Having a sizable opt-in mailing list can be a great asset for your business. But there is more to list building than just getting the email addresses of potential customers, as I have mentioned in previous posts. It is necessary to test and refine your emails to find their sweet spot and to profit from it. Trying different approaches to your mailing list customer base will help you find the best ways to market to them and give more profitable results when you send messages.

Trial and error plays a part in this process. Once you have discovered methods that give good results, you can modify future mailings to take advantage of what you have learned. Every list is different and some will be made up more of those who prefer product reviews. Others may lean towards a desire to focus on methods and actions they can implement for themselves within their specific niche. Testing will uncover what works best for the people you have on your list.

One of the first things you need to keep an eye on is the number of emails that are “bouncing” back. Emails may not be getting through to their intended recipient for several reasons. Their inbox may be full, the mail client maybe refusing emails from your domain, or the address may have been abandoned or deleted. Whatever the reason, these addresses need to be removed. If you are using a paid autoresponder company (I recommend Aweber) that charges for the number of subscribers that you have (including unsubscribes) you should remove them. Doing this alone could keep you from moving up the next level of service. Although, if you are adding a substantial number of subscribers each day, you may want to contact their support and have them manually remove your unsubscribes on a regular basis.

You should also be keeping track of just who is buying and have them opt in to a new list so that you can track them easier. These loyal customers can then be given preferential treatment and possibly extra bonuses not available to the general list. For those who have never bought from you, a separate list that markets low price items may generate a few more sales. You will have to examine your individual business goals to determine if you want to take the time to continue trying to sell to them. Under normal circumstances though, it is better to separate them and customize your marketing approach rather than just throw away the address of a current non-buying subscriber.

Another way to test your list is to run a survey asking for suggestions and advice on how you can serve them better. People like to be ‘talked to’ and those that answer your survey request are proving they listen to you and actually read your email messages. They deserve extra special treatment as well.

If this process is started early enough before your list grows huge it will not seem like much of a chore. The extra sales you may generate by testing and subdividing your opt-in listw should easily repay you for the time it takes to fine-tune this essential marketing tool.

Having problems getting started with your list building? List Building From Scratch will solve that problem and get you on your way to testing and refining it so you get maximum benefits from your efforts.

Next post I am going to go over some of the ways that you can get your list to be more responsive…now that’s something a LOT of us need! That will be the last post of this series and then next week I am going to start going deeper into the mechanics of your opt in page and how to make it suck in subscribers.

Stay tuned…