List

by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

Why You Should Be Building a Customer List

Almost every marketer has heard of lists. It is something that simply can’t escape your notice really, especially with all the fantastic reports of how effective and amazing the results of marketing to a list can be.

People look at lists as cash-cows, just waiting to be milked.

But what is it about lists that make marketers gush about them? Why is it that lists are looked at as one of the ‘ultimate marketing tools’? Most importantly though, why should you start building your own customer list?

These are the kind of questions that baffle most people, and certainly cause a bit of confusion among relative beginners. Sure, we all know that lists can be profitable, but then again, a lot of things on the internet can be profitable too.

Why is it that lists are held in such high esteem compared to all of these other things?

Well, that’s what you’re about to find out. We’re going to dissect lists in general, looking at how they work, where they work, and why they work, until at the end of the day you’ll be able to say for a surety that you understand just why they’re so powerful.

What’s more, over the course of this ‘dissection’, you’ll no doubt find out a lot of useful facts about lists that, well, aren’t really talked about too much.

So not only will this help you realize the full measure of a list’s potential, but it’ll also give you a very solid grounding on lists in general. And, probably more enticingly, it will let you profit fully from lists, the way that ‘gurus’ and experts do.

Needless to say, that’s going to be what you should want to be doing anyway – profiting.

Before we jump into a thorough explanation about the huge benefits of lists though, it would be best to sit down and start thinking about what exactly a customer list is.

“What is a Customer List?”

Okay, a customer list is a really pretty simple concept, and all that it really consists of is a list of customers. That said, there are several other things that you’re going to need as part of your list if you ever want to make it work for you.

If you consider it a little, you’ll realize that having just a list of names isn’t much good at all.

What could you do with a list of names, right? Pretty much just keep it on record that so-and-so bought something from you at some point.

So you’ll need a little more than names for your customer list.

That is why a customer list needs to have contact details. Any kind of contact details. It could be something as simple as a telephone number, fax number, or even house address. Of course on the internet there exist a whole other variety of contact details.

No surprise then that the most common form of contact detail gathered by lists online are email addresses. Naturally, some go one step further, and end up benefiting from a variety of other data.

Twitter, Facebook, Internet Messaging (IM) Services… all of these are valid forms of contact data as well.

Why is it email addresses that are most popular in a customer list then? Well, simply because it is the easiest thing to manage. Admittedly you could, possibly, achieve some kind of results with other online contact details, but it gets a lot tougher when your list expands.

Keeping in touch personally with say, 10 customers, through an IM service would be pretty easy. But keeping in touch with 100, or 1,000, or even 10,000; would be a lot more difficult.

Thankfully, with autoresponders, managing an email-based customer list is made as easy as snapping your fingers (or almost, anyway). Still, it needs work, and as you’ll soon see, there is much more to lists than many people think about.

As you now can see, a customer list is basically just a list with your past customers and their contact details.

“Why Should I Build a Customer List?”

If you had the contact details of your past customers, what good would it do you? When you think about it, you’ll see that all your past customers share at least one thing in common, that you know of anyway.

That one thing is that they’ve bought some product or other from you before.

Okay, so that isn’t exactly a ‘revelation’, but it is important. If a person has bought something from you before, that means they’re interested in the type of product that you’re offering. So, it stands to reason that there is a very high chance that they’ll also be interested in other, related, products.

On top of that, they’ve proven that they’re the kind of people that are willing to buy products of that variety. This is important, especially online, seeing as there are a lot of freebie-seekers around, so finding proven buyers is a definite plus. We’ll discuss this more later though.

For now, you know that, essentially, your previous customers are people that might be interested in buying products related to the one that they bought from you.

Which is why, the simplest and most powerful reason why you should be building a customer list is simply so that you can continue to market to these people. They will form a base for all your further marketing efforts.

Further down the line, we’ll be looking at this in more depth. After all, it is what this book is about.

Right now though, the important thing that you need to take away from this particular section is that keeping in touch with your former customers actually opens up the opportunity for you to continue marketing to them. Which is exactly what list marketing is all about.

Before we get into the more specific details of what exactly you can accomplish with a customer list, we should just go over a few fundamentals of what a good list should have; the kind of list, that is, that you can end up using to your advantage.

Fundamentals of a Customer List

Since you already know what a customer list is, we’re not going to rehash the definition here. Instead, what this is about are the core areas that can affect (and therefore, improve) a customer list.

Some of these will be familiar, as we’ve briefly mentioned a few of them already. Here though, we’re going to be looking at them in a lot more depth.

If you think about each a little, it will help you out. Don’t just take our word for it, try to mull it over yourself and get a better idea of it. As you’ll notice, most everything that we’re going to discuss really does make sense.

Buyers vs. Freebie Seekers

First off, there is a definite difference between buyers and freebie seekers. While that difference may be a psychological difference, as a marketer, the part that you’re really concerned about is how that difference manifests itself.

On the internet especially, there are many freebie seekers. These are people who don’t spend money online, and try to find free alternatives as far as possible.

