Brian

I know a lot of you guys have List building on your minds.

I want to point out some important things about list building that will probably blow your mind.

Let’s start with the basics of single opt-in vs double opt-in. What’s the difference? Well, simple, single opt-in they just have to enter their email, click one button and they are magically on your list without having to do anything else. Double opt-in they have to enter their email, click one button, go to their inbox, find the email, open the email, find the verification link and finally click it.

When I type it out like that it sounds like double opt-in has to do a lot more work and that it’s a stupid idea to use double opt-in. This is not necessarily the case. Let’s now compare the difference between single and double as far as quality stands.

Single opt-in. The most common reason for single opt-in is that someone wants to collect as many email addresses as possible. This is generally used to build a broad list and then immediately redirect them to a video or an offer right after they opt-in. Single can work really well for getting them ON your list and then getting them to buy something right away.

Now let’s talk Double opt-in. You should see the cons of single opt-in in the meantime while I’m explaining double opt-in. Double opt-in is used for drastically different purposes. Generally, a double-opt you are building for a quality newsletter, email series that you want people on your list to be of a more specific nature. When you are dealing with more specific things it’s a bit harder to get them on your list depending on the source of traffic or your landing page. BUT, what you have to realize is this. When someone goes through these extra steps they are telling you that yes they are very interested in whatever it is that you have presented to them and that they are willing to follow this thing through to see what you have for them or to see what you have to say.

Do you see the difference? In most cases what I’m doing is building niche specific lists that focus and for that reason I generally want to build the trust of my visitors as fast as possible. If I single opt them in to a list and they don’t have to verify their email or get used to clicking links in emails that I send them, then I’m not building any trust and I’m not associating them with anything!

Basically, I’m not getting them into the habit of looking for emails that I send and ultimately clicking links and doing things, AND I should be! This is where double opt-in comes in and believe it or not no matter what the latest email guru told you there is actually value to using double opt-is for the reasons described above. And there’s also this thing called getting multiple conversions from people because of the trust you have built with them. Whereas, if you were to just send them immediately to some shady high payout CPA offer in the single opt-in way, you will probably not get them to buy something again with the amount of negative value they have now associated with you. Personally, I rather do things the right way and get 3-4 conversions over a week, two weeks or month rather than just 1 and never see that person again.

So how do you write the opt in email?

Most of the providers allow you to customize the subject and part of the message. The subject should be something specific from your landing page, such as the name itself without any of the weird “Confirm your subscription” text. Most of the time I see guys having people opt-in for something like a free report and now they are sending someone an email asking them to confirm their SUBSCRIPTION. Half of the people are thinking to themselves, what did I subscribe to? Am I going to be charged for this free report? Huh? All in all, don’t use terminology that you didn’t use on your landing page. Talk to them like they are real people. If you were adding a buddy of yours to an email list for poker night participants, would you send him an “confirm your subscription” email? Probably not. Talk to them like the real people that they are.

The body of the opt-in email should be super short and just re-stating what was on your landing page. You could give them an additional bonus here, but let’s stick to basics for now. Again, stay away from new terminology that you have not already mentioned. And a simple message about how you just wanted to be sure that the email address was correct and have their permission to send it over. Again, something you might send to a friend. Don’t make it sound too lame or too professional.

So they have now confirmed. Send them to another page on your site. Get them in the habit of when they click one of your links, they go to your site and can be expecting greatness. Another option here is to tell them on your site itself that another email is coming with a special download link or link to whatever it is that you promised them. Contrary to what everyone has been teaching in the early 2000’s email is all about building up trust and delivering on your promises rather than to just spam them with Buy links.

You’ve now got them on your site looking at your content or ready to open another email and look for a link that will contain content. You’re making them do a lot of steps and you will inevitably lose some people along the way, with this method of list building at least. Those are the cons. The pros are that the people that have made it this far are going to be eating out of your palm. They’ve trusted you, you’ve delivered. They’ve trusted you again and you’ve delivered again.

The next part of the puzzle is that you’re going to want to keep promising them high quality content in the future and continuing to deliver. Each time you promise them something and deliver, especially when it’s something for free they are going to give you a +10 in their subconscious grade book. We want them to be in the habit of expecting content (on similar intervals, every 2 days , every day at 5:30 AM, etc) and to actually get high quality content that they were expecting. We are going to put them into a pattern of expecting and receiving.

Stick to the free content at first and FIGHT the urge to promote your affiliate offers right away. If you push affiliate offers you’ll get one sale maximum and they’ll probably wont buy from you again unless you are a magician and giving them the code for your ATM card for $1.50. THEN, after you’ve given them a couple emails worth of free content you can gradually start working the paid stuff into your emails. But, don’t forget the opposite is true when you promote something that has a bad reputation or looks shady, they are going to give -10 in their mental grade book and start expecting krap and “advertising” in their emails from you.

If you really want to make a lot of money you want to position yourself like the gate keeper in your niche. You want to be the one guy that recommends super high quality content and when you do finally actually put something that costs money, you’re only doing it because it’s so high quality that you just have to tell them about it. And it should actually be high quality to keep the trust with your list high enough.

That’s it for a really quick List Building summary in the 2010 way of doing it. Let’s all move into the new way of thinking about email marketing, trust, list building and turning our affiliate marketing businesses into actual long term sustainable businesses. Hopefully one day we won’t need to keep spending as much on traffic that we never ever see again once we start implementing these list maintenance and trust building practices.

This is just one of the many things that we coach people on over at ListPlaybook.com