June 13, 2006
There are two main streams of thought about building email lists and how to market to them. In the marketing area you have those that tell you that once you get your leads, then hammer them hard until they either buy or unsubscribe from your list.
The other school of thought is that you woo them and start a slow, long-term relationship that gains trust and lets them know you're human and what is you're all about.
The first way of doing things is usually done with people with more money to burn than others and endlessly do exactly what they say: hard sell. This works, but short-term. They don't mine their customers over years, they get a couple of sales out of them and their done. There are some big name online marketers that do this that you may even be on their ezine list.
The soft-sell approach, in the current online climate, to me is the much better way of growing your business successfully. Get your audience to know and trust you. Show them a little of your human side and your personality. I subscribe to a lot of ezines to track what is happening out there, and I get some that don't really have a lot of "leading edge" stuff in them, but I like to read them because the writers show forth a sincerity that I really appreciate.
In a way what I'm doing is waiting for them to grow and offer something that I'm interested in so that I can buy from them.
