Building an opt in email list will be the most important thing and well probably be the focus of most of your time spent on building your Internet Marketing business. Most of the tools you will use to build your Internet Marketing business will actually be the ones you use to build your list.

Lead Capture or Spalsh Pages
Auto responders
Newsletters and Ezines
Ebooks and Viral Marketing
Article and Forum Marketing

All these tools and methods of Marketing all lead back to the opt in list. If you want to be successful at Internet Marketing you will need to build a list. Whether you have a website of your own or are using an Affiliate website it will be the list that matters and will provide the most reward from your efforts.

How do you build a list?


First you need a way to capture the name and email address of your perspective customer. This will be from a web form you place on your website or Lead Capture page, sometimes called a Splash page. Then you will need and Auto Responder to deliver your message to your client. As well as the scripts to place in your Auto responder.

You will have the Auto Responder send out your messages and also redirect the prospect to your website if you are using a Spalsh page.

You will need a way to entice your website visitors to sign in to your web form or Splash page.This will be by offering a Newsletter or Ezine subscription. Ebooks are a great way to encourage people to sign up to your list as you are giving them away as a free gift. This can create a Viral effect and is a very powerful form of marketing.

When you post on a Forum or write an Article to submit to an Ezine or other venue you will want to include a link to your Lead capture page instead of directly to your website as to add these prospects to your list. You can offer a email lesson as a way to attract prospects by setting up several messages in your Auto Responder.


You must find a balance between Building a relationship and the call to action. You goal is to create both, by practice and experience you will find this to be the key element of list building.


Building a Relationship

Building a relationship with your opt in list is very important. You don't want to send to many messages in a short period of time as your prospect will undoubtedly opt out. You want to keep them informed and subtly entice them to action. Think of the long term advantages of this opposed to trying for the quick sale. By building a lasting relationship improves your credibility and professionalism. Your prospects will learn to trust you and will become more apt to be repeat customers. Show interest in what they are trying to build in there business and you will become a source for them to come to.


Call to Action

A call to action is important part of list building you must set up your Auto Responder in such a way to create a sale or to motivate your prospect before they opt out or the message sequence is finished. By having a list in the first place helps you control this to some degree. If your prospect does not opt out by the time the message sequence has ended you still have an opportunity to start over at a later time.
By using "Action Triggers" to entice a prospect to act on a sale or service is a good method.
Offer a bonus for quick action by limiting the time it will be available. or by offering a discount for a specified time frame.


Overall it will be your opt in list that will be the key to your success, build it wisely and it will provide you with many repeat sales, and also give you opportunities to create JV partners. If you have a large list by developing an Ezine or Newsletter you can even charge for advertising from others to market to your list.

You can even use this to market your products if you don't have a list by using someone else's list. There are many methods of list building, an the sky is the limit when using them.