Two Little Known Secrets To Strengthening Your Email List

When it comes to building a successful mailing list, there are a few standard things everyone knows you should do: Give out a free incentive, have your opt in box in a highly visible position, and don’t annoy your subscribers.

Today however, we’re going to look at a couple of the lesser known things you can do to strengthen your list. So read on, and feel free to add any additional tips in the comments.

1. Giving The Reader Something More To Do

If you send relevant emails to your subscribers, you should hopefully peak their interest and get them excited about what you’re talking about. If you do this successfully but then don’t give your subscriber anything more to do once they finish your email, you are effectively losing out on a big opportunity. This person has just been warmed up and is ready to go, so not giving them anything more to read or interact with is a big waste.


One thing I like to do is link to a relevant blog post at the end of each of my emails. Let’s say for example I’m giving a tips on how to increase your subscriber rates in one of my emails. At the end I’d then add a link to my post with further information on this topic, and entice the reader to read on.
There are three main benefits to doing this:

1. Building a stronger relationship with your subscribers. You can offer a lot of value using this method without sending overwhelmingly long emails. You’re basically introducing people to a subject in your email, and giving them all the details in your relevant blog post. Giving this much value will mean people learn to trust your emails, and stay responsive to them for a long time to come.
2. You get more visitors back to your site. This will increase your site’s page views and get people finding content they otherwise wouldn’t have known about. This can build life long fans, and mean your older blog posts still get regular views.
3. You will make more money. If these blog posts you lead them back to have affiliate offers or your own products for sale, you will get a percentage of people buying them if it is a topic they are interested in.

I like to include this strategy in my autoresponder series, as it means people will always have new things on my site to look at. When people first visit your blog and subscribe, most of the time they don’t go through your archives or look at any posts past the first two pages. This strategy will allow people to see your older and lesser known posts that are still as helpful as ever.
It also allows you to set out a clear path, and gets people to view your content in a order it’ll benefit them the most.

2. Delete Non Responsive Subscribers

This may sound like a weird thing to do, but at times it can be beneficial to delete some of your subscribers. I know this goes against what many bloggers recommend, but there is a reason behind this logic. Many bloggers feel that the bigger your list is, the more successful you are. This however couldn’t be further from the truth, as having a list of thousands isn’t worth anything if they don’t interact with your emails. Not only will they not benefit your business in any way, they will actually hinder your business and lose you money.

Think about it, if you’re using a email marketing service such as Aweber, having more people then necessary on your list is costing you money. As most of you know, the more people on your list, the higher your monthly Aweber fee is. Similarly, the less subscribers you have, the less you’ll pay to keep their service going every month.

So let’s say for example you have 3,000 people on your list. You will be paying $49 a month to keep your mailing list up and running, according to Aweber’s current price plan. But imagine 1,000 of your subscribers never open your emails and never contribute to your business in anyway, this will be 1,000 subscribers you could easily delete from your list without it having any negative implications on your business. It will have positive implications however, as deleting these 1,000 subscribers will bring you down to a lower price band. So instead of paying $49 a month, you’ll pay $29 a month and have better list statistics (A higher open rate, more link clicks etc).

So how would you know which subscribers to delete? Well luckily, most email marketing services keep these sort of stats for you. You should easily be able to see who never opens any of your emails, and doesn’t click any of your links. These stats are usually rounded up to give a general rating for each person on your mailing list, and anyone with the lowest rating should be deleted.

Got More Tips?

Both of these methods can help you streamline your email marketing campaign, savings you money and building a stronger relationship with your subscribers. As I’m sure you know though, there are a whole heap of other things you can do to get more subscribers and keep them interactive. So, what email marketing techniques do you use to strengthen your list building efforts? Let us know in the comments below.