7 Ways to Attract Your Dream Clients to Your List

List building is a rewarding activity for business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone else who owns a business website. Even if you're a reluctant list builder, simply because you can see a quick return on your activity and know rapidly if something is working for your audience, or if something needs tweaking.

The most overlooked aspect of list building is attracting the right people to your list. If you cast the net too wide you’ll get unresponsive people on your list.  Unresponsive people means a LOT of list cleansing in the future. So, when it comes to email marketing quality matters more than anything else. Yes, of course, bigger lists are perceived as better, but they're only better if you have the right people on the list in the first place.

How to Attract Your Dream Clients to Your List

Plan Ahead – Think through how you’ll not only grow your list but exactly who you want on your lists. Identify your dream client, specifically and clearly write down the information on paper so you can follow it. Develop customer personas that can help you build a list full of dream clients who want to hear what you have to say and for whom you can nurture and connect with. Sarah has an email planner that will help you with this.

Manage Subscriber Expectations – Educate subscribers so they know what to expect from you, what sort of information you’ll be sending them, when and how often.  There is no need to reason to trick people into joining your list. You want the people who want to be there to be on it. Subscribers are not hostages, and shouldn't be made to feel that way.

Give Them Something of Value – When creating your optin gift, focus on a very narrow and specific audience. You want to give them something that truly adds value to their lives and even solves one of their main pain points. You want the offer to be so specific that only people who belong on your list will want to sign up for it.

Make Opting In Simple – Avoid asking for too much information up front.  No inside leg measurements, no favourite movie, no age, no bra size…  Ask for a first name, and an email address. You can make it even simpler by only collecting an email address. In fact optin rates increase significantly when you just ask for an email address, however, this does mean you'll struggle to personalise the emails you send.

Value Their Privacy – Make sure your dream client knows up front that you will not give or sell their information to third parties. You can put a privacy notice right on your optin form by adding a hyperlink to it, or if you use Get Response they'll add one in for you. It helps if the privacy link opens in a new window so they’re not taken away from opting in.

Monitor Your Stats – While email is a wonderful tool that can be fully automated, physically monitor your email stats at least weekly. You can get a lot of insight into what’s happening with your lists by looking at the analytics and you can see who is opening, who is clicking and some services even enable you to be able to message only your actively engaged subscribers and reward them with a bonus.

Connect Elsewhere – Once your dream clients have joined your email list as a subscriber, be sure to let them know where else they can find you on the web. It should be easy for them to connect with you in multiple places. Believe it or not, this movement will increase trust as they get to know you outside of their inbox.

You've got your dream clients on your list, what's next? Book a call and let us help you plan and implement the email strategy that works for you and your business.