Every marketer says that you should build an email list. And I agree. Your email lists are an asset that only YOU control, and if you treat them right, they will become a source of long term customers who will buy your stuff over and over again
The problem is, building an email list is challenging. Especially if you’re starting on scratch. That opt-in popup you added to your blog is not going to get many subscribers if you don’t have much traffic to your site already.
Let me introduce you to a list building method has been working well for me. I call it the Perpetual List Building Machine. While it’s specifically targeted to the IM market, the most creative of you guys should be able to adapt this method to their own market.
Getting Started
- A War Room account ($37)
- 2 Free and Valuable Gifts To Giveaway.
- A Squeeze Page.
What’s The War Room?
If you’re not familiar with the War Room, it’s a private, paid section of the WarriorForum, which is one of the biggest internet marketing forums online. The War Room is $37 for lifetime access, and inside you’ll find it full of marketers giving away some of their best products (reports and software) for free, to other War Room members.
The best threads in the War Room can get several thousand views, which is what makes this such a terrific traffic source.
Setup
The first step of the process is to brainstorm a couple of gifts to give away. You can’t give away junk though. Both gifts have to have some perceived value or else this method will never get off the ground.
One candidate that popped immediate to mind, was the Smart Affiliate Links wordpress plugin which I had just finished developing. It’s a $47 product, and I knew other War Room members would find it a terrific value if I let them download it for free.
Don’t have your own software product to give away? It’s very easy to create your own software these days even if you don’t know how to code yourself. Use sites like Freelancer.com or Elance and you get easily get a high quality product created for $250 or so.
If you don’t want to go that route, you could also just create a free report. Software has a higher perceived value in general though, so my feeling is that you’ll get better results with that.
Unfortunately, the War Room does not allow forced opt-ins. That is, you can’t require visitors to opt-in to your list to receive whatever product you’re giving away in your thread. So this is where the 2nd free gift comes into play.
What you can do instead is put together a special type of squeeze page. It has a direct download link to your first product at the top and an opt-in form for your 2nd free product below. As long it’s compelling enough, with a good headline and bullet points, you’ll get people downloading your first product AND opting in to your email list to get your 2nd free gift as well.
In my case, I put together a free report titled, 41 Free Kick-Ass SEO Tools to be used as my 2nd product to give away. These types of reports are pretty easy to put together, and you can create a high quality report together like this in a single afternoon.
Have a look at my squeeze page to see how I’ve structured mine:
http://misterfong.com/smart-affiliate-links-for-war-room-members
The War Room Thread
Once I had all the essential components put together, it was time to write my War Room thread. I’m not a master copywriter or anything, so to start, I just looked at some of the popular threads in the War Room and tried to mimic what other people were doing.
To get the maximum clicks and response, you’ll want to make sure to come up with a great title, that catches people’s eye and inspires them to click through and read your thread. Include the benefits of the product you’re giving away and also have a clear call to action so people will click through to your squeeze page.
Here’s a look at my War Room thread as an example. (War Room members only)
http://www.warriorforum.com/war-room-private-discussions/385960-boost-your-sales-200-using-my-new-premium-wordpress-plugin-free-war-room.html
The reason this method works is that other marketers will click into your thread and download your product. Many of them will reply to your thread and say thanks. Others might have questions they want to ask about your product.
All you have to do, is just reply whenever anyone replies to your thread. This keeps the conversation flowing and every time you or anyone leaves a comment, your thread will get bumped right back to the top.
More Views = More Clicks = More Opt-ins.
Some threads in the War Room are still getting bumped up more than a year after they’ve been created, which is why this is such an excellent long term list building method.
Here are my own results with this method after the first 12 days.
Thread views: 1394 (116/day)
Clicks to my squeeze page: 634 (53/day)
Opt-ins: 169 (14/day)
Not bad right? And I’m sure these numbers could be improved by tweaking my thread copy and squeeze page as well.
If you’re in the IM niche, and you’re trying to build an email list, then this is one of the best list building methods I’ve tried. Anybody can setup one of these Perpetual List Building Machines with a little bit of effort, and I think you’ll be impressed with the results you get from it.
What do you think? Is this a list building method that you would try yourself?
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