It has been proven again and again that opt in email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for any marketer.
All the successful marketers have one thing in common. They all have their own database of subscribers and customers and they run a newsletter.
And they use email marketing to promote their online businesses. Email marketing will enable you to keep in touch with your subscribers by sending them news, articles and product offers. These subscribers can become your future customers.
Hence, building an opt in email list is absolutely crucial if you are really serious about the long term hedge of your business. Opt in refers to people who have voluntarily given you their email addresses. They have agreed to receive information from you, for instance in the form of a newsletter.
But building your own opt in email list takes much time. It won't be rewarding if you have only a handful of subscribers. For your business to start becoming serious, you need to have at least 500+ responsive subscribers, some marketers say at 1000, it becomes solid business ahead.
Well that's true but an important aspect to consider also is building good relationship with your subscribers. With 500 or 1000 responsive subscribers, your business will be given a huge boost.
So starting a newsletter and collecting email addresses should be your primary focus. But generating these number of subscribers when you are first starting out is a big task. First of all, you need traffic, then you need to maximize the conversion rate ie from visitors to subscribers. I won't go into more details about you can get traffic for it's out of scope of this article.
Consider the five tips I am giving you to explode your conversion rate to your opt in newsletter.
(1) Benefits of your newsletter
State the benefits of your newsletter clearly. When a visitor arrives at your site, if they just see a subscribe form with say "Subscribe to my newsletter" and nothing more, chances that they will subscribe are very low.
(2) Free eBook
Offer a Free eBook to every visitor who becomes a subscriber. eBooks are very popular these days and are powerful incentives to attract new subscribers. eBooks can be in .exe formats or .pdf formats. The pdf formats are read by adobe acrobat reader program and it's a better format for it allows Macintosh users to read this file too. Mac users can't read .exe files. It's important for Mac users account to 10-15% of pc users.
Display a graphic of the eBook if possible. It has been proven that images play a part in the psychological aspect. You have the impression that the product is real.
Give the eBook an estimated value to give more weight to your offer. Prices also play on the psychological aspect.
Your offer could say something like "Subscribe to Web Biz Secrets Newsletter and receive a valuable eBook WORTH A $27 VALUE"
Then offer this eBook via autoresponder. Upload it to your server and include the link to this file in your autoresponder. The one that I am actually using is getresponse at http://www.zineguru.com/getresponse
(3) Free Email Course
Offer a Free email course to boost your conversion rate. An email course is also a very effective way to skyrocket your opt in list building. It is not very difficult to create an email course. It can just be a series of tips that you will deliver via autoresponder in say 5 days.
Example - 5 Day Email Course "5 Powerful Ways To Explode Your Opt in Email Subscriptions"
In fact it can just be an "How To Article". Day 1, the first tip is delivered by autoresponder. Then day 2, tip 2 and so on.
(4) Free Report
A Free report is also a nice incentive. It is a bit the same as the Free email course or Free ebook but it's the way that it is presented which is different.
Your Free report can be given the same title as the free email course. You could say something like. Get your Free Report "5 Powerful Ways To Explode Your Opt in Email Subscriptions"
In contrast to the free email course, the free report can be delivered in the form of an article that you can simply deliver by autoresponder. Just include the link to the article in the autoresponder.
Or you can compile this information in an eBook and deliver it via autoresponder.
(5) Pop Ups and Pop Unders
Pop-Ups and Pop-Unders are fast and easy ways to immediately increase the percentage of visitors who opt in to your subscriber list. Pop Ups appear when a visitor enters your site. A pop up should usually not be too big such that it covers the whole screen and hiding your main page. Preferably it should appear in the upper left corner or upper right corner of the visitor's screen.
It should also load fast. For if it takes too much time, chances are that your visitors would have already close it before it opens.
On the other hand, there are also pop unders. These can be launched the same way as a regular pop-up, but it sets itself behind the main browser window. That way, your visitors will see it only once they close their current browser window. And it does not interrupt browsing.
If you don't have a newsletter yet for your online business, consider starting one soon. The earlier the better. Think of ways to drive targeted traffic to your site and maximize the conversion rate by implementing the strategies I've just given you. A conversion rate of 20% is considered good. Say you get 100 visitors to your site, this would mean 20 subscribe to your newsletter. Per month, you would already have 600 subscribers. Well worth the time invested to start building that list. Happy opt in list building.
About the Author
Jean Lam is the editor and publisher of "Web Biz Secrets" E-Magazine. Receive a FREE gift when you subscribe today at http://www.zineguru.com.
He is also the author of the highly acclaimed eBook "Top Search Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed" and has shown webmasters how to drive massive traffic to their websites from Google. Click here to find out: http://www.top-ranking-strategies.com
jeanlam@zineguru.com