In order to have a successful business on-line you need to master certain techniques and skills. This is true regardless of the type of product that you have or the business you are in and one of those is list building.

The internet is different from traditional buying in that potential customers do not have any personal contact with you and people buy from people not companies. So you need a website that introduces you, not just your product, to your visitors. It will take time for people to get to know and trust you; it is unlikely that anyone will buy something on the basis of one e-mail or one visit to a site. So it is your relationship with your list that matters; having a small responsive list is far more valuable than huge numbers of ‘cold’ customers.

Once someone is interested enough to visit your website you need to offer them something of value, this often takes the form of a free gift related to your area of expertise such as a ‘how to’ video or a free product in return for their name and e-mail address. Only those who are interested in what you are offering will respond with their information and so are likely to be potential customers. You also need to make it clear that their details will not be passed to other companies as concern about what you will do with their information is one of the reasons that some people are reluctant to deal with companies on-line.

Once you have a list you can keep these people updated with your latest offers or new products but it is important that you do not just continually try to sell them things. Some of your e-mails should consist solely of useful information.

One thing to be wary of is people offering lists of names for sale because you will have no guarantee of the quality of that list and there is a danger that other marketers will have also bought those details and targeted those people. There are also problems with this from the recipient’s point of view. They might be over whelmed with all the correspondence they receive and could well just ignore the e-mails or, if they are dealing with many companies, they could forget that they had requested information from you and your contact could be seen as spam, which is not good for you or your business. There is also the possibility that Google could suspend your account as it has a low tolerance of continual and unsolicited e-mails.

It is a good idea to put yourself in the place of someone on your list and think about how you would respond to the information you are sending and if you do this, you are unlikely to go far wrong.