Pimp Your List

This week I want to talk about promoting your email list! I wanted to post this last week, but wasn't able to due to a death in the family. I'm back now and ready to start pimping my own list. So how do we start? This is what I'm doing.

1.) Why do you have a list?

What are you trying to do with your email list? Is it for a monthly newsletter? Is it strictly for promoting your products? Are you promoting an event? Are you trying to organize a social group? You have to decide what you are trying to do with your email list. You probably already have a good idea of what you want to do. Define it and try to figure out how to reach your ultimate goal. My goal is to get more people to read my stories.

2.) How often are you going to send emails?

This could be a deciding factor for people who are potentially interested in signing up. People don't want to be spammed, but at the same time you don't want people to forget about you either. How often does the content you are providing dictate that you should send an email? Is it time sensitive where you may need to send out weekly updates? Is it a daily joke or horoscope? For authors like myself a weekly or monthly update should be sufficient.

3.) Motivate people to sign up

I have found a few articles that talk about how effective an email list is, but many of them don't tell you how to get people to sign up. Why should people want to sign up for your email list? Exclusive content, contests, and interaction are what I am going to try to provide every month with my newsletter.

4.) Pimp your list

Now it's time to promote. Tell people why they should sign up. Tweet about it when you send out the newsletter. Post an on-line version so people can see what they are missing and decide if they want to join in on the fun. Create a page explaining why they should sign up. Point towards your list signup page wherever you can. I still have a bit of work to do here, but I am going to be taking all of these steps in the near future!