Why You Need an Email List

Do You Really Need An Email List?

Let’s talk about list building, or more specifically why you need to build a list in the first place. It doesn’t matter what form your online presence takes – be it blogging, creating video content, running an online store or growing a social media presence – any online business can benefit from having a list and focusing on growing your subscriber base. Let’s discuss why you need an email list.

What makes email lists so special? It gives you a chance to talk directly to your audience. You don’t have to wait for them to come to your blog or login in to Instagram to see your content, your message, and your offers. Instead you get to go to them … their email inbox to be more specific.

While blog posts, videos, and social media posts lend themselves to talking to your entire audience at once, with email… even when you’re writing an email to a larger list, allows you to talk to each reader individually. While your blog posts for example are written to a whole segment of your audience, you can sound more personal and personable with your list.

Most importantly though, email marketing converts better than any other form of marketing and it’s the main reason why all your other marketing efforts should focus on growing your business and expanding your list. In other words, the list allows you to make a living from your online business. And it’s also a safety net. Let me explain.

Things happen. Facebook decides to close down your account, your website may get hacked and a lot of the content lost, search engines may one day decide they no longer love you and stop sending you free traffic. Murphy’s Law holds true, even on the web…. Anything that can go wrong will eventually go wrong. But if you’ve focused on building a list, you always have a way to recover.

Plus you have a chance to get to know your readers better. You can build a relationship with them through the daily or weekly emails you send to them (as well as their replies). You start to build trust with your audience. Why is that important? Because once you have earned that level of trust and comfort with your target audience, they will gladly take you up on the offers you sent them via email. And provided you treat your list well and share great stuff, it’s sustainable. You can make offers for things they want and need over and over again.

Auto-Responder Providers Compared

If you have an online business or blog, you need an email list. And for that you need an autoresponder service. This is a company that stores your readers email address and other pertinent information and allows you to send emails to your list. These can be weekly newsletter, frequent update emails, solo offers, or a series of autoresponder messages.

Let’s look at a couple of different autoresponder providers and compare them. I hope this information will help you make an educated decision when it comes time to sign up. All option we’re discussing here are subscription services – meaning you’ll pay them a monthly fee for their service, similar to your hosting fees. There is a second option – a self-hosted autoresponder, which I do not recommend you, try There are all sorts of technical and legal hot waters you can get yourself into by hosting your own autoresponder service. Leave that to the guys that know what they are doing and sign up for a reputable Autoresponder provider. Here’s a short list and comparison of a few of my favorites.

AWeber

AWeber has been in the business of list building and providing autoresponder services for ages. They have a great reputation and work hard to ensure their emails are delivered to your reader’s inboxes.

Over the years they’ve expanded and added a lot of features for list segmentation, testing and tracking, and list building templates. They offer a free trial if you want to check them out.

One of the big disadvantages of AWeber is that they charge you for duplicates (same people subscribed to multiple lists of yours) and unsubscribes unless you go in and manually delete them. Since pricing depends on your list size, this can quickly add up. I have been using AWeber since 2008 and recommend them without hesitation. This is my affiliate link for AWeber.

Mail Chimp

Mail chimp has long been the autoresponder darling of bloggers. It’s easy to use, has a lot of functionality and some beautiful templates to make your newsletters and emails look just as pretty as your blog.

Like AWeber, you are charged for duplicate entries and unlike AWeber it is hard to segment your list and track to see what’s working. If all you’re worried about is one main list for your blog, Mail chimp could be an option for you. Also, they do NOT allow affiliate links in your emails, so that would never work for my business.

If you want a little more functionality and data, and you want to be able to set up multiple opt-in forms then this may not be the right choice for you. I do not use or recommend Mail Chimp.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is the new kid on the block that seems to give us the best of both worlds. It’s easy to use and has very pretty options like mail chimp, but with all the bells and whistles of AWeber. And since it was developed by a professional blogger who was sure to include everything he’d want in an autoresponder service, this might work even better for you.

Even though the company is fairly new and still small, I believe they will make it and stick around for decades to come. Yes, I have an account with ConvertKit and may start for free and add 10,000 subscribers before you will be charged! This is my affiliate link for ConvertKit.

Different Ways To Send Email – Autoresponders, Broadcast, Blog Broadcast

When it comes to email marketing, there are 3 basic ways to send email to your subscribers. They are a/r or autoresponder messages, broadcast emails, and blog broadcast messages. Most popular autoresponder services allow you to set up and use all three with your lists. Let’s take a look at each of these email types in turn as well as when and how you may want to use them.

Autoresponder Emails

Let’s start with a/r (autoresponder) emails. These are emails to go out to your readers in the order they signed up. It’s a little hard to grasp at first, but it’s a very efficient way to email your list. Often the very first email you send to your subscribers is an autoresponder email. I’m talking about the welcome email your readers receive in their inbox as soon as they sign up. You usually thank them for subscribing in this message and if you offered a freebie/free giveaway/lead generator for signing up, you deliver it in this email as well.

The autoresponder function allows you to schedule more emails to go out to your readers on a regular basis. The big benefit of using this type of email is that you write them once, get them scheduled and you know that every single person that signs up for your list will see every one of these emails. This is perfect for evergreen content and offers.

Broadcast Emails

On the other hand, broadcast emails are more like the emails you send through your personal account. You send them today and whoever is on your list today will get the email. Someone signing up tomorrow or next week never sees this email. It works very much like your Gmail account. The big difference is that you email hundreds or thousands of people at the same time.

This type of email is great if you send out a weekly or monthly newsletter and any content or offer that’s time sensitive.

Blog Broadcast Emails

The last option is a blog broadcast. This is a pretty cool feature and an easy way to automate some of your email marketing if you’re a blogger. The autoresponder service generates and sends out an email as you blog. You can set it up to send out an email each time you publish a new blog post, or create an email every so often (once a week for example).

Ideally you want to use all three types of emails on a regular basis. Mix and match them to get your email messages out in an effective way. Having options gives you leverage and it allows you to make the most from every email message you write. So, to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this article, yes, you really so need an email list to build and grow your business. Taking full responsibility for this one part of your communication and marketing will make all the difference in the level of success you will be able to achieve.

I’m Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, independent publisher, and serial entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and would love to connect with you. If you’re new to the world of online entrepreneurship please check out my training on how to make your first income online at 3 Day eBiz (Use Code: MAKEITHAPPEN to Save) and learn how to gain an unfair advantage when it comes to building a lucrative online business.