If your sole focus on building a mailing list is to get as many people on it as possible, you’re missing the point.  I recently did an interview with my mentor, Bernadette Doyle, and she shared great insights on the purpose of a mailing list and how to build one that’s more responsive. She noticed when she started building her mailing list, that she got a much better result and was spending less time marketing, because her focus was not on adding as many random people as possible.  In fact, she was spending less money on marketing and was getting double the results. Here’s why:

Who Should Be on Your Mailing List?

A good mailing list is effectively a group of people who have raised their hands and said “I’m actually quite interested in what you’re doing, tell me a bit more.”  Many people online will say, “The money is on the list!” and as a result the emphasis is misplaced and is too focused on how big is your list.  You can almost become obsessed with the number of names you have. The path to success is not the number of names that you have, but the quality of the relationships you have.

That’s really important to grasp, because if you want 5,000 names, you probably have that in your home office already. It’s called the yellow pages. You could start sending emails to them right now, but that doesn’t mean that those individuals are predisposed to buy from you. The reason is, you haven’t done anything to make them step forward and say, “Yeah I’m interested, so I’m more likely than anybody else to buy from you.”

What Is List Building, Then?

Building a mailing list is building a responsive prospect list. It’s about getting those people on your list that have done something to tell you that they’re interested. They’ve responded in a certain way so that you know for sure that they are prospects for the service or products that you are offering.

What have you done to motivate prospects to raise their hands and join your mailing list? Share your tips by leaving a comment below.