Many ebook entrepreneurs are careful about planning their businesses and their ebook marketing strategies. One point that most of them agree on is that they have to have a well-thought-through marketing plan. Devoid of it, they are lost. And that e-book marketing plan is there for a reason: it helps the business owner to chart out the territory so that he can develop his business. In other words, it is a map to find customers.

So when we are talking about how to make money with ebooks, one dimension of that is growing the number of customers. The more customers we get, the more profit we get.

But it is not just customers we want. We want satisfied customers that revisit to buy more of our ebooks or other products or services that we may provide.

So it is not enough, as seen from a long-term business perspective, to have completed some sales and having some new customers; we also have to take care of our already existing customers and offer them new products and services.

What Are Your Plans for Your Visitors?

Let us take for granted that you have traffic to your website. Thousands of visitors come to your site every day. What do you do with them? Are you just letting them come to “window-shop” and do nothing? Or are you counting on them to buy something? What happens if they don’t buy anything?

The question, in other words, is this: Can you afford to let non-buying visitors go? And, even more essential, can you afford to let buying visitors go? After all, since they have already demonstrated that they are prepared to buy from you, why not construct a marketing system to cater to those users?

All efforts to get visitors to your website have cost you something. So why let them escape to possibly never return, if you can prevent it? By implementing an email opt-in list on your website you can get the most money in return for your e-book business costs.

This way, you will also let your potential customers in control: they sign up and listen to your email messages; and when they are truly persuaded that they can trust purchasing from you, they will (usually later than sooner) buy from you.

The Email List: Seeing Our E-book Business Plan In Action

The main idea that I am trying to raise is this: if you invest some time in setting up an opt-in list (a so-called autoresponder system), this makes perfect business sense. By being able to track potential customers we are, in a sense, getting a map of the territory and our future customers. We may thus see the email list as tangible evidence that our ebook business plan is working.

The argument can, of course, be made that we don’t need an optin email list of potential customers to verify that our business model is working. After all, these people are not necessarily the real customers anyway, since they have not necessarily purchased anything yet. So it is no sign of that our ebook business plan is working. If there are no sales yet, what good is it for? So a better indication of that our business plan is working would be to just look at the sales numbers: if there is more sales, then it is working; if there isn’t, it’s not.

Although the above objection may have some truth to it, let me say this. It is true that possible customers do not necessarily indicate the amount of the current sales; as for current sales, the sales figure alone is the best measure. However, as is known from statistical analysis of sales figures and prospective customers, it is reasonable to expect that there is a certain percentage of those who have signed up for the optin list that eventually, in the future, will become buyers, and perhaps even be returning buyers.

If we can recognize this as true, then an increasing number of prospective clients signing up to our e-mail opt-in list would, indeed, denote that our business model is working, and that we are on the right track to making more money. The force of the list lies therefore not mainly in the idea that it is a measure of the current sales, but that it is a measure of what our sales figures are going to be in the near future.

Optin Email Lists: Also Good For Customer Behaviour Analysis

But email lists are not solely about getting an estimation of how your future sales is going to be. One may also use them in different ways to understand your customers better.

One way to use the opt-in e-mail list sign-up information to understand your potential customers better is to note the date and time when they signed up. This may be essential for different reasons. One example may be that you just have launched a special AdWords advertising campaign, and you observe that the sign-up happened when that advertising campaign was live. By investigating also other aspects on the site, with for example Google Analytics, you may conclude that this, indeed, was a result of your AdWords campaign. By investigating all such occurences, you may get a nice picture of whether or not your ebook advertising campaign was successful.

Another way to use the e-mail list sign-up information to understand your potential customers better is to place different sign-up forms in different locations on your website. When the user signs up, you can then track from which form he signed up. This may tell you more about his interests and personality. Also, it may tell you something about which forms work best, and by doing so, it may give information about how to tweak your website.

Opt-In List Building Is Good E-book Marketing

In essence, then, email list building is a must for the serious ebook marketer. By using the opt-in list, the marketer can repeatedly send messages to the subscribers and continuously offer new advise, tips, and information that may not only educate the reader but also build trust. So when the trust is there, in conjunction with the right product, there is sales.INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Johnny Jones currently contributes to the EbookBrothers.com website, where he shares his views on ebook marketing and other aspects of running a lucrative ebook business, including topics such as how to build your own email list, etc.

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