An email list is one of the greatest assets in your business. Can’t deny that fact, right? You know it is highly important to build an email list right from the start of your business.

I suggest you do. Coz if you wait to reach some point or a milestone before you could start building an email list, you are simply wasting time.

I see a good number of blogs that run for months without a sign up form - they don’t give their readers an option to join their list. They don’t build a list.

I simply tell them that they’re wasting time, even if they find it rude!

So ya, building your email list from day one matters a LOT!

But we are dealing with a concern that is different from what I’ve been talking so far.

What if you are already building an email list but your list growth is VERY slow?

What if the size of your email list is small?

I get it.

“Mine is small” - say many bloggers.

When it comes to having an email list, the size of the list matters, right? Yes it does!

It is really good (and you feel successful) if you have a list of 10K subscribers compared to having a list of 1000 subscribers or 100 subscribers.

But the size of the email list is NOT ALL. In fact, compared to another most powerful metric I’d say the size of your email list doesn’t matter at all!

Surprised? You might be!

So Jane, do you say that I can have a small list of 1000 subscribers and still feel OK and/or successful?

The answer is YES, but… there is a something else that you need to focus on before you could feel proud of the small list you have.

It is called engagement.

Here’s the thing - if your list is engaged, you could still achieve what you want with your small list.

But wait a second - I’m not saying that you should stop building your list at 1000 subscribers and focus on increasing engagement. It is always good to have a big list.

BUT a big list is of no use if there is no engagement. On the other hand, if you have a small list of super engaged subscribers you could achieve a lot more than your competitor who has a big list of unengaged subscribers.

That’s the point!

In this context, the size of your email list doesn’t matter.

You should be continuing to build/grow your list regardless of that fact. But you should focus more on building an engaged email list.

Don’t get discouraged if your email list is small - if your list is engaged you should be proud of your list.

Why is the engagement level of your email list more important than your list size?

What *is* an engaged email list in the first place? An engaged email list is responsive. The subscribers in an engaged email list interact with you.

If your email list is engaged, all your messages have a very good reach. You can measure this by the open rates of the emails you send and the responses you receive from your subscribers (and of course, other metrics like sales).

On the other hand, if your list is not an engaged one, all your emails and the core messages you send out won’t reach people - they might just end up unnoticed and be tossed in the trash.

To be very honest, an unengaged list of subscribers is merely dead weight, because you will be paying for an email auto responder service like Aweber or GetResponse, right? And your subscription plan or the pricing for that usually depends on your email list size.

If you have a super huge list of 10K unengaged subscribers, you are paying for the dead weight.

Apart from that all your messages go unnoticed as well. If you have an email list and if you are constantly communicating to your list by teaching them something or offering them training or other free resources, and if your list is not paying any attention to you, it is waste of time, energy and resources. You won’t be able to make a difference in the life of your subscribers.

So a targeted email list is a list of subscribers who pay attention to you, and who are willing to learn from you and make use of the knowledge and resources you share.

So how do you build an email list that is super engaged?

Having said that, let’s see *how* you can build an email list of highly engaged subscribers.

#1 Aim for a targeted list

It all starts with how you build your list. There are various ways to build your list - but not all ways are going to give you a list of highly engaged subscribers. Your list will be engaged if they have been targeted properly.

Let’s say you run a blog that helps stay at home moms to prepare healthy meals for their family. Your blog should ideally publish content that stays well within the context.

and so on.

You are going to attract un-targeted audience to your blog.

May be you write one or two blog posts about other stuff like time management and fitness, but your blog’s main purpose is to help stay at home moms prepare healthy meals.

If readers subscribe to your email list from any of those out of context pages, they are going to assume that you will provide them with training or resources related to that topic. But if your email newsletters and your training provides them with tips on how to prepare healthy meals (since that is your business), they will be disappointed.

Over the time, they will ignore your emails, they will not open them and they will not pay attention to you. If they unsubscribe, it is good for you both. But if they don’t, you will have dead weight on your list.

In this case you might be having a huge list, but there is nothing to be proud of!

#2 Keep your promise

Take a look at one of your email subscription forms. What promise have you made to your readers/subscribers? For instance, my subscription forms are shown below:

Now it is time for me to take a look at the content of The PBS Library - I should double check and make sure that my promise is fulfilled. I also should make sure that my newsletters and auto responders align with that promise!

I suggest you do the same as well. Take a look at the promise(s) you make to your readers and take a close look at your newsletter/freebie/autoresponders/whatever you are delivering to your subscribers.

If you fail to keep your promise, your subscribers will be disappointed (and even annoyed) and they won’t be engaged with you!

#3 Be interesting and get personal

No one likes a boring person. If you want your subscribers to be engaged and if you want them to listen to you, then you have to be interesting. Share interesting stuff with your subscribers.

Keep your emails interesting and useful. Over the time, people will start to “expect” your emails and they will listen to you - only if you keep them interesting and useful.

Getting personal also helps keeping people engaged. Now, by “getting personal” I don’t mean addressing your subscribers by their name in your emails - although that’s important as well. What I mean here by “getting personal” is to make your emails personal. Share some personal stuff in your emails.

Now this won’t fit for everyone. Not everyone will be happy to share their personal details. Well, however you don’t have to share your credit card details or details like when you’re going on a vacation and when your house can be looted - but you can make yourself more realistic.

People are fed up with being bombarded by automated messages, and emails from companies that lack human touch. In this scenario, making your emails human and personal will help your readers to connect with you and to be engaged with you. People can only engage with other living humans (or pets) - certainly not with companies, or organization, or bots!

#4 Stay in touch

This is something really very important although it is easily overlooked by many bloggers! If you don’t stay in touch with your subscribers, they are most likely to forget you.

If you contact them once in a month, before you send them your next email, they will not remember if they actually signed up for the list or if your email is just spam. Yes it happens.

When you don’t stay in touch and if you are sending out occasional emails, you are most likely to get high unsubscribe numbers.

If you are consistently in touch with your subscribers, they will know that the email is not spam and they will stick with you.

And, engagement - yes, you cannot expect your subscribers to be engaged with you, if you don’t care to stay in touch with them, right?

Conclusion

You should not feel ashamed of your email list if it is small. More than having a huge list, having a list of people who actually pay attention to you matters a lot.

This is also applicable to the website traffic. There is no point in getting HUGE traffic, if that traffic doesn’t convert - conversion should be in the form of achieving your business goal - say, an email subscription, product sales, affiliate sales and things like that. If you merely get loads of traffic and if that traffic has nothing to do with your business goals, then the traffic is dead weight. The traffic uses resources in the form of bandwidth for which you are paying (your hosting bill).

My point here is - a small list of people who actually pay attention to you and do business with your is a lot more valuable than a huge crowd of people on your email list who doesn’t pay attention to you!

I’m not saying its OK to have a small email list - no it is not OK; you should still work to grow your email list (fast). But the more important metric that you should focus on is the engagement.

I hope you got my point strong and clear!

Do share your thoughts about having an engaged email list in the comments below.