Responding to the emails of your prospects will help you to build your business more quickly. I can remember when people first began to ask me questions by responding to my broadcast and autoresponder emails. Sometimes they thought I had written to them personally, and I took that as a great compliment. Over time I began to build relationships with the people on my list, and it all started with me answering their emails with answers to their questions.

Make sure the email address you use in your autoresponder sequence is a current one. You will not want to miss anything that is sent to you. This is done when you first set up your autoresponder, and can be changed if you need to later on.

You may want to initiate the contact with your list. Ask them what they think about something you have written to them about. Because the overwhelming majority of marketers do not respond to emails, you will set yourself apart very quickly.

You may already be thinking that this business model will not be scalable as you become more successful in your online business, but I have been answering all of my own emails for four years now and still do not find it to be too difficult. People are amazed when I answer their questions so quickly, and when I am busy I will write back to tell them I will answer their question the following day. I have found this to be a wonderful way to find out exactly what my prospects and clients want from me, as well as a way to get to know them much better.

When I was a classroom teacher it was a big deal to have a class paper. For my first three years of teaching my class published the ‘Room 5 News’. This was back in the early 90’s, so desktop publishing was not so easy to do. I can’t even remember the name of the program we used, but I do know it was on about twelve 5 1/4″ floppy disks, and I had to keep changing them throughout the process. This was before hard drives were commonplace. The result was a beautiful newsletter that we printed for the entire school, and a group of 5th and 6th graders who were very proud of what they could accomplish on a computer.

Today the process of creating and distributing a newsletter to your prospects is much simpler. You write an article, and then ask several other people to do the same. They are able to promote themselves at the end of their article, and you receive content that can be passed on to your list. The idea is to connect with your audience many times, so they can get to know you better over time. Take a look at the newsletters currently published by Armand Morin and Dr. Jeanette Cates and see what you think.

You must remind your prospects of what your products have to offer them on a regular basis. People are busy, and most people are on several people’s lists. This means that it is almost impossible to keep up with the products that are available and how they can help us to achieve our goals. You must stand out from the crowd and above the noise by showing the people on your list exactly what you have to offer them.

This will be more manageable when you are just getting started, because you will not have much to keep track of. Make a list of your products and the products you are promoting as an affiliate. Write an autoresponder message for each one so that the people who join your list in the future will be able to hear about these products.

If you have already been online for a year or more, make a

With the Internet changing so quickly, your prospects will appreciate your willingness to stay on top of things and to share that information with them in a timely fashion. Even if you have only been doing business online for a year, you are still far ahead of those you will be helping. Think about the information that would be of interest to the people on your list. What is it that they must know in order to achieve their goals? How can you get that information to them so they will know you care about what they need?

There are a variety of ways you can provide this type of information to your prospects. Subscribe to some of the blogs and ezines that cover the news in your niche. Read offline magazines on the topics you cover. Attend live events where you can hear the latest updates first hand. Set up Google alerts on the keywords you need to know about. Being the person who is ‘in the know’ about what is happening in your niche is the fastest way to position yourself as an expert in your field.

This does not have to consume all of your time and

There are many ways to connect with the people on your list. These are people who have come to you to learn what you are teaching online. You can share secret or other insider information with your list, and this will make them see you in an entirely new light. We all love a secret, so when someone we only have a small connection with offers to divulge secret information or insider tips, we suddenly feel like we are part of the group. This will help you to quickly build the link, know, and trust factor in your business.

When doing this, make sure the information you are sharing with them is valid and applicable to their specific type of business, give them a reason for needing to know what you are telling them, and give them an opportunity to respond or further communicate with you on the topic. This is important in order for you to maintain your credibility with your list.

A secret is only valuable if it helps us to achieve our goals. Think about it; we want and need insider tips and other information if we are to achieve what we want in our personal or professional lives. When I was a classroom teacher, I was often privy to information that helped to decide the best course of action for my career. These secrets helped me to save time and money when I was deciding to return to school for an advanced degree and taking a closer look at changing from one school district to another. Make sure the insider tips you share are truly ones that will be helpful to your prospects.

You may have a list of people who have opted in to receive more information on your topic, but have not purchased your eBook or other product. I have found that the best way to connect with them is to remind them of what your product or servive has to offer.

For example, tell them about one of your chapters and what information is included there. You will be sharing a few of the benefits with them, and if they are still interested in your topic thay may be more likely to purchase it at this time. By sharing more details of what you know and will be teaching them, it brings your list even closer to the idea of buying your information and solving their problem.

You may know that I now have 6 membership sites. These sites allow me to have multiple streams of online income in the areas where I am something of an expert. These include article marketing, affiliate marketing, and marketing for small businesses. So how can this help you, you may be asking?

I decided to offer one of these memberships at no cost to the people who have been on my list for more than two years and have continued to be supportive of what I am doing on the Internet to help them achieve the success they want and deserve. This is my way of paying them back for their loyalty and support.

What are you an expert in that you could offer to your list? It is so simple to set up these membership sites now, there just isn’t any reason not to use this technique for building your relationship with your list. Read my short report on membership sites and see how this business model will help you to build your own online empire.

Last week I had to apologize to the people on my list. I had invited them to a teleseminar training that required a password. The first email I sent contained this password; the follow up email did not.  I did the same thing on my paid call that week.

One of my students wrote to tell me about this. He wasn’t angry, but he had missed out on two calls that he had scheduled his time to listen to. I apologized to him, and then apologized to my entire list for the confusion this had caused. I knew he wasn’t the only person I had inconvenienced.

Don’t be afraid to make a public apology to the people on your list, if it is warranted. Being big enough to admit when you are wrong goes a long way in today’s world, and especially on the Internet, where people are

I spoke with the editor of one of the local magazines in my city earlier today. Business is down and she does not like to market. She knows she must reach out to others in order to stay in business in 2010. I recommended she schedule what she would do each day to connect with others.

Make a schedule of marketing activities for your business. Marketing is the most important activity within your business, so schedule time every day to take action in this area. This needs to be at least fifty percent of each day, even though that may be different from what you are used to doing. The businesses that understand the importance of regular marketing will prosper during good times and bad, so give yourself the benefit of knowing this going in.

It’s really about building a relationship with your prospects, as well as with current clients. Connect with them on a deeper level and you will be able to notice the difference in your business within a short period of time.

You must get the people on your list to open your emails, or you do not have the opportunity to begin building a relationship with them. This is why the subject line of your email is so important.

The first thing we all look at is to see who the email is from. If we recognize the name and want to hear from that person, we will open the email and read it. Make sure to brand yourself so that you use the same name in each of your emails.

The subject line is also more attractive and likely to be opened by our prospects if we personalize it. You can merge the first name of the person you are writing to into the subject line and also into the body of the email. Make sure to have an attention grabbing headline that is worthy of opening. Also, deliver on the promise of your subject line in the body of your email. If you use something like:

firstname, here’s something to help you write articles faster

then make sure you have included this information on article marketing in your message. Remember that you are continuing to build trust with people, so deliver on your promise and you will do just that.

There are many tried and true subject lines that have worked well when tested over the past few years, but you may be better off to just write