getting targeted prospects to your list is key to your success. So, how do you do that?

Know Your Market

First, you have to determine your target market. You do this by studying the demographics of your market – gender, age, location, interests, income, etc. If you don’t know exactly who your prospects are, you won’t be able to give them what they want.

When you know your market you will understand their needs and be able to fulfill them. Knowing your market will help you craft your sales letter and emails exactly to their needs making them want what you have to offer.

Always Present An Opt-In Form

Statistically the average customer won't buy from you until you've made contact with them 5-7 times. Rarely will someone buy from you on the first encounter. This means if you don’t get their contact information the first time they visit, you’ve probably lost them forever. But, if you get their email address you can continue marketing to them. Oftentimes this turns a prospect into a customer.

You need to give them a compelling reason to join your mailing list. Do this by offering something free so they can see the value you offer and I would strongly recommend having an email opt-in form on each page of your site. Especially on your homepage.

Some smart and profitable marketers have two or three opt-ins before they even allow people see the sales letter. This ensures they have the email address of every single hot prospect because sometimes just putting the opt-in on the sales letter might let a few slip through the cracks.

Remember, your main goal is to get that prospect on your email list, not to make the sale the first time they visit. Again, this is because it takes most people at least 5-7 contacts before they will buy.

Create A Powerful Backend

The most important part of a list is the backend because that is where most of your money will be made. Most of the time you will do nothing more than break even on the front end so the KEY is having an effective backend to make up for it. This could be in the form of up-sells, cross-sells, your own product or someone else’s from a joint venture.

I would strongly recommend you separate your list into two categories: the ones who have purchased and the ones who haven't bought yet. This helps you make offers specifically for them. When done right, well over 50% of your profits may be coming from the backend.

If you have questions, please post a comment and I'll answer for the benefit of everyone.