Day 1

We’re doing the 30-Day Challenge List Building 2.0 differently.

This is a complete rewrite, re-organization because the list building world has changed quite a bit since we built this challenge (our first) 3 years ago.

So, let's start with a couple of questions for you:

1) Do you have a list? More than 500 people on your list?
2) Are you making money from your list?
3) Do you have multiple optins working for you?

If you answered "No" to all those questions, you should take the Basic list building track. If you answered "Yes" to all those, you should take the Advanced list building track.

We're adding two videos per lesson. The top will be Basic, the bottom will be Advanced. You're welcome to do both if you want, but please focus on the one that is right for you so you can move ahead quickly.

Today's Assignment:

Select the path you'll take: Beginner or Advanced list building.

Day 2

Advanced Track

I guess congratulations are in order. You have a list that is making you money and growing with all of your different opt ins that you have in place.

You may be thinking that as an advanced list builder, you're doing pretty well. And I think you are, too. But also at this point in your career, you understand that Listbuilding is essential to continuing to improve your business because you always have to fill the pipeline. So let's talk about that pipeline and what does it mean to your abilities to scale your business.

You may have mastered Listbuilding with article marketing. Or maybe your list building efforts through webinars have served you really well. Have you noticed over the last year that both of those are becoming less effective?

What that means for you as an advanced list builder is that you must find new sources of engaged avenues to bring in people who fit your targeted niche. Otherwise your business will dwindle into oblivion.

Advanced list building has many, many lines in the water. But the key to being an effective list builder is to measure all of your traffic sources.

As you can see we've got a lot to do in this list building challenge. Hangout. It's going to get exciting.

Day 3

Sorting Hats

Before we do anything with Listbuilding efforts, we are going to focus on segmentation.

The goal of our Listbuilding has to be more than just getting people on the list. Now what we're wanting to do more than anything is to build relationships with the people who are on our list. That means talking to them about things they want to talk about.

The most successful online business people these days are using multiple techniques to discover more about their list as individuals and then treating those people as individuals.

To segment your list properly, you have to have a list management tool that creates campaigns as well as tags for your list. When somebody signs up, you need to know where they came from. That could be key information and what they're interested in. If you know what they're interested in, you'll be able to offer them exactly what they want in the way of content as well as sales opportunities.

We're going to spend a lot of time talking about segmentation.

Your action today is to dig around in your autoresponder system or CRM if you're using something like Infusionsoft or Active Campaign or even AWeber, make sure you understand how to build campaigns as well as tagging in the system. Watch the tutorials in your system so that you understand what we’re talking about as we go forward.

Today's Assignment:

Watch tutorials in your CRM system about tagging and building campaigns to segment your list. Make sure you understand how to use these features.

Day 4

What are Tags?

Let's start with some basic information about segmentation. The building block for a well segmented list is the tag.

The very basic tag difference is between the different types of people on your list. Our friend Nicole Dean talks about the four lists that everyone should have:

1) prospects
2) buyers
3) affiliates
4) and what she calls besties

The first three are pretty self-explanatory and make a lot of sense. A prospect is somebody going through a funnel in your system until they become a buyer. A buyer is someone who is a little more valuable to you because you understand they will spend money. An affiliate is a partner, someone who will promote your products. All those make perfect sense.

What is a bestie?

Think of that as the top 20% of your customers. One of the things I learned from Alex Mandossian and when I was coaching with him was that I needed to know exactly who the top 20% of my customers were and reach out to them specifically so that I could build a really good relationship with those folks.

They got a new tag in our system so that we could communicate with them easily and watch their activity to engage quickly. Those folks are what Nicole calls besties.

This is just the beginning of our segmentation process.

Today's Assignment:

This is your first segmentation assignment: make sure you have at least these four list segmented in your system. Look at the lifetime value of your customers and identify your top 20%. Tag those folks or segment them somehow so that you can deal with them specifically and differently.

