A Permission Database Is As Good As Gold

By Stephen Palmer • February 11th, 2009 • Email This Post • Print This Post

Here’s the bottom line: The easiest, quickest, and best way to build a following on your blog and generate revenue is to cultivate a permission marketing database.

spamkiller A Permission Database Is As Good As GoldThis means a database of individuals who have given you permission to market to them. You provide value, and in return, they give you their personal information, most importantly their name and email address.

Building a database should be one of the primary goals of your website. A database is a ready-built audience that can be leveraged to generate traffic and revenues — regardless of how much new traffic you’re receiving. Without it, you’ll be dependent on the hamster wheel of constantly driving new traffic to your site.

Your alternatives for creating community include people having to come to your site manually to read new content, and RSS subscribers. The problem with people checking in on your site occasionally is easy to see — they’re forgetful. And the problem with relying upon an RSS feed is that relatively few people are web-savvy enough to use one.

So how do you keep people coming around? How do you keep them engaged? How can you capture an audience of recurring visitors, rather than relying on driving more traffic?

You build a database of information from people who give you permission to stay connected with them.

How To Build a Database

Step #1: Purchase Email Marketing Software

The first thing you need is software. You can either use comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, such as InfusionSoft, or basic email marketing software, such as AWeber.

For 99% of bloggers, AWeber gives you everything you need including database management, email marketing with an industry-leading deliverability rate, auto-responders, and website forms.

So start by signing up with AWeber.

Step #2: Create a Free Giveaway

You must give people a reason to give you their personal information, and this takes the form of a free giveaway. These can include e-books, newsletters, white papers, videos, podcasts — any type of e-product that can be delivered automatically over the Internet.

Make your free giveaway(s) substantial. Create genuine value for for your customers.

Step #3: Create Delivery Systems

Using your email marketing software, create web forms for people to sign up to receive your giveaway. Once created, it will generate code, which you copy and paste into your website template. Next, create an auto-responder that delivers your giveaway once people request it.

AWeber has excellent instructions on how to do all of this.

Step #4: Display Your Offer Prominently & Market

Include a direct call to action on your home page inviting people to download your giveaway. Sprinkle calls to action and sign-up forms throughout your site so that visitors can’t miss it — but do this as unobtrusively as possible (depending on your niche). In every place that a sign-up form is displayed, assure them that their personal information is safe with you.

Then, market the heck out of your blog using the strategies and tips I provide in chapter five of The Beginning Blogger’s Bible.

How To Manage Your Database

goldengoose-232x300 A Permission Database Is As Good As GoldWarning: Your database is like the proverbial Golden Goose. When managed properly, your database will produce golden eggs interminably. But you’ll kill the goose if you break the following rules:

Rule #1: Never, Ever Share Personal Information

Don’t even think about it. To do so is to compromise your relationship with your subscribers. It’s wrong and stupid. It may bring you short-term gains, but it will erode long-term profitability.

Trust is money — sharing personal information from your database is like flushing money down the toilet. When your customers subscribed, they gave you and you alone permission to market to them.

Rule #2: 75/25

75% of your contact with your database should be designed to create free value for them. Give them tips, insights, and resources without trying to sell them anything. Limit your direct product offers to 25% of your contact with your subscribers.

Rule #3: Strike the Right Contact Balance

Every niche is different, but you must be very careful with the number of times you contact your database — too few contacts and they’ll grow cold, too many and they’ll get turned off and unsubscribe.

I send out The Sentinel once a week to the subscribers of my community blog. Since it’s not commercial in nature, this frequency is appropriate. For commercial sites, twice a month is probably about right.

Rule #4: No Carry Over

If you start one thing and get a list of subscribers, then start another, unrelated project, don’t carry over your previous subscribers to the new project. You can tell your existing subscribers about what you’re up to, but don’t automatically place them into your new database.

Each project needs its own list of people who have subscribed specifically to that project. Someone who signed up for your health newsletter isn’t an automatic candidate for your e-book on dog training. Build separate databases for each online project.

Ready to create wealth? Look past the gold of profits to cultivate the golden goose of a permission marketing database.

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2009-04-22_palmer_1131-copy-111x135-custom A Permission Database Is As Good As GoldStephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com
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By Kyla@new contacts. fresh leads. on May 18th, 2010 at 1:25 am

I like rule#1 - trust is money, an example of it is when a person tells a secret to a friend, that person doesn’t have to tell his friends that by sharing the secret it means that the person trust his friend =)

 

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