Well, hello there! Welcome to Episode 80 of Coffee Break Blogging.

Today we are going to be discussing a little bit more about the whole idea of our email list. We are in Stage 3 of the overall 7-phase system to building up our online business. And what we are going to be talking about today is the one blog – one list strategy that most bloggers are using.

Most bloggers who are building an email list have one list for their one blog. And this is certainly better than nothing… but it could be a LOT more effective.

Today, we discuss the use of multiple lists for one blog and why it is so much more powerful.

You’ll learn:

• Why list segmentation is so important
• The most effective (and simplest) way to begin segmenting your list
• How you should structure multiple lists for your blog
• How to get people onto your “general list”

This episode is important for your success with email marketing, moving forward.

One List

So basically, what I am referring to here is the fact that most bloggers who have an email list have heard all about the importance of building up an email list; what they will do is they will have one email list to their one blog. They are basically doing the one list to one blog strategy. And so that also means, that generally there is one lead magnet given away, often in the side bar; you opt-in to that thing and you are on “the list”.

Now the thing is, too, as a subscriber, you are basically getting the exact same thing that everybody else is getting. So that is the big thing that I want to talk about today; with the one blog – one list strategy, is that you are essentially sending the exact same email to everybody on your list. You are treating all of your subscribers exactly the same because they have one common entry point into the list and you do not know anything else about them.

One of the things that I have talked about on this podcast before is the fact that in reality, our email subscribers are different. They are not all the same. They might be united by one very over-arching niche that it is you are talking about, but within that there are sub-interests, we could say. At the Blog Marketing Academy I can pretty much know that everybody who comes here is interested in blogging. But blogging is a humongous topic. Underneath that we have got everything from membership sites, to building your list, to themes… whatever you want to come up with there is a lot of little sub-topics.

And so if I treated all of my email subscribers exactly the same, then I am really should be shooting myself on the foot because what is going to happen is anything that I say is going to land on… Well, for some people it is going to have some effect, it’s going to get them to take action, but a majority of them will not. They will just scan the email and delete it because they weren’t interested.

List Segmentation

So the alternative to one blog – one list is having some basic segmentation. You have probably heard the idea of segmentation before; but it is the idea of dividing your list up into groups. And these groups are going to be based on actions that those subscribers taken or things that they have indicated they are interested in. And you do that by how you actually structure your email system. The whole idea here is you want to send the right message to the right person at the right time. And you want to get as close to that as you can. At the end of the day, you could get really fine-tuned with this but it is going to be really difficult to do with some email systems.

If you are with Aweber or MailChimp or one of these what I call “linear” email systems, it is a little harder to do this. If you are with somebody like Ontraport or InfusionSoft, it is a lot easier because they work based on tagging and sequences and it is a whole different thing. But we want to get as close as possible to the idea of being able to send the right message to the right person at the right time, which means every subscriber is being treated individually and not as a huge collective.

The way that we are going to do this is we are going to use our email lists as our list segments. Now I am primarily speaking to those of you who are using somebody like MailChimp or Aweber or one of these linear systems. A lot of bloggers make the mistake of thinking, “Well, okay, I have multiple list capability inside of Aweber” which you do. And they think, “Okay, well I guess I can run multiple blog out of the same Aweber account.” And you could. But I do not want you to think that because Aweber calls that “thing” an email list, it is a big collective. Really, you want to treat each email list as a segment, not as “the list.” Okay?

So basically, let us say you have different lead magnets out there. Now this is a great way to segment your list. So instead of having one thing that you giveaway to get people on your list, you can have an army of these things.

Let’s say you have five of them. Now, depending on what lead magnet they opted-in for, they just indicated that they are interested in whatever it is that lead magnet is about. So you want to have each of those lead magnets get people onto a different email list, not the same list. You do not want to put each of your 5 lead magnets onto the same email list because then you won’t have any way to differentiate them. And that is not segmentation. You want to be able to segment these people and know exactly what they are doing and what they are interested in.

So you want to have different lead magnets, different ways of getting onto your list and you want each of those things to go on to a different email list. Now, to speak to those who have multiple list for the same blog and you can get confusing on that like, how do you know what to send to who?

Well, when you send out to your subscribers with Aweber, you can actually check out boxes and just say “I want to send out to this list and I want to exclude this other list.” So basically what it comes down to is you treat your entire Aweber account as your list. But within that account you have got various (Aweber calls) list. But you just realized that they are just a block of your subscribers. That is not “the list.”

It really is a terminology game at this point, but I want to make sure that you adjust your mindset accordingly so that we start thinking of our list in terms of segments and not as this big collective where everybody is the same.