Day 5

Let's Talk About Campaigns

The CRM that you use must be capable of creating campaigns based on behavior.

The old programming language phrase off "if this, then that, else that" carries through when we are talking about campaigns.

For example, if someone clicks on an affiliate offer, we don't continue to promote to them in the affiliate campaign until the very final opportunity. One of the reasons we do that because we don't want to hammer the people on our list who have already purchased an affiliate offer.

Without having insight into the affiliate backend system, we assume someone who clicked is engaged in this opportunity. We also assume that they purchased. We watch our numbers pretty closely to make sure that the high percentage of those who click do purchase. But it's more important to us to use the campaign functionality to treat people who are engaged with our opportunities correctly. That's just one way that we use campaigns.

Another way is that we send people to an assessment and if the results of their assessment indicates a high commitment to their business, we invite them to get on a free strategy call with us. The face-to-face 20 minute call is a great opportunity to convert those highly committed people into our programs. The campaign gives us the if / then ability to make choices based on the behavior of the visitor.

Your CRM should have the capability to use decision points and campaigns. This may seem like a real pain to implement, but it is the holy Grail of being able to treat every individual on your list differently based on their behavior. But you must be committed to this process. If you don't have this capability in your CRM, reach out to us and we will introduce you to our friends at Infusionsoft to get you a really good deal.

Today's Assignment:

Investigate your CRM system to see how you can use campaign functionality and if you can use campaign functionality.

Day 6

Split Testing

This may seem a little self-serving but we do have a simple split testing Plug-in that we want to tell you about if you don't have one that you're using already. It's called Simple Click Tracker and it does just that with redirects.

But I'm not here to sell you my plug-in. I am here to make sure that you're using split testing to determine which landing pages, squeeze pages, and even emails are giving you the greatest results.

Split testing is often talked about and seldom implemented. But I guarantee you, if you see someone who is extremely successful in their online business, it's because they know how to test and often it's just a simple AB split test.

So how do you set up a split test that gives you good numbers?

The concept is really simple. Create one landing page that is the control page and create a second landing page that is the variant page. Send an equal amount of traffic to those pages, and see which one brings in the most conversions.

Obviously this is a tedious task and a great candidate for automation using the computer. The results of the split test can tell you which landing page to focus on.

As with most data, the numbers never lie. And you'll find that you're often wrong with your assumptions about what works.

The best way to start a split test is with what I call a scream test. That's when two pages are radically different. For example we could be testing a video squeeze page versus a long form text sales page.

The second test is what I call a whisper test. That's when two similar pages are being tested, but you're only really testing the headline for example.

The reason were dealing with split testing so far up in our challenge is that split testing eliminates the guesswork and drives high ROI quickly.

Today's Assignment:

Your task today is to ensure that you have a split test tool that you can use to evaluate your landing pages.

If you don't, check out Simple Click Tracker at

http://nams.ws/sctsales.

Day 7

Inspiration Day

Today's Assignment:

Listen to the story of how list building kept Kathleen Gage's business humming while taking time off to attend to dying parents.

When stuff happens in your life, you need stability to get you through. Kathleen was tested a couple of years ago when family issues caused her to take a couple of months off to tend to elderly parents who needed her. Because of her list and her systems in place, she was able to devote time and energy to those dear to her. Want to know why a list is important? There's no better reason.

Watch Kathleen Gage: Key to Your Success

Day 8

Advanced List Building with Ben Adkins (Part 1) 

Ben is wicked smart, and I'm happy to call him a NAMS instructor and friend. He gave us a couple hours to talk about different aspects of advanced Listbuilding from his perspective using paid advertising as well as free techniques.

As you can imagine we spent a lot of time talking about testing and tweaking and patience when it comes to honing in on a target market.

Today's Assignment:

Watch Part One of Advanced Listbuilding with Dr. Ben Adkins

As always Ben totally over delivers with his content and his strategies. We spent two hours together but because the info is just so good, I've broken his sessions up so we can discuss them and you can really let it all soak in!

