Chapter 9
E-mail Distribution Lists
What's the most valuable thing in your business?
In many cases, it's your e-mail list. Why is this list so powerful? Because you can click “send” and have your message reach potentially thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of people in an instant, and it won't cost you a penny. If you ever try to sell your business, you'll get far more if you have a big e-mail list. It's a sales channel. It's a communication channel. It's a direct link with qualified prospects. If you could do only one thing to build a stable and profitable business, build an e-mail list!
We'll talk more about building your own e-mail list in Chapters 23 and 50. For now, I'd like to introduce the available options. There are basically three different ways to market your product or service by e-mail:
1. E-mail to your own list.
2. E-mail to a joint venture list.
3. E-mail to a distribution list.
Your Own List
E-mailing to your own list is just that. You send out a message to a list of e-mail addresses you've accumulated on your own. There are some great strategies for using your own list; we'll go over them in later chapters, after we've covered a few website topics.
Joint Ventures
Here's how this type of e-mail marketing works: You approach someone in your field who already has a big e-mail list and then send a message out to that person's or company's list, splitting the resulting revenue. It's a great way to get your products in front of a huge audience quickly.
But ...
