The Dirk Tietjen Blog - Let Dirk lead you in the right direction with his free marketing tips

Building a list is, at the same time, the most profitable, yet the most challenging aspect of internet marketing. However, make no mistake, it is the essential element to long term online income. While you are building your list on one end, you need to take steps to make sure that you are not losing list members on the other end. How can we achieve that, how can we make sure that we are keeping our list members happy?

There is only one way of making money with list building and that is to provide value to your list members. If you are not providing them value then all they will need to do is click the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the page and they’re gone. Not only are they gone, but you do not have the opportunity to convince them to come back.

Please understand however, that losing members is normal. Not everyone is going to want to stay on your list and there are a variety of reasons for that, most of which are not your fault: They only wanted the free ebook, they heard similar information before, they don’t want to be sold anything.

Let us take a moment to look two avoidable list member losses.

1. Not enough good information. If I was on your list, and all I received was sales letter after sales letter, I would unsubscribe too. Your first ten messages on your auto responder should be good information but have a short sales pitch at the bottom for your product. Similar to the way an article is written, just think of it as your resource box.

2. Find out what they want. Ask your list members to ask you questions. However, you should remember that only 1 out of 10 will likely take you up on your offer. When they do take the time to ask questions, you MUST take the time to answer them. If you do, your conversion rates with those customers will go THROUGH THE ROOF. If you don’t, chances are, they will unsubscribe.

These two alone should decrease your unsubscribes significantly.