Admittedly, some don’t spend money for a good reason, such as, not being able to afford to spend on ‘extras’. Others just are convinced that buying things online isn’t safe. Yet others simply feel that they can probably find a free equivalent somewhere or other.

To be honest though, the reasons don’t matter, but chances are, if someone is a freebie-seeker, they aren’t going to end up buying things from you very often. In fact, they may just be on your list because you were offering out a free sample or something in exchange for joining it.

Due to this, differentiating between the freebie-seekers and the real buyers is a big part of what building a good list is about. If you’re building your list solely on past customers whom have actually bought items from you, then you’ll find that you have to worry much less about the number of freebie seekers on your list, as we mentioned previously.

Still, there will undoubtedly be at least some. But really, you’ll find that there are probably other categories other than just these two extremes.

Buyer Categories

Even amongst buyers, there are different types. For example, there are the millionaire buyers, to whom money is not an object and would be willing to buy practically anything as long as it appeals to them.

But unless you’re marketing to this exclusive crowd, chances are most of your buyers will be regular, working Joe’s. Even then, you’ll find that there are various categories of ‘buyers’ in which you can place people.

Some people are impulse buyers who see something, like something, and so they buy it. Very often these type of people don’t really think about whether they really should buy it, they just know that they want it, and so they get it.

On the flipside, there are the more discerning buyers. These are the people who like to dissect everything down and find out if it is really worth their money to buy something. Needless to say, it is tougher to market to them – but if you have a product that is a really good buy, then these are going to be people who are willing to buy it.

Of course there are many other categories, but these are the most common. Yes, it is sort of like stereotyping, but you’ll find that, especially as your list gets bigger, being able to know what products suit which people is really an advantage.

Also, as you’ll find, there are different pricing categories that people tend to go for. Where some people will buy only products around at most, others will be more likely to buy a product than a (because of perceived value).

This too, is beneficial, not because you should try to price the same product differently, of course, but more because you’ll know what interests people more.

And people always appreciate it when you hand them exactly what they want.

Further Contact Details

Earlier, we’d discussed how email really is one of the easiest contact details that you can use on a customer list. While this is true – it certainly doesn’t hurt to have more contact details.

Downside is, it is far easier to get people to fill out just a simple ‘name and email’ form that it is a huge, and large, form. But, if subsequently they’ve been on your list, been buying your products, and generally trust you, then there’s no reason why they wouldn’t be willing to give you more details.

With extra details, you can certainly do more.

Sending greeting cards during seasonal holidays, for example, is something that many companies do to great effect. Although you could, admittedly, send an electronic version through email, it isn’t quite the same thing.

Step by step, you’ll find that the more ways you have to contact people, the more possibilities exist as far as marketing and establishing a rapport with your list is concerned. So yes, it really is beneficial, and brings us to our last fundamental which is…

Keeping in Contact with a Customer List

Seeing as we’ve gone over the various other fundamentals, the only thing really left to talk about is keeping in contact with your customer list. Now, the key to a customer list, as you probably can guess, is that it allows you to have a continuous relationship with your customers.

Mind you, it has to be continuous for it to work. If someone buys something for you, and joins your list, but doesn’t hear from you for a few months, then when he finally does, there is little chance that he or she will even remember about it.

So it will appear as just a random advertisement, rather than the recommendation based on their previous purchase that you want it to be.

But remember, too much contact is just as bad as too little. If a customer buys something for you and gets 10 emails in the span of a few days, that will probably just end up annoying them, and is a good way to get them to ignore your marketing efforts completely.

At the end of the day, the aim is to toe the line between keeping in contact, and too much contact. An email or two a week is perfectly acceptable, and in some cases, even daily emails can work.

As things go along, you’ll find out what your list responds best to, but for now, just keep it in mind and don’t make any ‘extreme’ mistakes.

When you do have a list, you want to ensure that you can maintain it properly, and keep the trust that your subscribers have in you. Which is why it is crucial for them to not feel like you’re just trying to take advantage of them for a quick buck here and there.

In order to avoid that, make sure that you don’t just keep marketing products to them, but rather send them helpful freebies, and information, in between your marketing efforts. That way, they’ll actually have a really good reason to stick around and see what you have to offer.

Plus, they’ll also know that you’re the kind of person who knows what he’s talking about, in whatever niche you’re in, and can impart the kind of knowledge that they could use to their own advantage.

Summing Up the Fundamentals

Although you might be wondering why we digressed slightly from what we’re supposed to be talking about (which is why you should build a customer list), let me explain.

Building just any customer list is really, well, not going to get you the kind of results that you want. What you need is to build the right kind of customer list, and for that, you need the fundamentals that we just discussed.

In other words, you need to make sure that you have buyers on your list, and not just freebieseekers. You also need to be certain that you know their habits, and the categories in which they fall in.

On top of that, having the ability to contact them in a number of ways, and then, keeping in contact constantly – these are the kinds of things that will get you that ‘right’ kind of list.

And armed with that kind of customer list, well, you could do a whole variety of things that may have never even crossed your mind prior to this. In short, a list does represent an enormous potential to market products, but the ‘right’ kind of list is so much more than that.

It is, really, completely priceless.

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