$1,139 in One Afternoon – The Day I Understood The Value of An Email List

In online marketing it is commonly talked about the notion that “the money is in the list”. It refers to the idea that there is great value in building a long-term relationship with your customers via an email list.

Although I immediately started collecting prospect’s email addresses when I created my first product online I didn’t really get why until a few months later.

The first digital product I created was a guide for students on how to find student grants. I’ll write up a detailed case study about the product at some point. It’s a good story and there are some valuable lessons to be learned from it.

For now, the abbreviated version.

I was 21 at the time and was looking to start an online business. I came up with the product during my summer break at college. After going through a long research process I wrote a short book, put up a sales page, launched an Adwords campaign and it was immediately profitable (4-figures per month).

On the sales page I also offered a free email course. Essentially, I was capturing the email addresses of people who didn’t want to buy my product immediately. I had a short email follow up with some information and that was it.

A couple of months later I was launching an updated version of the product. I had expanded the book and added a number of complimentary bonuses. My main intention was to increase the conversion rate of the sales page by offering a much better product.

And as expected, it did increase the conversion rate. But I learned something else that I had not anticipated at all.

After the product was finalised I updated the sales page to reflect all of the new content and bonuses. Only then did I realise that I ought to let everyone on my email list know about the updated product version.

So I sent out a quick email describing the updated version with a link to the sales page. The list had a few thousand subscribers at that point.

About five minutes after the email went out I received the first Paypal payment confirmation. And every time I refreshed my email inbox there were new sales coming in.

During the course of the afternoon I sold $1,139 from that one email! And I had a couple hundred dollars more coming in over the following days.

That afternoon it really hit me: the value of an email list.

I’ve since made it a point to offer people the opportunity to join an email list for all of my online projects.

Think about it, your list contains people who have willingly given you their email address because they trust you to provide quality information, product recommendations and other valuable resources.

If you deliver on this you can develop lifetime win-win relationships that are worth thousands of dollars for your business.

Part of why my list was so responsive was because they were very qualified and because I had only sent them useful information in the past without being salesy. So when I sent out my offer, a large percentage of them purchased the product straight away.

So no matter how small you start, make sure you build an email list from the very beginning. You’ll be glad you did later.

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