When it comes to building a list, then the size of that list is obviously going to be important, however size is not everything and that is what a lot of new listbuilders fail to understand.
Let’s say you bought a list of 5,000 people – random people you have never heard of and who may (or may not) have any interest in your product. (Buying a list in this way is a really, really bad idea and we would strongly discourage anyone from doing so.)
Now let’s say you had built up a list of 500 people, perhaps from making them an offer via a squeeze page or from getting in front of an audience in an online live streaming event or via your blog.
The second list will be an order of magnitude smaller than the first but it will be much more valuable to you than the larger list. This is because it is not just a numbers game, it is a game of numbers combined with quality.
A high quality small list will always trump a low quality large one because you will be looking to build up a relationship with the people on your list and this is key.
How can you possibly hope to build up a relationship with people who have no idea who you are and have no idea how they came to be on your list in the first place? The simple answer is you can’t.
This is one of the reasons that buying a list is such a bad idea, because you have no way of knowing that the people on it have given their permission to receive emails from you. Maybe there people out there who are happy just to be emailed at random but I know I am not and I don’t know anyone who actually does fall into that category.
So always have list size v quality in mind when you set about building a list. Numbers for the mere sake of numbers is never a good idea.
At RocketResponder we want to ensure that your listbuilding efforts are effective and that you have all the right tools to both build a list and communicate with your list as effectively as possible.
If you concentrate on building a high quality list then it will take you longer to grow that list but once you understand that simply going for high numbers is not the best approach then taking time to grow a list is no longer a problem.
