How to Stop Buying Lists & Start Building an Opt-In Email Database

It's difficult, I know. If you've been buying lists since ... well, the dawn of Marketing. It's hard to imagine another way of doing things. Even as your lists get worse and worse (along with the results they drive), it just feels like that's the way things are. You just have to buy more lists, and negotiate better prices to make up for the decreasing returns.

But there actually is another way -- a more sustainable, lovable way -- tobuild an email list and generate leads对于您的销售团队。想知道它是什么吗？我保证，这很好。

等等，我需要停止购买清单？

Yes. While it's been the way marketers have been doing email marketing for a long time, the practice of emailing purchased lists is getting less effective and will likely be illegal before too long (it already is in Europe and Canada). You can read more aboutwhy buying lists is always a bad idea，但这是要点：

• 信誉良好的电子邮件营销服务提供商不允许您发送电子邮件购买的列表。For all the reasons listed in the subsequent bullet points.
• 没有出售的好列表。没有人会自愿将其电子邮件地址放在可供购买的列表中。因此，您得到的是被刮擦，已停用或不良的电子邮件地址。
• 购买的列表中的人不想收到您的来信。您必须购买该列表的原因是因为该人不知道您是谁，也没有有机地选择您的电子邮件。但是那是什么意思they don't want to hear from you.
• 您将损害您的电子邮件传递性和IP声誉。购买的列表 - 质量较低，人们不想听到您的消息 - 反弹，取消订阅和垃圾邮件费率。这伤害了你电子邮件声誉和未来可交付性。
• 您想成为一个可爱的营销商。营销的一个关键任务是与潜在客户进行交流和互动，而垃圾邮件不是与观众互动的可爱方式。

All of this adds up to this:A house opt-in email list is more effective than emailing a purchased list。

好吧，好吧，那我该如何进行切换？

First off, you should know that building an opt-in list takes time and effort -- but it will bring you significant long-term gains with higher response rates and continued growth at a lower cost. What I propose in these 4 steps is to completely cut off all list purchases immediately, and focus on your long-term list building strategy while supplementing it with more legitimate paid marketing efforts to give you some short-term results, as well.

Step 1: Start blogging to attract website visitors.

您需要的第一件事是内容，博客是创建大量简短内容的好方法，这些内容可以被搜索引擎索引。每篇博客文章都是可以由搜索引擎索引的另一页，因此当您的潜在客户搜索他们的问题的答案时，您就有更多的机会出现。特别是博客内容应具有教育意义，对您的目标市场有价值，以便他们有理由阅读并与他们的网络分享。确保您的博客有内置社交共享这样您就可以鼓励其他人共享您的内容，并将您的覆盖范围扩展到单个目标访问者或电子邮件订阅者之外。

创建第一篇博客文章比您想象的要简单。只是问问自己，您从潜在客户那里听到的最常见问题是什么？这是您第一篇博客文章的标题。本文的主体只是您每天都用来给出的答案。很简单，对吧？现在，请重复所有其他常见问题 - 一段时间后，您将越来越习惯于创建教育博客内容。最初的驼峰是最难克服的。还有一些创建业务博客内容的策略如果您担心正在进行的博客内容创建。

步骤2：创建一个要约，将访客转换为潜在客户。

现在你已经你的博客一个吸引游客d your website, you need a way to convert them and let them opt into receiving your email communications. If you don't have any offers on your website where someone can give you their information in exchange for a free resource, I'd suggest starting with two offers: one top-of-the-funnel, educational piece of content (like an ebook on the top 10 challenges facing your target customer), and one middle-of-the-funnel offer to let someone request to speak with your sales team and get a demo/quote/consultation. By having these two offers, you can capture potential leads that are at different stages in the buying process.

现在您有了这两个报价，请在您的博客和网站上推广它们。在您网站的任何给定页面上，您的访问者应该知道 - 下一步该怎么办？如果他们正在阅读博客文章并享受您的内容，那么最终的呼吁行动可以为他们提供在十大挑战中下载您的电子书。如果他们在您的产品页面上并且有兴趣了解更多信息，那么他们应该有明确的机会与销售主管一起注册演示。

一旦您涵盖了前两个报价，就该创建更多与潜在客户相关的挑战或兴趣主题绑定的报价了。弄清楚如何用作您下一个报价主题的一种好方法是查看新博客上流行的内容，并围绕它创建报价（然后您甚至可以重新利用一些博客内容！）。这里有完成创建可爱的营销活动的完整步骤为了帮助您入门。

步骤3：在短期内补充付费营销。

以上两个步骤将帮助您随着时间的推移构建高质量的选择电子邮件列表。但这不一定会立即为您提供所需的潜在客户量。因此，为了在短期内补充您的潜在客户生成工作，有一些有偿营销工作可以使您陷入困境。

• 搜索引擎中的按点击付费广告- Run ads that will show up beside search results in Google, Yahoo, etc. This is a great way to capture some percentage of the people who are going to search engines to find an answer to a question. You can therefore catch people at the time that they're doing their research and target based on keywords to show more relevant ads. Make sure your ads lead to a targeted landing page that aligns with the content in your ad to capture as many of those new opt-in leads as possible. New to PPC?这是如何开始您的PPC广告系列。
• 社交媒体广告- Similar to search PPC, you can do social PPC where you run ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter to reach people when they head to social media during the day. After all,社交网络吸引了全球82％的互联网用户，这些互联网用户在社交网络上花费了67亿小时。And that was just in October, 2012. (在这里查看更类似的疯狂统计数据。）
• 博客/电子邮件赞助- 可能有与您的目标市场相似的组织，博客作者或其他公司，并且已经建立了自己的内部清单。他们中的一些人将允许赞助他们的电子邮件或博客，并在他们的电子邮件或博客中显示或分享您的内容。这是加速自己列表增长的绝佳方法，因为您正在建立现有的关系，并且可以针对非常具体的受众，并鼓励他们通过下载内容选择进入您的列表。

步骤4：传达更改。

It's one thing to write about this marketing shift; it's another to do it. And it's yet其他为了使您的团队的其余成员和高管加入其中。如果您预计这种转变会面对销售或管理团队的抵抗，则可能需要考虑提出一项提案，概述了一个实验，您将尝试这种方法6个月，并设置目标指标以显示其是否正常工作。以下是您可以在这样的演讲中包含的一些内容：

• 当前程序和结果- Outline your current process of purchasing and emailing a list, including a typical campaign with number of emails purchased, response rate, number of leads generated, total cost, and cost per lead. This gives the team a baseline of what's going on today, and sets their eye on a metric that matters -- number of leads generated. If you can go further down the funnel to marketing qualified lead, opportunity, or customer, that's even better.
• Why the Current Program Isn't Effective- Share points like向第三方列表的电子邮件营销被排名为营销人员最低有效的策略，也许甚至在上次回应如此冷淡的电子邮件时问团队。
• 建议的计划和目标指标- 阐明生成和每个线索成本数量的目标的目标，并概述如何使用新方法生成这些线索的计划。您甚至可以详细说明您每周发表的博客文章，并提供每季度的报价。

这样的演示文稿集中在结果上，并得到数据的支持，并补充了一个明确的计划，可以帮助您从团队中获得支持，并为您提供一些转向此方法的跑步。想要从该演示文稿中开始吗？这是a customizable starter PowerPoint presentation与上述点。只需填写您的数字，如果您愿意，请相应地品牌，并计划并向您的团队展示！

您是否已完全从购买或租用的电子邮件列表中过渡？您是如何获得内部买入来进行过渡的？

Image credit:珍妮·唐宁