Blogging and List Building: Feed vs. Autoresponder
A simple question keeps popping up from folks in my corner of the universe, so… I thought I’d address it here. Lots of people may be wondering about the same thing. So, here’s the question:
What’s more important–the number of subscribers to your feed or the number of subscribers on your email marketing list?
To the seasoned veteran of the marketing wars, it’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s the mailing list!
Why?
Well… when you get names and email addresses into your autoresponder, they’re yours. You can do whatever you want to do with them. You can email the folks every day. You can move the data to another autoresponder. And you can use the list for joint venture propositions, right?
Your list is the MOST valuable asset that your business owns. The people on your list should be cherished and treated with respect and given tons of great content so that they will know you, like you, and trust you. When you have a list of loyal subscribers, you really have something. You’re holding money in your hands.
An RSS subscriber is great, too… don’t get me wrong. I hope you subscribe to my RSS feed, and I also hope that you subscribe to my mailing list. But let’s face it. Until you actually put your trust in me. Until you tell me who you are and what your email address is, you’re a stranger. I know little about you.
Oh sure, I might know what reader you’re using. I might know the pages that you viewed. I may even know what keyword phrases you typed into the search box to find me before you subscribed.
But I don’t know what you’re really interested in. And, on a whim, you might hate something I write and disappear from my circle of influence forever. Yes, you can do that from my email list, too, but you probably won’t be as quick to hit the unsubscribe button, if you have spent years on my list and I’ve been a true provider of cool stuff. You’re not as impulsive in severing that connection.
So, what should a good blogger do? Have both. Give everyone who comes to your blog the opportunity to subscribe to both your RSS feed and your mailing list. Every blog should have an optin form placed conspicuously at the top of the sidebar, and right below that, a way to subscribe to its feed. The person that subscribes to your feed today, might come back several times to read what you’ve written and then, decide to join your mailing list, too. They get a chance to decide who you are and whether or not you’re worth paying attention to.
So, the bottom line is…
All subscribers are valuable, and I appreciate each and every one of you. You’re why I’m here. Oh, sure, sure… I want to make money. That’s what we’re all doing here. But I look at they money as a side benefit of being able to help folks to do what I do. When I can teach folks things to help them be more successful online and they come back to me and tell me what a difference I’ve made in their lives… that’s totally something that money CAN’T buy.