You'll need about an hour for the first session and be sure to have a pen and paper handy! You're going to need it!

Day 9

Part 1 Review with Ben Adkins 

What was your biggest takeaway from Part 1? As Ben Adkins mentioned about these things:

1. Facebook
2. Marketing
3. Experts
4. Success
5. Dream Situation
6. Money
7. Big Opportunity

Day 10

Advanced List Building with Ben Adkins (Part 2) 

Today's Assignment:

Watch Part Two of Advanced Listbuilding with Dr. Ben Adkins

Get into even more detail and advanced techniques in the second hour.

In part 1, we talked alot about success, mistakes and opportunities. In part 2, we're really getting into the automation end of things. This will carry us through a lot of discussion going forward.

Day 11

Part 2 Review with Ben Adkins 

What was your biggest takeaway from Part 2? We talked about patience, automating promotions and data.

Day 12

Sell More By Doing Less 

Based on Ben's Foundation, we start digging into automated monetization strategies with list building.

Today's Assignment:

Create a list of segmented interest areas of yours that could use a specific sales campaign.

Day 13

Automated Launch 

Dr. Ben Adkins is brilliant. And one of the techniques he shared with us was the automated launch monetization process that is working like gangbusters for him.

Let's talk about that process today.

Today's Assignment:

Design your own automated launch. What are the pieces and what are you selling? What is BIG value for this one-time sequence?

Day 14

Inspiration

Can You Build A Six Figure Business From a Free E-Book?  That’s how Dennis Becker spawned his Earn $1k A Day empire and became an influential mentor to 1000s of people. Let’s see: Free eBook = large list?  I wonder if that’s the story?

We’ll find out in this webinar.

Day 15

Rolling Sales 

It's almost the same as the Automated Launch, but not quite. It's based on the sequence days that someone signs up.

Today's Assignment:

Design your own Rolling Sale. What are the pieces and what are you selling? What is BIG value for this nurture sequence?

Day 16

Step Back 

Find 3 traffic methods you'll focus on for the rest of the month. We're focusing on paid advertising through Facebook and YouTube, Joint Venture promotions, and software launches to build buyers' lists.

When you choose your three methods, become a MASTER of those. Nothing else.

Today's Assignment:

What 3 methods of traffic will you focus on for the remainder of the challenge and beyond?

Day 17

Revisit our Goal 

The goal is simple. Let's make sure we stay focused on it.

Automated list building efforts with automated monetization opportunities yields bigger and better revenue growth.

It's that simple. But if you're not careful, you'll get distracted. So, if you do a software launch - for example, our Simple Video Management System (SVMS) launch, sales will die completely after the launch unless you have a process in place for driving automated list building and monetization for those. This is the part that most marketers forget or ignore because it's so hard to build the system.

Launching is easy. Building the system is where the rubber meets the road.

Today's Assignment:

Design your system. What is the end result of your automated system? And what are the steps to get to that result?

Day 18

Watch Days 15 - 20 in the Beginner Track 

Yes, I know. You're in the advanced List Building track, but I'm sending you back to the Beginner's track today to watch 6 - count 'em - 6 more lessons of the challenge.

And here's why: In those lessons, I'm giving you two valuable plug ins as my clients. And we go through the exercises of building out our opt in funnel  and pages that go with the funnel using the plug ins.

If you don't need them, don't worry about it. Go have a cup of coffee. But if you'd like to get them, go to the Days 15-20 of Beginner track.

Today's Assignment:

Watch Days 15-20

Day 19

Importance of the Confirmation Page 

Make money from the beginning with the confirmation page. This is the most valuable piece of real estate you own. It pays for advertising fueling the automated opt in process. ALWAYS, ALWAYS offer something related for sale on this page.

Day 20

Diversified Listbuilding 

This is where my concept of Diversified Listbuilding is insanely profitable.

