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 continuously inspire the business owner to expand his business. In other words, it is a map how to locate new customers.
So when we say that we want to grow our ebook business, we are almost certainly talking about an increasing number of customers (although other factors may be there also). For the more customers we can generate, the more profit we will be able to get.
But it is not only customers that we are looking for. We are in search a particular type of customers, namely those who also are satisfied with out products, and as a result of that, will be returning to buy new products or services from us.
So it is not enough, as seen from a long-term business standpoint, to have completed some sales and having some new customers; we also need to take care of our already existing customers and recommend them new products and services.
What Are You Doing With Your Website Visitors?
Now let us look at your website or blog. If we assume that you have lots of traffic to your site, what do you do with your visitors? Do you let them get away with not buying any ebook from you, and never return to your site? Or do you have some method of knowing who they are?
So the real question is this: Are you letting new visitors who haven’t bought anything when they visited your site just evaporate 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 bring in 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 email optin list on your website you can get the most money in return for your e-book marketing expenses.
You will not only make more money, but you will also serve your clients better. They will sign up to your email list and take part of your messages. And when they gradually get more and more convinced that they want to buy from you, they will one day (usually later than sooner) do so.
The Email List: The E-book Marketing Plan In Action
The main idea that I am trying to advance is this: if you invest some time in setting up an opt-in list (a so-called autoresponder system), this makes perfect business sense. By being able to track potential customers we are, in a sense, getting a map of the territory and our future customers. We may thus see the email list as tangible evidence that our ebook business plan is working.
The argument can, of course, be made that we don’t need an optin list of potential customers to verify that our business model is working. After all, these people are not necessarily the real customers anyway, since they have not necessarily bought anything yet. So it is no signal of that our ebook marketing plan is working. If there are no sales yet, what good is it for? So a better indication of that our business plan is working would be to just look at the sales figures: if there is more sales, then it is working; if there isn’t, it’s not.
Our answer could be this. It is right that the actual sales figure is the most tangible evidence that the business plan is working right now. However, the opt-in email list can tell us about the future, and in that sense it is a measurement about whether our business is continuing to work, or whether our destiny is another. For it is reasonable to expect, especially if the number of subscribers on your list is substantial (say a thousand or more), that there is a strong statistical correlation between the number of subscribers on your list and your future sales.
So if we may accept this proposition as correct, then we could say that a growing number of people signing up to our email optin list surely may indicate that our ebook marketing model is working, and that our future looks promising. The strength of the list lies therefore not so much in the idea of being a gauge of the current state of our business, but is more of a measure of how our sales are going to manifest in the near future.
Email 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.
One way to do that is to be careful to note the time at which the customer signed up. If you have just had an AdWords advertising campaign, and you detect that the customer signed up two hours after you launched the campaign, and six hours before you stopped that campaign, you may conclude, with the help of other analytic information, that this person opted in to your optin email list as a direct result of your advertising. So he was attracted to the offer that you presented in your campaign.
Another way to use the optin list sign-up information to understand your potential customers better is to place different sign-up forms in different locations on your website. When the user signs up, you can then track from which form he signed up. This may tell you more about his interests and personality. Also, it may tell you something about which forms work best, and by doing so, it may give information about how to tweak your website.
List Building Is Good Ebook Marketing
In essence, then, email optin list building is a must for the serious ebook marketer. By using the email optin list, the marketer can repeatedly send messages to the subscribers and continuously offer new advise, tips, and information that may not only educate the reader but also build trust. So when the trust is there, in conjunction with the right product, there is sales.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Johnny Jones currently writes for the EbookBrothers.com website, where he shares his experience on ebook marketing, and on particular topics such as opt-in lists: hot or not? etc. For a free subscription to the EbookBrothers.com Newsletter (with free articles and tips on how you can succeed with your own ebook business plans), visit EbookBrothers.com now, before the free offer expires.
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