New to List Building?

New to list building?

From time to time I will respond in a blog post if a great set of questions come along from a reader via emails or in the comments section. This is a response to a question regarding the basics of list building that a blog reader asked in another post.

The readers questions are in red below with my answers underneath.

Do we need to put our company name on each email next to the physical address? I notice some lists do it and others don’t. Is the physical address the only legal thing we need on each email?

I rarely use my company name. From time to time, I will. However, most of the time I find myself using the website name or newsletter name which is under a company of mine. I’ll rarely use the parent company name for each newsletter. I don’t always create separate LLC’s for each of my lists, since sometimes there are several niches under one company and it would be confusing for the readers to see the company name, if it doesn’t sound exactly related. I can’t tell you the legalities as I’m not a lawyer, all I can say is that I know many, many marketers don’t use a company name or don’t use their “real” company name (they will use the name of the list, newsletter or website). If you really wanted to be 100% “correct” about it, you could create a Series LLC and create a separate Series under your main Parent LLC for each website and newsletter. As far as address goes, I recommend listing an address. It creates a layer of transparency and makes you “look good”, in a way.  Make sure to check laws and regulations as well as the particular rules for the mailing service that you are using. Some mailing services have a certain requirement in their TOS and you’ll have to adhere to that. Last thing you want is to be labeled a spammer over something as simple as not addressing appropriately.

Whats the deal with double optin vs single opt-in? I just found out AWeber allows single opt-in although the default seems to be set to double. What do you recommend to use?

There are different methodologies behind when to use double and single opt-ins. A double opt-in is generally considered more valuable and will cause you less headaches on a spam accusation standpoint. You can’t really be found guilty of spamming someone if they double-in and are sent the info you told them you would. However, if you only have single opt-ins you can be accused very easily of spam and you really have minimal recourse to disprove that it’s spam (there is some but it will be an uphill battle). Single opt-ins are good for giant political opt-in lists and things of that nature. Don’t try to hard sell a product with single opt-ins too frequently or the spam bug will eventually catch up with you. However, sometimes if you are having them opt-in as part of a submission form for something else, it can be a great way to get increased revenue by re-mailing them a reminder to buy another product similar to what you just sold them.  An auto-responder setup can work well too, if you are giving away something for free. Personally, I rarely use single opt-ins unless a client that has me on retainer specifically wants to do that (and has a good reason for it) otherwise I usually use double opt-ins as those are generally better quality most of the time. One theory is that the more steps you can get them to do without losing people along the way, the more valuable the lead is. You are creating trust and authority by giving them more emails and more steps before they see “stuff for sale”.

Do you make a small site around the opt-in LPs for each niche? Or have a general URL split up like abc.com/lose_weight abc.com/golf_swing, abc.com/save_money?

This can be done many ways. I personally don’t take the “build as many small lists as possible” approach. Quality is much more important than bulk quantity, in most cases.  I’d recommend setting up separate domains as you go. However, don’t try to “build” all these lists in bulk, you’ll get burned out and lose money because of all the lists that you don’t have time to monetize or manage. Stick with high quality lists and spend the $8 on a domain. Buying the domain itself will mentally make you value it more and force you to put in time into managing it. If you use sub-domains you’ll set up tons and move to the quantity approach (that is not as good as the quality approach, usually). Stick to high quality list setups the best you know how, using main level domains if you can afford it. (listtype.com rather than domain.com/listtype)

What do you do about creating the persona who is sending the emails? Is it legal just to make up a name or do you just use your real name for each list?

First, this is not legal advice. This is marketing advice. I can’t give legal advice.
From a marketing standpoint, it doesn’t matter what name you use, yours or an alias.
My recommendation? Be yourself. It generally seems less forced and will work best, especially if you are relatively new at this. Tap into other parts of YOU that you can utilize in your marketing. You have each “energy” that you need for talking to your list. You have the “tough guy/girl” energy and you have the “easy going” energy.  You could go from one extreme to another in different lists really easily, once you get a groove for those. Everyone has every extreme that they could possibly imagine and every energy, which could also be called a “persona” or “voice”.
Each of us can tap into any energy we want, in order to “talk” to any list that we are knowledgeable on.  We all have different masks that we use on a daily basis. Think of how you talk to your friend, your significant other, your mother, your father, your brother, your son, your daughter… and so on. You talk to them all in a different “voices” or energy/masks whether you realize it or not. Try to figure out which of the people that you talk to on a frequent basis most resemble the list that you are talking to and this will lead you to the most appropriate energy. You can usually find it yourself, or a friend can ask you questions that might lead you to the right energy. If all else fails emails me brian (a-t) dailyconversions.com and I will help you find your “persona” for the list.

Are suppression lists only for the guys who just blast email creative’s or do we need to worry about that for our list building? Like our auto responder might have multiple links to CPA Offers but some of the people on our list might be on the suppression list for those offers. AWeber only lets us use a suppression list when we do a blast.

This is debatable, however I’d personally wouldn’t use a suppression list unless I was targeting a specific offer in my email. If you can help it, you might want to use the suppression list otherwise it’ll most likely result in a spam complaint if that offer is linked. But, I wouldn’t stress out about it. If you are building a quality list and not just trying to do massive quantity of single opt-auto responders in hopes to convert a bunch of CPA offers then you should be fine. IF you are trying to get massive quantity and send them every CPA offer under the sun then you are not properly utilizing your list properly and that road will eventually lead to lots of spam complaints (and not a lot of profits). Focus on quality lists and keep them engaged, don’t start sending them a ton of CPA offers as an auto responder before you have even introduced yourself or gained their trust. In fact, I don’t recommend ever sending an offers unless they are high quality. Set a standard for your list and send a product once in a while when it’s a good quality one that you personally recommend. Your list will like you a lot more and listen to you.

When putting affiliate links in your emails do you just copy paste the network link or do u redirect through a tracker like Tracking202? Some networks say we need to redirect all links in emails.

I always use tracking of some sort but not because the network told me to. I do recommend T202.  I use it so that I have a third party tracking outside of the network or product owner’s stats. You should always have stats to verify against. Never trust the CPA network or product owner’s stats. Also, if you don’t feel like setting up T202, most of the email services have tracking now too, including AWeber.

–Brian