Why You Should Stop Buying Lead Lists

Guest post by Heidi Thompson

Stephanie and Jeff have said it themselves – buying email lists for your wedding business is a craptastic idea. Buying an email list full of dead emails belonging to people who are probably not interested in you so that you can spam them is not good marketing.

This is the sort of thing that gives marketing, the industry and your business a bad name, and it’s a waste of your money because it doesn’t work!

I don’t know of a single person who has spammed their way to the top.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying don’t do email marketing. I’m just saying do email marketing in a way that actually works.

The key difference between email marketing and straight up spam is permission.

When you buy a list of emails, those people have not given you permission to contact them.

When you build your own email list, those people are choosing to give you permission to contact them.

Email marketing is incredibly effective when done right because you have these people telling you that they want to hear more – from you specifically! And you can sell more without being “salesy.”

When you build your own email list, you are building one of the most valuable assets and business can have: a list of interested prospective customers. You’re also protecting your business from something known as digital sharecropping or building on rented land.

When you build your business off the back of a Facebook page or your Twitter account, you’re building on rented land and they could shut you down at any time. We saw this with the decrease in Facebook organic reach; a lot of people were screwed because they had no other way to get in touch with their prospective customers.

You own your email list. Even if all the social media networks shut down tomorrow and your website got hacked, you could still run your business because you have your email list of prospective customers. Now that is powerful.

When you build your own email list you’re giving people an option to get to know you and your business. This is incredibly important because most people who visit your website are going to be in research mode, and you aren’t going to be too successful if you’re proposing marriage on the first date.

Giving people the option to join your email list allows them to take a step toward working with you. If you’re only giving them the option to get in touch and have a sales conversation and they’re not ready to do that, you’re going to lose them and they may never come back.

If you are not building your own email list, you are letting valuable leads slip away.

Once someone is on your email list, you send them valuable pieces of content and opportunities to work with you. You get these from Stephanie and Jeff if you are on the Book More Brides email list.

You allow them to get to know, like and trust you so that when they are ready to make a commitment, you’re the one they’ll turn to. Sales is just like dating and if you never give people an opportunity to date you before proposing marriage, you’re going to get turned down a LOT.

Email marketing is a big part of creating a system to bring in leads and generate more business. Understanding that you need to build a list is only the first part of this.

There is more to building this system than I can cover in a blog post, but if you want to learn more about how to build an email list and turn those email subscribers into customers, click here to get a free training that will help you get started.

What do you think about lead lists?

Heidi Thompson is the chief marketing geek & founder of Evolve Your Wedding Business and she is on a mission is to help you book more weddings without all of the struggle and stress. Her marketing expertise has been featured on Planner’s Lounge, Wedding MBA, Sell The Bride Photo Biz Xposed & she’s an advisory board member for the UK Academy Of Wedding & Event Planning. If your goal is to grow & improve your wedding business, be sure to pick up Heidi’s free training to help you book more weddings!

 

photo credit: Tax Credits via photopin cc