Does Size REALLY Matter?

You know, for the last few years I've been helping fitness professionals to grow their lists from zero to hero proportions very quickly, using very little money, very little time and very little expertise.

As well as the last couple of 12 days of fitness promotions, I've been secretly working behind the scenes with some pretty famous fitness professionals to help them write their copy and attract hoards of signups to their lists.

It's been great fun, a lot of fun in fact, and I've learned a ton about what works and what doesn't when it comes to growing large and responsive lists for selling fitness products.

Mostly I've learned what DOESN'T work.

See, like most people, I used to repeat the mantra 'The Money's In The List, The Money's In The List' over and over again. I subscribed to the (then) popular theory that the most important thing I could do to help my business and those who consulted with me was to build big lists.

So I did.

I built lists that were in excess of 30, 40 and 50,000 people. I even built one that had nearly 80,000 people in it with the belief that the size of my list was more important than anything else related to my business efforts.

It made sense when I listened to the 'Gurus'. They all said that you will only ever sell to a small proportion of any list you grow and so it makes sense to grow a large list.

So I did.

I grew these monster lists, wrote to them weekly, twice weekly then as much as daily and, you know what I found?

My largest list were the LEAST responsive.

Not only by percentage but by total volume of sales, period.

Where my 30,000 person list was pulling in say, 20 sales a week (yes, THAT bad!), my 750 person list was pulling in 25, 30 or more... of the exact same product, and sometimes using the exact same email!

It didn't make sense to me at first. In fact, it didn't make sense to me for a looong time.

I couldn't figure out why my 30,000 list was converting less than my 750 list. That is, until I started to pay more attention to the lists of the marketing experts that I was subscribed to.

I noticed that whilst I tended to keep my lists on the large side, jealously protecting them against attrition of any kind and boasting whenever I could about 'the size of my one', the marketing superstars OUTSIDE of fitness were doing something very different.

THEY were always chopping their lists down, deliberately making theirs smaller!

It didn't make sense to me at first, until I really took the time to look at what they were doing and when I did, when I finally understood the method in their madness and applied it to my own business model, my results exploded overnight.

What were they doing?

They were splitting, splitting and splitting again, each and every one of their lists so that those who were in the smallest groups were the 'purest' of their raving fans.... and the most likely to purchase.

Instead of keeping lists of 30,000 plus with mixes of genuine fans, freebie hunters, and everybody in between, they were walking their subscribers through a well thought out screening process to find out who were the real fans and who weren't.

A simple system they'd operate (and one that you can too) is to offer a report of some kind (let's say fat loss) in order to grow your 'feeder' list. These are all those who are generally interested in a product/service 'like' yours. Though they may not know of either you or your products yet, they're looking for fat loss info and don't mind who they get it from.

Once on your list, offer them something more specific, say a kettlebell fatloss workout or a nutritional program (or both) and have them subscribe to these niched reports and newsletters.

What have you done here?

You're 'purified' your list (slightly) by seeing:

a) Who actually opens your mails - most people only experience a 30% open rate anyway

b) Who acts on your mails - Who actually follows through your links and looks at what you're sending them to

c) Who is interested in the sub-niched material you're offering - Once you know that a certain proportion of your list is interested in fatloss with kettlebells as opposed to 'just' fatloss, you can now speak to them specifically about using kettlebells, easy!

But it doesn't stop there!

That's just the first layer of purification. There are many, many more you can apply.

Take our kettlebell fatloss list for example, we can now purify the list again by offering, say, home fatloss programs, bootcamp programs, challenges and tests, body makeover competitions etc, etc

See how it works?

Every time we take a list and purify it, sure, we make it smaller but we also make it much, much more likely that they'll respond to what you're offering. After all, each time they sign up to a new list they're putting their hand up to say "I'm interested!" aren't they? And the more times they do, the more likely it is that you can connect with them, befriend them, help them and yes, have them buy your products.

It's not exactly rocket science, yet you'd be surprised at how few fitness professionals ever purify their lists, instead focusing on size rather than responsiveness like I did.

At the time of writing this I have 45 lists in operation, each one following the list purification process and each smaller list making me more money than the last. In fact, I have a list of 200 people that makes me more money than my 30,000 person list!

Size really doesn't matter. Sure, the money IS in the list but it's not in the big one. It's in the smallest, most focused niche list you can build.

So get to building!

Dax Moy
www.personaltrainersuccess.ning.com