7 Tips to Building a Killer Opt-in List

Author: Sean Kells

Anyone looking to make a serious income from home as an internet marketer should incorporate an opt-in email list at the earliest possible stage of their business. Why? Because it's a known fact that it usually takes 7 or more communications with a prospect before they are comfortable enough to make a purchase. Using an opt-in email marketing strategy will allow you to continue communicating with your customer after they have left your site and, therefore, will greatly increase your sales.

Building Your Opt-In List

Incorporating an opt-in list into your web site is fairly straightforward. The only additional tool required is a subscription to an "autoresponder" service such as AWeber or Get Response. This will allow you to put the opt-in form on your site and send out follow up emails to your subscribers.

Keep in mind that you can't just slap an opt-in form up on your web page and expect people to subscribe to your email list. Visitors to your site are looking for information to help them solve a problem. People generally won't opt-in to your list unless you offer them something of real value, like a free bonus report, ebook or email course which provides information addressing the issue that brought them to your site in the first place. The more exciting and valuable the bonus is perceived to be, the higher the opt-in rate you will experience and the better your return on investment will be. So, when it comes to creating the bonus to entice your visitors to opt-in, use your imagination!

Maintaining a Strong Relationship with Your List

Once you have started capturing email addresses and building your list of "leads", you will have an asset that can be leveraged over and over again. You can use that email list to deliver offers and drive traffic to other websites and sales pages again and again. In order to maintain the value of this asset, you need to treat your subscribers with care and build a strong relationship with them. If you pamper them and deliver real value, you will build a strong foundation of trust. On the other hand, if you simply email them one product pitch after another, they will feel abused and will likely unsubscribe from your list altogether.

Here are 7 key tips that will help you build a strong relationship with your opt-in list:

1. Send emails regularly - Aim to reach your subscribers every five to seven days. If you email too often you risk becoming a nuisance. If you don't email often enough, your subscribers will lose interest or forget who you are altogether!

2. Provide real value - Send your subscribers really useful information and tips. Remember that your subscribers are looking for a solution to a problem so your emails should always contain something that addresses the problem. This will build trust with your prospects.

3. Limit your sales pitch ratio - Send at least three or four purely educational emails for every one sales pitch. If too many of your emails are sales pitches, your prospects will stop reading them.

4. Include audio or video - You can send an email with the greatest written content in the world but its value will be lost on your subscribers if they are distracted by every day life (other emails coming in, screaming kids, TV, the internet, the phone...). Delivering your message with audio or video will keep them focused.

5. Ensure your emails are readable - Although fancy graphics, animations and logos can look really cool, they are often blocked by email filters. Generally, you should keep the body of your email limited to simple text. (If you are going to imbed audio in your email, make sure that your message is displayed in text format as well in case your reader cannot hear the audio file.) To deliver a video message, upload it to your site and include a hyperlink to the video in the text of your email.

6. Allow your subscribers to interact with you - Where possible, include a comment submission box or discussion forum on your site. Blog style websites which allow your subscribers to comment on your blog content are particularly good for this.

7. Track your results - After you have created your series of autoresponder messages, start tracking your results to determine which ones are experiencing the highest open and click-through rates. (Your autoresponder service will provide reporting on these statistics.). You can then experiment with different emails to improve your results.

If you follow these 7 tips, you will have an eager list of subscribers who look forward to receiving your communications and value your advice. In turn, you will enjoy an explosive boost to your bottom line.

About the Author:

Sean Kells teaches people how to make money online. To discover more and claim your free copy of his popular new ebook, 7 Days to Online Profits, visit him at : ==> ReviewAroo.com

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