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How To Grow An Email Mailing List - The Justin Premick Interview



When you signed up for Facebook or Twitter, did you start using it right away? Or were you like me and only started becoming an active user after getting a few emails for the company to remind you that you have an account and helping you get acquainted with it?

I’ve noticed that many of the most successful online companies–and many well-known bloggers–understand how to use email well. To learn what they know, I interviewed Justin Premick, a teacher at aweber, an email software company.

Here’s some of what I learned about growing a mailing list:

Understand why: Most people don’t understand the power of email marketing so they don’t make growing their list a priority. If you have a good mailing list, you can ensure that you’ll reach your audience–if you don’t, you never know if a user liked your site but never came because because he forgot about it.

I don’t even see it! One reason that users don’t join mailing lists is that they don’t even see where the registration process is. During our interview, Justin and I went hunting for the email registration form on a company’s web site and we couldn’t find it.

“Why should I?” Most people don’t say, “I want more email.” They say, “why should I register?” So you have to give them an incentive to join your list. When Justin looked at my site, he said I didn’t give people enough of an incentive to register and suggested I offer special interviews just to people who register.

Location, location, location: Justin told me that one thing successful list growers do is put their registration processes in multiple locations.

Do you know any other ways to grow a mailing list?

Right click here to download the full interview!

September 19, 2008 | Filed Under Interview, podcast 

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5 Responses to “How To Grow An Email Mailing List - The Justin Premick Interview”

  1. Vijay Goel, M.D. on September 19th, 2008

    Email lists are awesome for building a rapport with customers and spreading both news of your company and getting a little viral (forwarding) love.

    For my wife’s catering business (www.bitecatering.net), we use our mailing list to send a monthly newsletter, which shares some recipes, party planning tips, and company news.

    This has helped us strengthen relationships by helping to share events of interest (we got a lot of supportive emails following Liz competing on Food Network Challenge) and we’ve also seen quite a bit of forwarding for popular recipes and that kind of thing. Great way to build and establish your brand while offering clients (and potential clients) a reason to keep thinking of you and returning to the website.

    One tip we’ve used is putting the registration next to a sample of the newsletter. We’ve had a number of people hit the tab to the newsletter content and then sign up once they’ve had a chance to check it out. Allow people to try before they buy, even if its free.

  2. mel on September 20th, 2008

    Couldn’t download the mp3 from my blackberry. It said the file wasn’t found. Might be bberry or your website. I’m not sure. I’ll check out on pc another day.

  3. Andrew Warner on September 22nd, 2008

    Vijay, I’ll add you to my list so I could bring up the site in a future interview. I’ll email you when I do. Thanks!

  4. Andrew Warner on September 22nd, 2008

    Mel, are you sure? I just tried it and it works.

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