Major List Building Mistakes: 3 Reasons Business Fail To Build Responsive Email Lists (& How You Can Avoid Them)

Share this post:

Table of Contents

In this article, I’m are going to talk about the three key reasons that most businesses fail to build responsive email lists and how to make sure it doesn’t happen with your business.

There are a lot of reaons why that happens but I’ll share insights that I have learned over the years from selling 50,000 copies of my own information and software products. I’ve also worked with different entrepreneurs at different levels and have seen what works for them and what doesn’t

Want to claim your free website for simplicity, speed and results? To try Dashnex pages for free, click here. You can also get $5 credit just for signing up.

What is A Responsive Email List?

Before we look at why businesses fail to build a responsive email list, let’s take a look at what it actually is. In essence, a responsive email list is exactly what it sounds like; a list of subscribers who actually want to interact, engage and ultimately buy from you.

Having an email list of 10,000 may seem like an exciting prospect, but if you’re too focused on the numbers and not considering the people behind the email addresses, then the list you have built is not worth anything to you, and it certainly won’t make you any money!

List Building Mistake #1: The Don’t Know Their Audience

The number one reason most people fail to build a responsive email list is that they don’t know anything about their audience. One of the key prerequisites to build a responsive email list is to intimately know everything that’s in your prospects’ or subscribers’ heads.

I’m not talking about just going out and doings some general research online where you check a couple of forums and read some articles, and suddenly you call yourself an expert in the niche. I’m talking about knowing the niche so intimately that you understand what the key problems of your audience are and know why they search for whatever you are offering.

You need to have an inside knowledge about the particular niche, about particular topic or about the problem that you’re trying to solve for people.

Your Subscribers Can See Through You

Every word, every sentence and everything that you send out in your marketing – whether it’s on a landing page, in your email follow-up sequence, on a Thank You page, on any piece that you release – gives away your expertise and knowledge about the niche.

Every word gives an insight to potential subscribers as to whether you are someone who knows what you are talking about or you are just someone who has read a couple of blogs and is claiming to be an expert.

It is very important that you have this high-level insight in the niche because only by having that, can you start to dig deeper and understand the problems and issues that subscribers have in their minds when they search for you. And knowing what they search for and how you can solve their problem is how you turn subscribers into customers.

You Can’t Just Solve General Problems

It’s important to note that general problem-solving is not going to cut it either. For example, if you are going to pick the weight loss industry as your niche, we all know that everybody wants to lose weight right? But you can’t convert customer by just knowing what everyone else knows. You need to know what is in their mind at that particular moment when they discover your offer, giveaway or however you are building your list.

Some many people just look at the earning potential of a niche, thinking that they can make a lot of money there or there’s a lot of people in the niche and they just jump into it and start to build an email list. They end up just building empty lists, where there is no response whatsoever from subscribers. People have spent hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars building an email list but none of them are making any money and the reason is because they picked the wrong niche.

In order to solve this issue, I want to give you two key ways that you can make sure you never make this mistake.  

Want to watch the video? Check it out here…

Tip #1: Pick A Niche You’re Passionate About

The number one tip is to go for a niche that you, yourself, are super passionate about; something that you know intimately about. Obviously, you need to align this along with potential monetization and opportunity to build the product or offer too. You should look online to see what products or offers are available in your particular niche, and if there are none, then you should probably not pick that niche.

As a general rule, you have to have some inside knowledge and passion about what it is that you do. For example, one of my passions – apart from building a business and helping other people to build theirs – is self-optimization. I can read all day long about it. I can look at the different supplements that support the human potential and I look at how to extract the maximum potential from different age stages.

I’m very passionate about it. I read about it daily. I talk about it daily. I watch videos about it daily. So this is a niche I could build a business around.

Tip #2: Pick A Nice That Someone Close To You Knows Intimately

The second tip is, pick a niche that someone close to you – whether it’s your spouse, a relative, your best friend – knows intimately about.

For example, my wife knows a lot about making a jewelry. She has done that for 15 years so if I wanted to build a business in jewelry niche, it would be easy for me because I could just talk to my wife. She can give me all the insights I need, all the knowledge about where to source materials and how to put together a great design.