I choose partners to promote based on their lifetime referrals benefits.

Today's Assignment:

Read the case study we did about how we drove traffic to a lifetime referral program using Facebook advertising and tripled our investment in the first month.

http://nams.ws/CGCaseStudy
http://nams.ws/surefire

Day 21

Inspiration

Lou Bortone is all over the web with highly engaging and highly entertaining videos! We always love to see something new from Lou and so do the people that follow him. If you have seen LouTube Episodes on YouTube, you have seen Lou Bortone. :) The guy's got a really wacky side. He's a video expert who understands the power of marketing with video squeeze pages. Don't miss this one.

Today's Assignment:

Watch this video.

Day 22

Add Referral Opportunities On Your Pages? 

One of the benefits of having tight relationships with folks who have lifetime referral programs is that we can add those referrals to our different pages. If I get lifetime referrals, I'll promote in PS, on Confirmation page, Unsubscribe pages, on Thank you pages, in the email sequence - everywhere. But be sure you're promoting a program that will be around for awhile.

Today's Assignment:

Where can you add additional referrals for long-term commissions?

Day 23

Segment for Automation 

Now, we're really digging into the advanced listbuilding. Segmentation is the key to automation. How would you like to have 5, 10, 50 promotions happening at one time.?That's what we're talking about with segmentation in Listbuilding. Multiple promotions running at the same time means you've done a couple of things based on what we've learned so far.

1) Tagged an interest when someone signs up to your list.

2) Drop them into a funnel based on the interests.

3) Feed them more value with solutions that solve the problems they told you about already.

Today's Assignment: 

Let's go to the computer and look at a segmentation campaign.

Day 24

Determine Your Interest Groups 

Today's Assignment:

Create your list of interest groups.

Day 25

Design Your Funnel Processes 

Look at our diagram for specific funnel and how we've regrouped those to drive people into broader buckets to keep a selection of product opportunities in front of them.

Today's Assignment:

Design your funnel processes.

Day 26

What's Your Mix of Promotions and How do You Automate Them 

You've designed your individual funnels for each of your promotions. And since you're advanced, you know how to create the landing pages, offers, and follow-up sequences.

Now, we want to get all those funnels working at once.

Today's Assignment:

Build one, drive traffic. Tweak it until it converts well.
Build another, drive traffic. Tweak it until it converts well.
You get the point. This is now your full-time job.

Day 27

How to Automate Affiliate Promotions 

When you have affiliate promotions automated, it makes complete sense to run advertising traffic to it if your ROI is on the upside.

One of the biggest fears we all have is bugging our list of prospects and buyers even after they've bought the product we're promoting. That's really hard to know if you don't have access to the backend of the affiliate's management system.

We stay pretty tight with the affiliates we promote so we can remove people from a campaign after they purchase, but what happens to those who go to the sales page and don't do anything? We don't email them, but we can retarget them if we want.

We'll look at how we've set up automated affiliate campaigns that don't smother people.

Today's Assignment:

Check out the automated affiliate campaign in our system.

Day 28

Inspiration

We call it monetization techniques. Nicole calls it "Moneying stuff up".And she's the queen of it.

Watch this webinar: Monetize Your List - Even the Freebie Seekers! with Nicole Dean.

Day 29

What About Trial Offers? 

We love trial offers. But frankly, it's getting harder and harder to get people to sign up for trials. There's so much competition.

So you have to have a serious, value driven email campaign during the trial to urge people to let the membership continue. We've got one of those campaigns set up and will show you that now.

Today's Assignment:

Check out the trial offer campaign we have in our Infusionsoft system.

Day 30

Fill the Pipeline 

All of this work is for naught if you're not driving traffic to your opt-in pages. Yes, list building is about getting people on your list and getting results. But the rest of your life is about traffic and conversions.

Today's Assignment:

If you want to see our traffic and conversion product, check it out here: http://nams.ws/tnc