Size Does Matter… Or Does It?

You may hear some marketing experts say “It’s all about the size of your list.” But I disagree. While a large list gives you a large pool of people to market your services and products to, it isn’t ONLY about quantity. Yes, at several of the conferences I have attended, experts say that the tipping point for a truly successful ezine is 1,000 subscribers. But I am here to tell you that HUGE results can come much smaller lists, if your readers are engaged and you are actively working to build long-lasting relationships with your subscribers.

For example, when my client Melissa first came to me and asked me to help her figure out why she wasn’t getting the sales results she wanted out of her email marketing efforts, she was shocked to hear my recommended course of action.

Melissa had been focusing on steadily growing her list and had grown it to almost 3,400 subscribers. Not only was she was proud of her BIG list, but others were impressed as well, which lead to joint venture invitations, teleseminar guest speaking opportunities, and more.

But, her BIG list wasn’t producing results and her conversion rates were low, which means so were her overall sales.

Luckily Melissa was using an email marketing service provider for her ezine that offered robust tracking tools. Those tools allowed me to analyze previous email campaign reports and her list.

So what was the problem?

Melissa, may have had a BIG list, but her unique open rates and click-throughs were in the toilet. That means less than one-third of her list actually opened the emails she was sending, and of those one-third, even less actually took the time to read the content she was delivering! You see, Melissa had a high quantity list, but it was a low quality list.

So, what does it mean to have a high quality list?

Let me share my story with you. While I was designing, programming, and implementing ezine after ezine for my clients, when it came to launching an ezine for my own business, Bourn Creative, I was a total skeptic.

I had heard all of the sales pitches about how an ezine can double, triple, or even quadruple my business and had listened to quite a few teleseminars trying to sell me on an email newsletter product to make me loads of money.

I knew what a HUGE benefit implementing an ezine would be for my own business. I was seeing the results in my clients’ businesses daily! But at that time, I couldn’t see the big picture. I was working ridiculously long days, actively pursuing new clients, raising my two small children, and volunteering at preschool. I was exhausted. All I could think was, “Where am I going to find the time to squeeze an email newsletter into my weekly schedule, let alone write the darn thing?”

Then one day, a speaker at a networking event I attended gave a presentation that really hit home. She had us write down a list of things we were thinking about implementing in our businesses and all the reasons we had not yet taken action. We then crossed out the “excuses” and threw them away so the path to action was clear and ready.

The next week I added an opt-in to my website www.bourncreative.com and launched Design and Profit, my weekly ezine dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build their brand, market their business, and live their dream lives. Each week, I share a personal story, update my readers on special news and events, share a recent client project, and provide a high-content, value-added feature article on topics ranging from search engine optimization and websites, to branding and design, to internet marketing and social media.

Since then, I have been enjoying high open rates, a large amount of forwards and great conversion rates on my click-throughs! I even receive several emails from subscribers thanking me for the great content and sharing with me how I am making a difference in their business.

I was so excited because launching my weekly ezine wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be, didn’t take as much time as I thought it would, and I was having a lot of fun sharing my knowledge with my list.

While I did invite my contacts to check out my new ezine, download my free special report, and join my list, I did not add them to my list automatically. I wanted to make sure I grew a quality list full of people who wanted to hear from me and wanted to know more about my services. So, I chose to start my list at ZERO.

By the second week I was at 100, by the third week I was at almost 200. Within one month I was at almost 350 subscribers and my list continues to grow consistently.

Now, these numbers may seem low to some email marketing gurus, who boast lists of tens of thousands of subscribers. With so much emphasis put on list size these days, it is easy for smaller solopreneurs to feel poorly about having a small list.

But I was repeatedly seeing unique open rates around 75 percent and I wasn’t promoting my ezine at all.

After a few months of earning my subscribers’ trust with high-value content, I decided to do my first promotion and the conversion rates were off the charts — they were way better than those of my peers with HUGE lists!

My list may have been small to start out, but it was mighty, proving that it is not always about the size of the list, but about the quality of the list and the quality of the relationships you build with your subscribers.