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E-book Marketing: Do I Really Need to Use An Opt-in Email List?

By: Johnny Jones

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Many e-book marketers agree that having a carefully thought out business plan is crucial to their success. And that plan is there because it helps the business owner to navigate: more specifically, the business plan is, in a sense, a map to finding customers.

So if one is trying to identify certain ways to make money with ebooks, we could say that the growth of customers may be an intrinsic part of that. By increasing the number of clients, we also step up our potential profit.

But we are not only talking about any sort of customers. What we want is fulfilled and returning customers that buy again and again from our pool of products and services.

So it is not enough, as seen from a long-term business perspective, to have completed some sales and having some new customers; we also must take care of our already existing customers and recommend them new products and services.

What Are Your Plans for Those Who Visit Your Site?

Now let us turn to your blog or website. Let us assume that you already have traffic to your site. Hundreds or thousands of visitors come to your site every day. The question is: When new visitors come to your site, what do you do with them? Can they come to "window-shop" and leave without doing anything? Or are you counting on them to buy something? What happens if they don't buy anything?

The question, in other words, is this: Can you afford to let non-buying visitors go? And, even more essential, can you afford to let buying visitors go? After all, since they have already proved that they are disposed to buy from you, why not build a marketing system to cater to those users?

Even if you have constant traffic to your website, that traffic has not come to you completely free; normally lots of time and money have been spent to drive traffic to your pages. So why let anyone run off if you can stop it? Implement an email list (or several ones, for different types of visitors or products) and you can stop that trend, and you will get a much better ROI (return on investment) in the long run.

You will not only make more money, but you will also serve your clients better. They will sign up to your email opt-in list and take part of your messages. And when they gradually get more and more convinced that they want to buy from you, they will one day (usually later than sooner) do so.

The Optin List: The E-book Business Plan In Action

So my idea is this. The most intelligent thing to do, from a business point of view, is to invest some time in preparing an optin list for your company. By collecting email addresses we are, so to speak, building a map of the territory and our customers. In other words, this list of potential customers may be seen as real proof that our ebook marketing plan is working.

Someone may, of course, criticize this statement and say that we don't need an e-mail opt-in list to tell us that our business plan is working; for we can just keep an eye on our actual sales figures, and that will be enough. After all, the critic may say, the opt-in e-mail list is not necessarily a list of buyers, but merely a collection of people who possibly will buy in the future.

Although the above objection may have some truth to it, let me say this. It is true that prospective customers do not necessarily point to the amount of the current sales; as for current sales, the sales figure alone is the best measure. However, as is known from statistical analysis of sales figures and prospective customers, it is reasonable to expect that there is a certain percentage of those who have signed up for the email list that eventually, in the future, will become buyers, and perhaps even be recurring buyers.

If we can accept that argument, then it would be fair say that an increasing number of subscribers would point to that our business model is working even in the near future, and that we are on track to making even more money. In other words, the list is not chiefly a measure of current sales (for that is measured by the actual sales figures), but a measure of what our sales figures are going to be in the future.

Opt-in Email Lists: Also For Tracking Customers

Email lists are then necessary tools for getting your business to grow with new customers and sales. But opt-in lists are not merely used to signing up new potential customers or generate new sales; they can also be used to analyze the customers in various ways.

One way to use the email opt-in list sign-up information to understand your potential customers better is to note the date and time when they signed up. This may be significant for various reasons. One example may be that you just have launched a special AdWords advertising campaign, and you observe that the sign-up happened when that advertising campaign was live. By investigating also other aspects on the site, with for example Google Analytics, you may conclude that this, indeed, was a result of your AdWords campaign. By investigating all such occurences, you may get a nice picture of whether or not your ebook advertising campaign was successful.

Another way to analyze information from the opt-in procedure could be the following. Let us say that you have several types of opt-in forms on different pages of your site. So when the visitor signs up, you can directly see which page and form he has used. This may tell you more about this customer's preferences and interests. Also, this information may be gathered from many customers sign-ups, which then may be compiled to a report on which forms work the best -- statistics which in turn may be used to redesign or tweak certain aspects of your website.

Opt-In List Building Is Excellent E-book Marketing

In essence, then, e-mail list building is a must for the serious ebook marketer. By using the email optin list, the marketer can repeatedly send messages to the subscribers and continuously offer new advise, tips, and information that may not only educate the reader but also build trust. So when the trust is there, in conjunction with the right product, there is sales.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Johnny Jones currently contributes to the EbookBrothers.com website, where he shares his views on ebook marketing and other aspects of running a lucrative ebook business, such as building an optin email list of customers, etc. For a free subscription to the EbookBrothers.com Newsletter (with free e-articles, tips and tricks on how you can succeed with your own ebook project plans), please visit the E

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