The Money Isn’t Actually In Your List
Some email lists are worthless.
I posted about list building on my social media recently. Everyone seems to agree that “the money is your list.” A common argument made by direct response and email marketers. A belief I naively held before I saw behind the curtain of some 6, 7, and 8-figure businesses.
I learned that email is not created equal.
The real money is in the relationship you have with your list.
Let me ask you this…
How does one person make $50,000 from a list of 900 people. While another struggles to book a single sales call from a list of 25,000 people. Two real-life examples.
The answer is something more impactful than the words used.
It’s Relevancy and Intimacy.
And these two words can be loosely summarized in ‘the relationship’ you have with your list.
The relationship can outperform fancy email sequences, expert copywriting, and even tonnes of subscribers. And it’s the primary reason that small lists and even small Facebook groups or social media followings have the potential to be extremely profitable.
The profitability of your email list will be determined by the relationship you have with it.
Which list would you choose?
Email list of names you bought.
Email list of organic signups.
Email list of non-buyers/leads.
Email list of buyers.
Imagine that each list is 10,000 people. Logically, I’d take 10,000 buyers over non-buyers. But in reality, the numbers are much more skewed.
Example:
Purchased list: 100,000.
Organic list: 500.
Non-buyer/lead list: 25,000.
Buyers list: 100.
Now, which would you choose?
On my social media poll, most people chose the list of buyers or the list of organic signups before seeing the numbers.
Every list is different. Different quality, different levels of relevancy, intimacy, and intent. Therefore open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates will differ. Applying industry standard benchmarks doesn’t work because it’s an apples-to-oranges situation.
While my smarty pants social following chose right…
High-quality lists take longer and cost more to build.
When relevancy and intimacy are high, you’ll make more money.
Justin Welsh is a great example of this.
He has an email newsletter of 215,000+ people. According to him, it was built 100% organically. He posts content, people read his articles, and then sign up on his website.
Think of the “intent” behind someone doing that.
Compared to:
Getting an email from someone you don’t know. (Bought).
Or, you added a product to your shopping cart and now you're getting newsletters. (Non-buyer).
The former leads to spam complaints. The latter is improved but can lead to lower conversion rates because of the difference in intent, relevancy, and intimacy. For non-buyer and lead lists, this can be engineered with time.
It’s no surprise that Justin Welsh does around 5 Million per year without ever running ads. But don’t overlook that he’s been building this list for 4+ years.
That’s the power of “Organic” + “Buyer” lists.
Buyers are considered the best lists by direct response marketers.
Nothing beats the relationship with someone who pulled out their credit card
Buyers are the easiest to sell additional things to but they have to be earned.
This takes time or money, usually both.
Option A: Be around in business long enough to build a list of buyers through organic/free measures like content, social media, website traffic, joint ventures, networking, email marketing, etc.
Option B: Run paid advertising selling your products/services to acquire a list of buyers.
There’s no shortcut to building a list of buyers or a list of organic signups. That’s a business lesson right there.
The highest revenue activities have no shortcuts.
There’s always a trade-off, understand which one you are making.
There’s no right or wrong rather it’s a sliding scale of quality.
#1 Email list of buyers.
#2 Email list of organic signups.
#3 Email list of non-buyers.
#4 Email list of leads.
I don’t recommend buying lists.
When it comes to making money from your email list…
Here’s where you should focus:
Build a list of buyers. You will always make the most from a list of buyers. So invest your time (and or money) in building a list of buyers.
Build your list organically. The intent, and intimacy you have with someone that organically signs up to an email list, newsletter, or opts-in is greater than someone targeted via cold traffic ads.
Nurture your list and make them offers. Lists of non-buyers and leads are valuable but invest time in building the relationship and make sure your offers are relevant to them.
And remember…
The highest revenue activities have no shortcuts.
Hope this helps.
Landon