Tuesday, June 3, 2008

How to Build a Massive Opt-In Email List
in 4 Easy Steps

The value of a large opt-in list is usually grossly understated. It is never good enough to simply be making sales from your affiliate products. Failing to compile a fresh mailing list will result in lack luster or stagnant sales.

The purpose of building a list of your website visitors is to help you maintain contact with them and develop a relationship with them. Your mission in doing this is to turn as many as you possibly can into your customers. It has been said, and rightly so, that your list is the most valuable asset in your online business. With your list being that important, here are some tips that will make building a quality list possible.
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* Offer incentives when possible for people to leave their name and email address. Having an incentive program is an effective way to get people to opt into your list. Offering a special report or free e-book is a very effective and easy to implement. To get the best results, it is always helpful to give them something for signing into your list. This tip alone can easily double the number of sign ups you have.

I see so many people trying to build list with no offering of any kind for opting in. This is a big mistake. Incentives are to easy to create. It just doesn’t make sense not to offer one. Anything with a high perceived value that you offer free will help boost opt-ins by 100% or more. I’ve tried many ways of list building and I can assure you that offering incentives will give you a far superior result.
* Include a clearly written privacy policy. In all likely-hood, the main reason people refuse to leave their contact information is because they are afraid of being spammed. This has been a huge problem on the Internet for years. No one likes spam. If people have any reason to suspect that you will share their email address with others they will usually not let you have it. Give them a rock solid guarantee that you will not share their email address with anyone. This will put to rest the worries of people wanting to avoid spam. At one point I did not have a clearly defined privacy policy, however, after I added one I saw a 61% increase in the number of opt-ins I was receiving. Simple things like this can make a huge difference.

* Create many tightly targeted lists. Few people understand the power of a targeted list. By offering different lists on one site you dramatically increase the chance for people opting into your list. One of the lists could be for periodic updates, another could include a tips letter that your market would find helpful, while another could be for a newsletter. No matter what they choose, you get their email address.

Think about what your market might be the most interested in and offer that information or access to it on your site. A visitor may have little interest in your general announcements mailings but be keenly interested in your newsletter. If you do not provided several options that person would have signed up for nothing. Two or three options are plenty. If your visitor has not found something that interests them in your two to three choices they are probably at the wrong page anyway.

* Be sure to make all your lists double opt-in. Double (or Verified) opt-in lists require people to first sign up on your site, and then activate their subscription by replying to a confirmation email. There are many good reasons to use the double opt-in format. First of all, it will take away any chance of being labeled a spammer. You can show definitive proof that people actually did requested your emails.

An added benefit to you is that the double opt-in method will result in a list that is significantly higher quality than a singe opt-in list. If these people are interested in your offer enough to verify with the confirmation email, they tend to be much more serious and interested in what you have to offer.

By putting the tips mentioned here into use you would be able to build a large, high quality list in a short amount of time. I have used all of these methods and they work very well. I am confident that they will work for you as well.(ArticleSlot.com)

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