I’m totally confident that all of you remember the November 1981 issue of Management Review where George T. Doran first used the mnemonic term “SMART” for setting goals. WHAT?! You don’t remember that issue? Let me give you the overview…

The idea is that it gives you a framework for creating goals that is as follows:

S = Specific
M = Measureable
A = Attainable
R = Relevant
T = Timely

A valid goal must meet all those criteria. I am a big fan of this framework because I think it provides a good way to ask yourself if the goal(s) you’ve setup are structured properly. After all, if I have the goal of being 6 feet tall, that isn’t particularly a good goal because although it is specific & measureable, it’s not attainable (… and I hear platform shoes are still not in style!).
[Read more @ Wikipedia]

This past weekend I was thinking about this framework while talking to my very good friend Elisha Chesler. She is a talented, passionate and energetic young entrepreneur who owns the Sunshine Learning Center, which is an incredible program that helps children with special needs. (She is also a long time Elite Email client.) She was telling me about all the milestones she’s accomplished in the past few months (…very impressive stuff!), but each time she would list a goal she accomplished, she’d follow it up by saying she wants something more. I truly love the attitude of always wanting ‘more’ and I think shooting for the stars is an excellent plan. But, one of the things I kept saying to her is that you don’t just arrive at those stars you’re shooting for, you need to make a pathway with small measurable goals and celebrate each one of those victories.

This is the same thing we always tell new customers when they are first embarking on email marketing.

Everyone wants to wake up tomorrow and have 100,000+ opt-in mailing list subscribers that are actively engaging with your content, but it just doesn’t happen like that. There is no short-cut and no magic trick for building your mailing list. The process takes time and effort, but the results are well worth it.

Of course, it goes without saying that the bigger your mailing list, the more people you can contact and therefore the more effective your email marketing can be. But, if you are just getting started and have 0 people on your mailing list today, you cannot set the goal of having 100,000 tomorrow. That goal would fail the SMART test (and probably just cause you to be frustrated).

Instead, you need to set short term mailing list growth objectives. How many new contacts do you want to add this month? How many contacts do you want to have at the end of the current quarter? While setting these numbers, you’ll want to choose something that is realistic. Even if your underlying goal is always that you want the biggest number possible, you need to choose something that is attainable.

After you achieve your first goal and your mailing list is starting to get bigger, you can move onto the second goal, then the first goal, etc, etc.

The key is to be patient and trust that over time (with your hard work and effort), you will end up with a really big mailing list. It just won’t happen when you snap your fingers or click your heels three times…. But it will happen!

If you login to your Elite Email account and go to Contacts > More > Get More Contacts, you will find a variety of tools to help you build your mailing list.