If you’re new to marketing online, you might have heard about the need for mailing lists. The fact is a mailing list gives you a list of prospects you can contact at any time with offers. But not all marketers have mailing lists. Not even every experienced marketer has one.

Here are three great reasons why you may want to capture people’s names and form a mailing list. First of all, it gives you details of potential buyers that haven’t yet purchased your product. You can follow up with them. Secondly, once you have a customer, this gives you a reason to sell them additional products, because they’ve given you their email address. And finally, at any time you need a cash injection, you can follow up with these people. This is a form of lifeline into your Internet business.

To start with your mailing list to help you to capture future prospects, just imagine when people go to your sales page for your Internet marketing product. Not everyone will buy the first time that they visit your page. In fact, the vast majority of people won’t buy from you at that point. They need to be given constant reminders about the product; given the benefits and reasons to purchase it. That’s one reason you can capture their name and email address as part of a mailing sequence. If you follow up with them subsequently and remind them to go back to your site, you’ll find that some of these prospects purchase anywhere up to the seventh email. This automatically increases your overall number of conversions.

The next reason you might want a mailing list is to follow up with the existing customers. Once you have succeeded in making a sale, then you’ve got somebody who already knows your name and will be interested in buying from you again. So if you continue to contact them and to bombard them with future offers, you can be sure of some future sales. That’s just a great long term business strategy. Every time you release a new product, these people will be keen to hear from you. You can even promote affiliate offers from other marketers, like joint ventures, by using your mailing list as leverage.

Finally, this gives you the option to have a cash lifeline. Just imagine you’re short of money one weekend, and you’re looking for a quick, instant cash fix. All you need to do is to send a message out into your mailing list asking them if they want to buy a product. This might be one of your own, or it may be an affiliate offer. Failing that, you can even offer a service. Say you’ll be writing articles or providing sales letters for a reasonable price. If you’re an Internet marketing list, this can be a good lifeline to getting an instant cash boost. So you never need to worry about money again as your list grows.

Generally, I would highly recommend that you start building a mailing list as soon as possible. Don’t put it off just because you’re not getting a great deal of traffic. Your list will pay for itself in next to no time by giving you the option to contact people and market your wares to them.

For more excellent resources on building a receptive mailing list, check out Thom Lancaster’s recent blog posts. Participate in the email newsletter discussion. Discover the three list building errors that you must avoid if you want to be successful.