The Biggest List Building Mistakes to Avoid

One of the most important things you can do to ensure online success is to build a list. This is what makes a business fail or succeed and this is how you can get started in the online world and making money. However, even if you make a list, there are still chances that you can fail especially if your list is not targeting a particular audience. There are some mistakes that people make when list building that should be avoided, and here are some of the big ones.

Picking the Wrong Niche

A lot of people pick the wrong niche to work in and this is the biggest mistake you can do and can ensure your business fails. Picking a niche these days takes time and a lot of research. You don’t want to sell what everyone else is selling. Do some research to see what you can do differently if you want to be in a hot market selling products.

Targeting the Wrong Audience

You need to make sure you are targeting the right audience. If you are interested in the weight loss industry, you want to target people who are overweight and looking to lose weight; not necessarily those that are elderly and skinny to begin with. If you are working in an industry that caters to women make sure you leave the men out of it.

Buying a List

Many people think that buying a list is going to be their best option, and in fact, this can be one of the biggest mistakes. Buying a list can mean outdated information on a person as well as people who are no longer in the market for what you are offering. Some people never even had an interest to begin with. For the most part these people on this type of list don’t even know you and never even opted in to receive calls or e-mails from you.

Adding People Without Their Permission

One of the worst things you can do is add people to your e-mail list without having their permission. People don’t like being spammed and by adding them without them asking is spamming them. This can get you in a lot of trouble and this is by far the worst mistake you can do especially if you are trying to grow your online business. Adding people just takes away from the credibility your company offers and can spread fast that you are spamming people.

Using an Opt-In You Think Works

Every business needs to start out somewhere and when it comes to list building this can be hard for newbies. You might see an opt-in form on another website and the person claims that it works. However, it does the complete opposite. They may not even have received any opt-ins and if you take that same form and use it, chances are you won’t get anyone interested either. You need to tweak it and see what is going to work for your business in particular. Building a list can take some time, but if it’s done right you’ll have a list in no time.

 

Very good tips. It's hard to disagree with any of them!

 

In addition, another mistake people make is DOING NOTHING WITH THE LIST...

Acquisition is one thing - but then doing nothing with it is another.

Also - doing too much.

 

Nicely crafted.

Also, non-compliance to the CAN-SPAM Act is even the worst mistake!

 

Very nice post. Welcome to DP!

 

Good points. What are your thoughts as to what constitutes, "...doing too much" with a list?

 

That's not a mistake per se. Bad practice? Maybe. But even then it's debatable. For example, in Feb. of this year I purchased plane tickets. Now I am getting occasional emails from the company with really nice plane ticket rates. I don't recall opting-in for their emails. Yet I love it. If I have to fly again, most likely it'll be with them.

 

Emailing existing customers or even just prospects who contacted a company is generally acceptable here in North America, as long as you provide a way for them to opt out. However, my understanding is that in Europe, the GDPR rules are quite different. If you are based in the EU, you need to be very careful how you use email and whom you send them to. I ran marketing at my previous company and we had operations in Europe. I basically stopped emailing to the Europeans in our CRM because it was not worth the risk or the effort to do what was required. I believe that the fine for each violation was $250,000 or something.

 

Oh the insanity!!

 

And I remember my German distributor reacting in horror at my idea to have a European call center calling customer and prospects in his country. Apparently it is $100,000+ fines for cold calling a person or business in Germany.