Everyone tells you that the money is in the list. Furthermore they tell you that you must build a relationship with that list, gain their trust and confidence–and only then begin marketing to them with promotional emails.

I mean, that’s only common sense, right? But the thing is that often we run into things that make sense, but it turns out they just aren’t true. The only way to tell if something like this is true is to test, test, test.

In this post I’ll examine the fundamental precepts of email marketing and share some data I have collected that may go against the grain of what you have been taught.

When I started my online career I, of course, began building lists in several niches using squeeze pages set up to offer bonuses in exchange for visitors names and emails. One of the first lessons I learned was that my sign-up rates increased when I only asked for visitors to input their email address on my forms rather than their email along with their name.

That only seems to make sense. It takes less time and it’s easier to just input an email address. The other factor coming into play is that many people will not give their actual name when they join a list. They will make up a name and use that.

So collecting names, even if it allows you to customize the subject lines and content by personalizing them with the subscriber’s name, may not do much because the name in your auto-responder account for them may not be their actual name.

So my first suggestion is to do some testing yourself and see if you get a higher sign-up rate if you use only a box for them to input their email address. Again, there is no substitute for testing. Test it out for yourself and analyze your results (the conversion rates of your opt-in forms).

Another lesson I learned came from Tellman Knudsen. He is a master list-builder. In fact, if you do a search for “list building” his squeeze page will come up in the top 2-3 results. He knows his stuff.

He no longer offers this, but some time ago he offered a terrific little publication titled, The Great Extinction. One of his big points was that for years he struggled with making money by email marketing. Then, a friend told him the importance of hitting his list every single day–never miss a beat. Tellman explained that once he took his friend’s advice his earnings from email marketing shot up exponentially.

You have to keep your name in front of your subscribers. Don’t let them forget you. There are many other people marketing the same products you do to their lists and there is a lot of overlap on different marketer’s lists.

If one of your subscribers gets into the habit of buying products recommended by one of your competitors, they are likely to keep on accepting the products recommended by that marketer. This is especially true in the IM niche. You really need to hit your list every single day with some kind of promotional email. And most of the most successful marketers in the IM niche hit their list twice a day with promotional emails.

When I first started out, I provided my subscribers with very useful information in every single email. I would give them links to sites where they could get even more good content. I would give them great tips as well. And–I would work in a blurb about a product I thought the would be interested in. I did make some sales.

However, again–after testing quite a bit, I found that my earnings increased substantially when I took a different approach. Once a week or so I would offer them a free download–a report or video to help them out a bit. But the remainder of the week my emails were strictly promotional. I didn’t obfuscate the emails with other content, even good content. They were strictly promotional.

Now there is a school of thought that says doing this is not good. They say that you should always provide good content with every email. You know what? When I adopted this new model–sending out a good informative email once a week and on every other day sending out strictly promotional emails–my affiliate commissions more than tripled.

Again, you will have to do some testing. Different niches are different and some people will unsubscribe if all they get are promotional emails. But these people are not likely to buy from you anyway. If they unsubscribe, it only culls your list of unresponsive subscribers. You win on both counts.

And here is something I found really useful. I tried sending out emails with subject lines like, “48 Hour Free Download”. Now most people will think that’s just hype. They think that after 48 hours they can still access the free download. You must prove them wrong! You must train your subscribers to take quick action.

If you use Amazon’s S3 hosting for your downloads, you can set a time for the download to be accessible for download. After that time people clicking to download will not be able to access it.

Doing this will train your subscribers to open your emails quickly if they want your free materials. If someone misses your cutoff point and emails you asking to get it, you must politely tell them no. Again, this will train your subscribers that they must act quickly if they want your free stuff. It works very well.

Those are just a few ideas that may help you grow a responsive list that will buy through your links. Again, it’s all about testing–testing every single aspect of your email marketing campaigns. You cannot accept the generally accepted dogmas as being true unless you prove it true in your own case by testing!