In this blog post I want to focus on how to build a list using resale products to create lead magnets and powerful funnels and how to convert up to 30% of the freebie seekers into buyers in 7 days or less.
The basic concept of list building is to offer a free gift of some sort to attract the visitor to join your list and then sell them products either in a onetime offer straight after the visitor signs up or in a series of follow up messages or ideally using both methods.
Now this concept has been around for a long time but many marketers don’t understand the logic around it so I will provide a simple blueprint to enable you to get the most out of your list building effort so you can start to build a scalable business.
For the purposes of this post I will assume you have sufficient traffic although the strategy is the same using free traffic, the process is obviously slower unless you have an established website attracting lots of daily visitors.
If you are starting out with no budget you should set up as many free traffic strategies as possible which include
If you want to get results faster you will need to consider paid traffic, whilst your niche will determine what source of paid traffic works best for you we will assume you are providing an Internet marketing product or service and the best qualified traffic to send to this type of offer is from a solo ad
What is a solo ad
For those not familiar with solo ads, this is where you find another marketer in the same niche as you are and they send a solo email to their list of subscribers providing a link to your free offer, this works well because generally the marketer has built a relationship with their list of subscribers and you can expect around 40% of the total clicks to opt in to receive your free gift obviously depending on what you are providing and who is sending the solo ad.
Basic fundamentals that need to be factored in to this process.
The free offer must have a real world perceived value, gone are the days where a 6 page report could cut the mustard unless it is providing outstanding information, you may get subscribers to opt in to get it based on the solo ad email copy and the relationship with the marketer sending the solo email, but if the report or gift is of poor quality and provides no real value the subscriber will most likely never open any of your future emails based on their first experience with you, I would go as far to say don’t even bother trying to build a list if you can’t source some real quality content because it will be a waste of time.
As an example, I provide complete PLR products that may include a video series, sales funnel materials including follow up emails, squeeze pages etc. which does get me off to the best start with my future customers.
It’s not about making profits from this promotion
The second mistake a lot of marketers make is to try to make enough profit from the immediate sale of the OTO (the offer made to the subscriber immediately after they confirm they wish to receive the gift) by pricing this product too high.
Now I am not saying it is impossible to make enough revenue from this product sale to more than pay for the solo ad but this is a strategy that will not work in the long run
The only objective of your OTO is to convert as many subscribers into actual paying customers and here’s the thing, forget about the profit in the sale at this point, you can get up to 20% of subscribers to buy your offer providing it’s a no brainer decision, ask yourself if you would buy a product genuinely worth $27 for $2-$3 if it was presented in a onetime situation and the answer is probably yes.
If you want to see a real life example, check out my free offer, OTO and funnel, click here to sign up (and don’t forget to pick up the OTO to see the complete funnel, its madness not to for $2.97!)
Now conversions vary massively based on the cost of the offer, I get anywhere up to 20% from some traffic with a $3 offer and this can go down to less than 5% with a product priced at $10 so generally speaking I make the same if not slightly more revenue from the lower priced offer but I get up to 4 times the buyers which is the key driver.
Don’t try to sell too soon
The second mistake made is to try to sell products and services to your new subscribers too soon and more importantly for too much money.
Is a cliché but to sell anything to anyone needs them to know like and trust you and this process can take a couple of emails in 7 days or so to win the trust and respect of your subscriber all the way to months and months depending on the person concerned and the quality of the information you provide to them
Always think in terms of “what’s in it for me” You must provide more value than the next email in your subscriber’s inbox and while ever you do this your subscriber will look forward to opening your emails and once you are at this point, making sales is a natural process
Providing value can be in various forms, if you write good blog content highlight the issue you are writing about on your blog in your email and link to the post as a means of further information, if you don’t have a blog or don’t have any good content to use, find free online tools and resources, for instance in my follow up sequence I provide lots of free training on a wide range of tasks required to master online marketing, many marketers actually sell this type of “how to” video training but I provide this for free which works very well.
Many members of my PLR Membership use the PLR products to build up trust and provide lots of good quality PLR with giveaway rights as free bonus products and this works exceptionally well.
Only use quality PLR
A caveat here is to say don’t provide old outdated rubbish that is making the rounds from all of the churn and burn marketers, you may be surprised to learn rather than building trust and engagement, you will get a lot of unsubscribes even though you have sent a free product and the importance of relevancy and high quality is often overlooked.
Now there is nothing wrong with using PLR, in fact it’s the easiest way to create a product of your own or a bonus product but make sure it’s relevant and of value and always link a bonus product to a paid product you intend to promote later in your email sequence.
So for example, you may highlight an issue with list building and the fact that over 77% of online marketers don’t have the basic fundements to do this correctly. You can provide a great free bonus that provides a step by step blueprint to getting started with building a list in the right way and then a couple of days later you can provide a paid product that takes list building to the next level with advanced strategies and proven results, this strategy will always result in much better conversions than simply sending the paid product recommendation.
The object of the follow up sequence
The only aim of your follow up sequence is to convert the subscribers that didn’t buy the OTO on the “prospects” list into buyers
Again, we are not interested in making big profits here, we just need the subscriber to take action and buy a product, going back to the rationale of the OTO, if you talk about a common issue in your follow up sequence and then provide a solution that is clearly of high value it is going to be very difficult for your subscriber to turn down the opportunity if the solution costs just a few dollars.
My typical follow up sequence is 14 days and I send 10 emails, 5 of which are pure high value content and 5 provide paid products, the most expensive product in this funnel is $4.97 and this product sells all day long for $17, the lowest value product is just $2.97 and this provides 5 done for you video lead magnets which again sell all day long for $17, I know because I actually conduct price point tests and I sell this product for $16.97, click here to pick this up for $2.97 if you want 5 done for you solutions.
Once you make a sale set up your autoresponder to automate the process to take the subscriber from the prospect list and add them to your buyers list, this can be done easily enough in all of the mainstream autoresponders and now we can create a completely different set of follow up messages that introduce products and services based tightly on what you can learn about your new customer’s needs and wants
The easiest way to find this out is to simply ask them what you can do for them, how can you help them get the results they want, if you are a product creator ask them what product would help them with a particular issue they may have, send a survey out and then segment your list based on the results, the more time and effort you put in to email marketing the bigger results and profits you will achieve.
The ultimate aim of your email marketing plan is to take a new subscriber opting in to receive a free gift through to buying an entry level product ASAP which over time can result in the same customer buying a higher ticket item anywhere up to $10,000. This is done by always providing high value information and ultra-targeted relevant products and services which results in long standing customer relationships
I hope you have enjoyed this post and had at least 1 aha moment. If you want to progress and further improve your email marketing skills now you have the basics take a look at this video training which provides a detailed step by step blueprint to get you to the next level in the shortest possible time.
The strategy used in this post assumes access to high quality PLR and resale rights products. If you would like unlimited access to over 1400 quality products with a minimum of 40 new products added multiple times each month click this link to take a 14 day $1 trial.