E-book Marketing: Is It True That I Really Need to Build An Opt-In List?

Many e-book business owners intuitively understand the value of a suitably laid out business plan. In fact, without such a plan many feel that they are lost. For the idea behind it is to constantly support the business owner to grow his business. In other words, it is a map how to locate new customers.

So if one is trying to identify certain ways to make money with ebooks, we could say that the growth of customers may be an intrinsic part of that. By increasing the number of customers, we also boost our potential profit.

But we are not only talking about any kind of customers. What we want is satisfied and returning customers that purchase again and again from our pool of products and services.

In other words, it is not just enough, to get some quick sales and some one-time customers; we also must plan for the future, so that we may end up with happy customers that are to purchase again.

What Do You Do With Your Website Visitors?

Let us take for granted that you have traffic to your website. Thousands of prospective customers come to your site every day. What do you do with them? Are you just letting them come to "window-shop" and do nothing? Or are you counting on them to buy something? What happens if they don't buy anything?

So the real question is this: Are you letting new website visitors who haven't bought anything when they visited your site just disappear into thin air, without knowing who they are? And even more importantly, are you letting returning visitors who already have bought from you leave? If so, what is your plan?

All efforts to get visitors to your website have cost you something. So why let them escape to possibly never return, if you can stop it? By implementing an e-mail list on your website you can get the most money in return for your ebook marketing costs.

Getting your visitors on that optin list will let you have them at your fingertips: you can now email them at any time with information regarding the products and services you provide, and little by little build a long-term relationship that will be mutually beneficial. And as soon the potential customer is convinced that you are an expert in your niche, he will buy from you, providing you have the right products to offer.

The Optin List: Seeing Our E-book Marketing Plan In Action

So my idea is this. The most intelligent thing to do, from a business point of view, is to invest some time in preparing an e-mail opt-in list for your company. By collecting email addresses we are, so to speak, building a map of the territory and our customers. In other words, this list of potential customers may be seen as real proof that our ebook marketing plan is working.

Someone may, of course, criticize this statement and say that we don't need an email opt-in list to tell us that our business plan is working; for we can just keep an eye on our actual sales figures, and that will be sufficient. After all, the critic may say, the email opt-in list is not necessarily a list of buyers, but just a collection of people who possibly will buy in the future.

Although the above objection may have some truth to it, let me say this. It is true that potential customers do not necessarily indicate the amount of the current sales; as for current sales, the sales figure alone is the best measure. However, as is known from statistical analysis of sales figures and potential customers, it is reasonable to expect that there is a certain percentage of those who have signed up for the opt-in list that eventually, in the future, will become buyers, and perhaps even be returning buyers.

If we can accept this as true, then an increasing number of prospective clients signing up to our opt-in list would, indeed, signify that our business model is working, and that we are on the right track to making more money. The force of the list lies therefore not primarily in the idea that it is a measure of the current sales, but that it is a measure of what our sales figures are going to be in the near future.

Optin Lists: Also For Customer Behaviour Analysis

So by building one or several email lists you may boost your sales and simultaneously getting a better picture of what lies ahead for your company. But opt-in lists are not just about immediate sales or sales projects either. They may also be used to increase your understanding of your customers.

For example, the information about when they signed up to your email list can be important. If you just had an AdWords advertising campaign going on, and found out that the campaign was still running when the visitor opted in to your list, you may conclude, in conjunction with other factors, that this was a direct result of your campaign.

Another example of identifying customer behaviour could be to use different opt-in forms for different places on your website. When the user signs up, you can then see which form he has used to join your list, and it might give you an indication of what type of customer he is. Additionally, it may also give you an indication of how well that individual form performs, compared to other forms -- statistics which may come in handy if you need to revise your web site or blog to provide a better user experience.

Using an Opt-In List Is Good E-book Marketing

Whatever some bum marketers may be saying, email list building is essential for anyone who is planning a serious e-book business. By building an optin list, the ebook marketer can continuously communicate with the subscribers and gradually build trust. And whenever there is trust (and products or services to sell), there is sales.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Johnny Jones is currently writing for the EbookBrothers.com website, where he shares his experience on ebook marketing and other aspects of running a lucrative ebook business, including topics such as how to build your own optin email list, etc. For a free subscription to the EbookBrothers.com Newsletter (with free tips and e-articles on how you can succeed with your own ebook business), be sure to visit this ebook business web-site now, before the free offer expires.

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