Much is written about list building and how to go about it, yet you hear much less advice about the actual content you should send to your list once you have built it. What makes a good autoresponder sequence? What makes a good broadcast email.

1. Start by thinking about what they originally signed up for
It can be a good idea to make your early autoresponder messages super relevant to the free offer you had on your squeeze page. If people opted in to your list to get hold of a free product about Twitter then you know that your subscribers are interested in Twitter (or they wouldn’t be on your list) so sell them products about Twitter and give them advice on using Twitter well.

2. Look after your subscribers interests
Once you’ve built a list it’s easy to just sell, sell, sell, but what you really must do is provide true value to your subscribers. Before you add a new paid product to your autoresponder sequence or send a broadcast email promoting the latest thing, ask yourself if your subscribers will truly benefit from the product if they buy it from you.

3. Think about timing
Take the time to test out the best way to space your messages. Do you subscribers respond better if you email them once a week, twice a week, twice a month, etc? Try starting your sequence quite intensively and then space out your messages a little more as time goes on.

4. Become a trusted advisor
The last thing you want to appear is a salesman. Instead you want to become a trusted advisor to your subscribers, so talk to them as you would a friend and present the fact that you are recommending products that you think they will benefit from, not selling to them…

Having a large mailing list is all well and good, but if your subscribers never actually see what you are sending them then it means nothing. You need your list to be responsive. You need them to open your emails and hang on to your every word.
When I think about all the emails that land in my inbox every day, there are certain people I especially look out for. If it’s from a particular marketer then I will ALWAYS read what they have sent to me, purely because of who it’s from…
Here’s how to build that relationship with your list and get more subscribers to open your emails.
1.    Give people a reason to open your emails
If all you do is sell then people latch onto this pretty damn quickly! Even if they don’t unsubscribe in the first place they are highly unlikely to open your emails because they know that each time you’re trying to sell them something. Give people a reason to open what you send. Of course you need to sell from time to time, but also provide good content that people can actually use. Make people look forward to receiving your emails. You want people to see your name and think ‘hey I must open that because it’s from such and such a body and I know I’ll benefit from reading it…’

2.    Think about your subject line
Your email subject line is crucial in your quest to get more subscribers to open your emails. It really helps if you can either make people curious about the content or if you can convey the point of your email within the subject line. Both tactics can be effective – it depends on your target market, the style, and the type of email you are sending. I like to make sure that the subject line is relevant and related to the actual content.
3.    Consider the time
Sending emails on certain days and times will yield much better results than others. Again, it all depends on your target audience and where they live. When will your subscribers be at their computers? Try different times and test to see which times work best for you. A lot of people take the opinion that Tuesday is a good day, however I have always found it pretty poor and the competition is massive! Find out what works for you and don’t forget time differences. If you live in the UK but most of your subscribers are in Australia, for example, then don’t hit them when they will all be in bed!