So, if you have someone you can go to directly for their knowledge and insights, it’s going to be very easy for you to talk about the subject. People will understand that you are a real deal; you are someone who can help them.  

Obviously, you can pick other ways to choose a niche as well, but just remember: if you pick a niche based on earning potential that you know nothing about or you have zero interest in, it’s going to be extremely hard to build a responsive email list in that niche

Major List Building Mistake #2: No Follow-Up

The second reason why most businesses fail to build a responsive email list is that they don’t create a follow up sequence.

They, for example, give away a white paper or PDF or ebook, and someone subscribes to their ebook, they download the ebook but then after that, nothing happens; no follow-up emails, no nothing. It’s absolutely essential that when you start an email list building campaign, you have at least seven to fourteen day follow-up sequence already loaded in your autoresponder set to send emails every day or every other day.

You Need To Keep In Your Subscribers’ Minds

It’s super important to remind your subscribers about yourself and about the problem that you can help them to solve. It’s important to give them insight, knowledge and also give them the opportunity to sign up with whatever it is you offer because that’s how you can make money.

So many businesses neglect this step. I have done it myself; launch a campaign but I don’t have an instant follow-up sequence and usually the results from those campaigns are pretty poor. So, if you want to build a responsive email list, it’s absolutely essential to remind people about yourself every day or every other day.

When people look at their inbox, they receive a bunch of different emails and it’s absolutely crucial that they see your name right there! If you have that auto-responder follow-up sequence in place, you can remind them about the problem that you can help them to solve and start to build a relationship with them, which is how you turn subscribers into customers.

With your follow-up sequence, you can build really awareness of your product or your offer so you can close the deal and make money.

Major List Building Mistake #3: Creating A One-Way Conversation

The third reason why most businesses fail to build a responsive email list is that they create, what I call a one-way conversation. They email their subscribers with information that’s important to them and not important to their subscriber. They essentially push a bunch of different stuff to their subscribers without ever asking for feedback or opinion or what’s truly important to them.

When you build an email list, it’s really important that in almost every single email, you ask about your subscriber’s opinion, about their feedback, about what’s important to them. But you can’t stop there, it’s also important that you have a system to get the feedback directly to your own inbox.

Make Sure You Give Them A Good Experience

The worst thing possible when someone responds to an email where you’ve asked them about their opinion, it goes to a support desk and creates a support ticket. That’s not good customer experience whatsoever.

You need to create a two-way conversation where you ask people for their opinion and based on that feedback, you then adjust your follow-up sequence, you adjust your offers, you adjust everything to do with your communication with your subscribers. The more you start to do this, the more responsive your email list will become.

Find The Right Way!

I learned this long time ago when I started to build an email list and I started to get lots of subscribers on a daily basis back in 2010/2011. What I realized was that my method of sending emails, what always thought to be the ‘right way’ (sending out an email with three highlighted links to maximize click-through rates) was resulting in a drop in open rates and CTRs.

So I started to dig deeper into this and this is where I realized that when you create a two-way conversation, where people have a channel where they can respond directly to provide feedback, you become more valuable to them. They remember you; they remember you when they talk with their friends about the problem; they remember you whenever the problem comes up.

So, instead of just emailing what’s important to you, always remember that having this two-way conversation will dramatically increase the responsiveness of your email list.

The Takeaway

People subscribe to your email list for their reasons and not yours and that’s why it’s super important to:

  • know your audience;
  • follow up with them;
  • open a two-way conversation with your subscribers.

The “Lead Generation Simplified” Series

Check out the previous and next videos in the series below. Want to start from the start? Click here.

FREE DASHNEX INSIDER NEWSLETTER!
Zero hype. Zero fluff. Zero Nonsense.

We help online businesses to SIMPLIFY everything so that you can 10x, 20x or even 30x the ROI on your effort. Enter your name and email below, and let’s start now!

    We won’t send you spam, just super useful content you can use to grow your business!

    And if you don’t love us, simply unsubscribe at any time.

    Powered By ConvertKit

    Related Posts