List Building Challenge #7 – Giving them a second chance to opt-in

In the last issue, I talked about how I used a simplistic Facebook ad campaign to radically speed up the growth of my own email list.

I’m not going to deep-dive here on The Daily about running paid traffic. I know many of you just don’t feel you’re ready for that yet, even if you see how well it can work. But, I wanted to talk about it one more time here before we move onto other quick strategies for improving your list building efforts.

See, that ad campaign I was running was going out to new people. People who have likely never seen me before nor been to the Blog Marketing Academy site.

But, what about people who HAVE been to my website but never opted in?

All of us – and yes, you – have people who come to our blog who end up leaving without opting into our list. Sometimes it is because they’re not interested. Sometimes they just never saw your lead magnet. Sometimes, they’ve got such short attention spans that they could have the most awesome, relevant free download staring them in the face and they don’t see it.

But, once they back away and leave, is that it? You’ll never see them again?

Not necessarily. Bring in retargeting (sometimes called remarketing).

You know it, even if you don’t think you do. Because we’ve all experienced going to some website to check it out. Then, we just happen to see their ads all over the place. It is like they’re FOLLOWING us! 🙂 You might see an ad for them in your Facebook news feed. You might even see banner ads showing up on other websites you visit.

That’s retargeting.

And it is usually much cheaper to do this kind of paid advertising than going out to new people. Usually.

So, in terms of our email list building, here’d be the basic plan…

1. They visit your website. And, they end up leaving. However, a tracking cookie is put onto their computer so now the ad networks know they’ve been there.
2. Over time, you’re building up this audience of people who have been to your site. They’re anonymous. You don’t know who they are. But, you can reach out to them with an ad any time because the ad network can reach them using those tracking cookies.
3. You set up a simple campaign for them that points right to the landing page of one of your top converting lead magnets.
4. They may click and opt-in at a later time.

In effect, you’re capturing traffic that bounces off your site and your circling back to give them another opportunity to connect with you.

Because the audience of people you’re targeting is limited to people who have been to your site already, it is by nature a more narrow (and qualified) targeting than a more general audience. This brings down the cost of doing this.

And it adds a whole new layer to your list building. You’re not stuck with that one shot of when they’re sitting right there on your blog.

Now, as I said, I’m not going to deep-dive here on The Daily about HOW to set all this up. It actually isn’t complicated. For retargeting with Facebook, it is all covered in the members-only training the Facebook Ads Blueprint. For Google network, I don’t have that one covered yet.

If you want to read more about it, I’ve also got this blog post from the archives:
The Second List: How (And Why) To Set Up Your Blog For Retargeting

One final word…

Even if you don’t intend to spin up any ad campaigns right now, I recommend you be building that retargeting list anyway. It costs you nothing. But, by doing it, you’re building up that asset that you can choose to use later if you wish.

– David