Why You Should Build Your Email Opt-In Lists

You've probably heard hundreds of times that "the money is in the list," but why is that? What's so special about having your own email opt-in lists? The answer lies in the three benefits of having your own opt-in lists:

1. It Can Increase Your Conversion

Let's face the fact. Most of your site's visitors usually don't purchase at their first visit. Not everyone that comes to your site is an impulse buyer. Most of them may need to be followed up before they make their buying decision.

Also, most people prefer to buy from people they trust. This means that you may need to build a relationship first with your visitors to earn their trust before you start seeing some sales from them.

Now if you're just generating traffic without building your email opt-in lists, you don't have any means to contact your visitors. You can't contact them with your website, because a website is a passive medium.

But if you capture your visitors' contact information and turn them into subscribers, you'll have the ability to contact them, follow them up, and build rapport with them, thus increasing your chance of getting sales from them.

2. It Can Give You Ongoing Profits and Repeat Business

Let's say that you have 500 people subscribing to your e-course that pre-sells some relevant products. From those 500 subscribers, 25 bought your products. Is that means your efforts to get the other 475 subscribers are wasted?

Of course not, because you can always market to your subscribers again and again with other relevant products and/or services. And this is actually the number one benefit of having your email opt-in lists, namely ongoing profits and repeat business.

One thing that you may want to do though if you plan to send ongoing content and/or offers to your subscribers is to express it explicitly in your opt-in form or page. In this way, they know what to expect when they subscribe to your list, thus reducing the risk of SPAM complaints.

3. You Can Leverage Your Subscribers to Promote Your Business

This is perhaps one of the most neglected functions of an email opt-in list. Many people only see their lists as a means to generate direct sales. They fail to see that they can actually leverage their subscribers to become their partners in promotion.

And I don't only mean recruiting joint venture partners or affiliates from your email opt-in lists. There are various other ways to leverage your subscribers to promote your business. And you can always leverage even if you're in a business-to-consumer market.

Let me give you one simple example. For every newsletter that you send to your lists, there is a chance that your subscribers will pass it to their friends or acquaintances. And if your newsletter contains links to your website, opt-in page or sales pages, you may get some visitors, subscribers or even sales.

Now to increase the chance of your subscribers passing your newsletter, you can encourage them to do that. It's a no-brainer and it won't cost you any money or much time to implement. Just add a postscript in your newsletter that asks people to forward it to their friends or acquaintances.

Final Words

If you're still generating traffic without having any list building mechanism in place, then you're making a big mistake in your Internet business. This is especially true if you're still pushing for traffic. Come on, you've worked hard, spent your time or maybe paid some money to generate your traffic, why let most of them leave empty-handed?

Even if you're already in the level of enjoying tons of free, perpetual traffic, there is no reason why you should not have a list building mechanism in place. Because it will enhance your business, giving you the ability to actively engage your prospects and recycle your traffic.

How To Save Tons Of Money On Advertising And Dramatically Increase Your Sales

Simple fact: far not every first-time visitor will buy your product or subscribe to your services. Consider this: a very big percentage of people on the Internet are very picky comparison shoppers. They will go through every site they can find to get the "best deal". The worst part of this is: once they leave your site chances are you won't see them again.

Now all your advertising dollars spent to get that visitors go down the drain. This is the last thing we want to happen. Can that be helped? Most certainly!!!

The answer is in Opt-in list. What it does - it simply captures your visitors contact information and forwards it to you via e-mail or web form (keep checking my blog often for help with creating opt-ins). You can collect as much information about your visitors as you want and then integrate it into your marketing strategies to build a trusting, long-term relationship with your visitors, successfully turning them into RETURN BUYERS and DRAMATICALLY increasing your sales while SAVING big time on your advertising dollars. Once you captured your visitors' information you DO NOT NEED to pay any more money for this same visitor eve again!

With all the advantages of this marketing strategy you simply can't afford to ignore this opportunity!

How to collect e-mail addresses and build a MASSIVE subscribers list using opt-in

The most common and universal way to collect your visitors' e-mail addresses and other information is offering a free newsletter. Think about this: why do people go online? Mostly for two main reasons: check their e-mail and look for information. A free newsletter delivering industry news, solution to one or more of their problems, product updates would be an ideal opt-in offer. Another advantage of this method is - almost everyone can write a newsletter and it is suitable for practically every business type (with a few exceptions that I will cover in another post). You can go with either writing content for your newsletters yourself or opt for great free content resources. Here are some places to look for great free content:

· http://www.emailuniverse.com

· http://www.ideamarketers.com

· http://www.freesticky.com

· http://www.ezinearticles.com

· http://www.certificate.net

Another options to consider: free e-book, running a contest, free whitepaper, free downloads, free mini-courses, surveys, "Members Only" sections.

Few simple rules to make your opt-in newsletter a complete success or how to build a HUGE opt-in list within a short period of time.

There is absolutely no doubt about this: by providing a high quality newsletter you can attract a very large number of loyal subscribers pretty quick. You must be very careful though: DO NOT turn your free newsletter into sales letter every time you send out a new issue. If that happens your subscribers will opt out very quickly.

There is nothing wrong thou to include a small paragraph at the end of your newsletter offering something like:

· Special bonus offers "subscribers only",

· Updates and special announcements about new products or services,

· Special discounts on upgraded services,

· Special "subscribers only" promotions

To make sure your newsletter appears very professional and easy to read for your subscribers you need to follow these simple guidelines:

1) Always use a consistent header and footer for all your newsletters;

2) Include a table of contents;

3) Write in short paragraphs leaving lots of white space to break up your text,

4) Use dividers to separate different sections of your newsletter.

What are your options to generate additional revenue from your newsletters?

A good way to earn more money from your newsletters is selling advertising to other businesses. But before you decide to do so, you should consider this: the main reason for you having this newsletter on the first place is to build a strong and trusting relationship between your subscribers and YOU. I personally suggest some testing before you decide for sure to sell space on your newsletter to advertise other businesses or not. After all making some more money is never a bad idea. Just use a healthy degree of discretion while going with this option.

Another thing to consider before you go for selling ad space is the SIZE of your subscribers list. If you have a pretty tight niche and very targeted audience, you'd need at least 8,000 to 10,000 subscribers before you go and offer paid advertisement on your newsletter. The less targeted audience you have, the bigger your list should be.

If you decide to for it, make sure that you do a good research and find really good quality product or service. Present it in a way as if you are personally recommending it to your audience. Then people won't feel like they were getting a "hard sell" and most likely will gladly go for it.

How often should you send out your newsletter for maximum impact?

Most common frequency of sending out newsletters is once or twice a month. Some people send them out bimonthly, some every week or even every day. So how do you know how often to send out yours?

Actually it mainly depends on your industry niche. Also a greatly depends on how much time you can dedicate to writing your newsletter and how much content you have.

Evaluate your abilities and decide how often you would be able to write a quality content for new and informative issues to keep your audience interested and anticipating each new issue.

I suggest to experiment with caution! Try not to overwhelm your subscribers with lots of information on a daily basis. They won't have time to read all your publications and might start moving your mail to the trash bin. Once this starts to happen, it's very hard to stop!