Use Email as an Email List Building Strategy

Want to build your list? It's easy. Let's hear what longtime expert Chip House had to say in a recent Magill Report on email list building strategy:
Thanks Chip; Couldn't have said it better myself. To be organic today, you have to be successful in a long tail search strategy, and that requires content. Let me be clear that this is all about acquisition and inbound marketing. It's about being in front of your prospects when they have a problem or interest. Think Google and Facebook.

This is where email comes in as the primary tool. Use email to engage your existing customers to tell you stories about their problems and how your solution helped them. We are not talking about reviews (although valuable) but rather use-cases. "Why did you need this parka?" "What would you recommend to others?" "Share a picture of your new laundry room!"

Feed this content to your blogs and guess what? It becomes a magnet for organic search. Many companies who are using this tactic are seeing their blogs now generate more long tail traffic than their normal website.

Not done yet, though. After you post your customer content, send them an email encouraging them to share it. This simple tactic now puts that customer's story about your business on their own Facebook... attracting all of their friends to your pages and giving you an opportunity to capture that email opt in.

Here's one more Email to consider: Your Outlook email. Most of the time this is great content that just gets thrown away. Think about pushing your relevant Outlook email to your blogs. If it's worth sharing in Outlook isn't there at least a possiblity it could be worthwhile in your Corportate Blog? Facebook? Twitter?

Check out my posts...you will see that a lot of them start from my inbox :-)