When starting a business, new project, or campaign, we know we need to start a list – but often we never think about defining a goal for that list. But never fear, because we are going to cover list building goals right now! Indeed, your goals should include numbers, but they should also include a complete understanding of what you want to accomplish with your email list. In brief: What do you want the results of this list to be?
Start Off Right with these Four List Building Goals
In my previous post, I discussed sales funnels. Defining your list building goals is an important component of moving prospects through the sales funnel.
It is always important to define the goals for your new list. Some of those goals should be:
1. Developing a Targeted List
Offering an excellent lead magnet to a well-targeted audience will result in subscribers to your list. While I referred to this as a lead magnet, others may call it a freebie, opt-in, tripwire offer, pink spoon, and I’m sure you may have heard it referred to by other names. If people are getting the lead magnet and immediately unsubscribe, or are not opening subsequent emails (especially the first 5–10 emails), you may want to revisit your lead magnet and make sure it is congruent with your ideal audience.
2. Maintaining a Responsive List
When emailing your list, do you exceed or at least meet the average response rate for your industry? Most likely your email provider can get those stats to you. If you don’t reach that goal, then take a look at what you need to change or tweak. If you are sure it’s not your lead magnet that is the problem, then it’s time to take a look at your email messaging. Is that the problem? To do that you will have to dig deep into analytics and you will have to test, test, test to see what works best.
3. Continuing to Care for Your Nurtured List
If you are nurturing your list, that means you are sending emails regularly and consistently. Your messages can be either educational and informative or engaging and promotional. The promotional emails are sent less frequently than the other types of emails. Depending on your email provider you can send segmented emails based on what lead magnet your subscriber downloaded, or what product or service they purchased. This is a handy tool! This allows you to write in such a way that your subscribers feel you are writing a personal email to them.
4. To Always Work Towards a Growing List
Finally, your list should be growing. If your email list is not growing, it’s probably dying. Of course, you will lose people from your list, and don’t stress about that. You want people who aren’t interested in what you are offering to drop off. You can even go in periodically and manually remove individuals who haven’t opened your emails in a while. It is a good idea to keep your list active and healthy.
The key to constantly growing your list is to find ways to launch something new that will attract your ideal clients and/or customers. These can be either free lead magnets or very low-cost products or services, webinars, and more opportunities to engage with you.
Connect List Building Goals to Measurable Results
You will want to tie your goals to something measurable. Of course, you can easily measure how many people are on your list, but it is also essential to measure responsiveness once they are on your list. The responsiveness of the subscribers will let you know if you’re on the right track in terms of targeting your audience, and not only providing the right solutions for them, but building a lasting relationship with them as well.
Do you already define goals for your list building? Yes; no? If not, will you start with your next campaign or project? Let’s hear your thoughts about building a more responsive, healthy list in the future.