Here is what I would like you to do to put this strategy to use…

First of all, I encourage you to go back to Episode 42 of Coffee Break Blogging. In that episode I talked to you about the Transformation Map; a very simple tool that I created to map out the transformation that you are in the business of delivering. I talked about; back in Phase 1 of this overall process of Coffee Break Blogging I talked about the transformation and how your best business is; your best foundations for online business is going to be where your prospects are seeking a transformation of some kind or they are trying to achieve something. So at Point A, which is now – they don’t have it and at Point B, they do. You will see that template in a lot of different markets.

Now the Transformation Map that I talked about in Episode 42, is a plan to actually map out what the general steps are of this transformation; understanding of course, that everybody goes in different pathways and stuff like that, but there are typically certain barriers, certain things that people are going to have to overcome to achieve the ultimate aim; the ultimate goal that they have.

So you want to understand what those basic steps of the transformation are. You know, if you are looking to follow along in the transformation that I deliver at the Blog Marketing Academy, well there will be typical barriers that come up. Things like, “I need to tweak a theme… I got to choose hosting; I’ve got to write my first batch of content. I got to set up my social media profiles. These are basic things that pretty much everybody is going to have to do, so they are basic steps in the transformation. So you need to apply this transformation map idea to what you are doing so that you can map out and get a general outline.

Now, once you have got that general outline, what I want you to do is divide into four or five different segments or different major areas that map out to your transformation. And I want you to create a lead magnet for each one. So the ones that I just mentioned which is the idea of choosing hosting or getting your blog set up, that might be one of the main steps to the beginning of the transformation that I deliver. And I can go and I can create a lead magnet just around that one topic. So the whole idea would be that if anybody opts-in for that lead magnet, I know where they are in the transformation and I could talk to them, accordingly.

If they are at a point where one of the other barriers that they would have to get over in the transformation is how to get traffic to the blog content that they publish; again, all of us as bloggers are going to deal with that one, right? So then, I can give them a lead magnet that would be about the idea of how to maximize your traffic to every blog post that you publish. And I know that if they opt-in for that lead magnet, I know exactly where they are in the game; I know what they are interested in and I can then speak to them in the context of things like blog traffic because I know that is where they are coming from. I hope that makes sense. It is really pretty simple how this works.

So you build a lead magnet in about around each one of these main steps in your transformation. Now, you want to map each one of those lead magnets to a unique list. So build a new list for that lead magnet. Realize you are not building up a whole email list here. It is just another segment of your subscribers that are going to be inside the same account whether it be with Aweber or MailChimp or what have you. So, that is one lead magnet to one email list. And then, any autoresponder that you set up on that list that is related to the lead magnet will just go on to that list for that lead magnet.

The General List

Now, one thing that I want to clarify here is the idea of the general list. There is always that idea of the general list, like a general newsletter list. So if you have people coming in from different lead magnets then ultimately they are going to all end up to what is called the general list.

So how do we do that? Well, you want to set up another list on your system… Just call it “general list” or whatever you want to call it; and that would be the general list. So what is going to happen is when somebody subscribes to one of your lead magnet, they are going to get put on two lists, simultaneously. They are going to get put on the one that is specific to that lead magnet and they are going to be put on the general list at the same time.

The general list; you can set up an autoresponder sequence on that which does nothing but send them your best content. And we will be talking more about what kind of stuff you can send them in the next episode; in Episode 81, but this is all just going to be content. It is going to be things to deliver value to your people on the long run; typically the autoresponder that is going to go right next to your lead magnet or on that lead magnet’s specific list, is going to be an offer of some kind. Okay?

At the beginning you put them on two different lists at the same time. With Aweber you can do this using their automation rules that are built in right into the account. So you can simply just say, “If the person subscribes to List A, also subscribe them to List B. Your opt-in form would be set up for the lead magnet specific list and then you would have the rule in place which will also put them onto your general list. And that is how you do it. Not particularly difficult, but I also want to mention here, that at the end that if this is something that confuses you, you might want to check out one of the Action Plans that I have inside the Blog Monetization Lab and this one is called Build Your Blog Profit Funnel. It is about setting up your sales funnel behind your blog, but in that Action Plan I also described and I show, with the diagram, how to actually map out these different lists and how they work together. So if I was sending you a little cross-eyed there by talking about how to get them on your general list and stuff like that, there is information inside that Action Plan; it is called Build Your Own Blog Profit Funnel and it is only available to members of the Blog Monetization Lab. And you can learn more about that at blogmonetizationlab.com.

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So in the end, I will just mention; the one blog – one list strategy is flawed, you are actually not doing it right… Well, let’s say this, you are still building a list; it is just not nearly as effective as could otherwise be. The way to do it is put segmentation into place and don’t treat everybody exactly the same.

Hopefully you found that useful, I will see you in the next episode where we are going to talk about how to find good material to send to your email subscribers.

I’ll see you then! 😉