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12 Ways to Build Your Opt-in List
by Kevin Sinclair
Published on this site: December 11th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
Building your opt-in list starts with having a website that
will persuade visitors to spend some time there. By doing
that they will be more apt to sign up to your newsletter or
offer.
Here are 7 steps that will help accomplish this.
- Use original material. If they see that you are
displaying the same content as similar sites. They aren't
going to stay around for very long.
- Start out with a headline and introduction
that captures
their attention. Let them know what is going to be found on
your website. It doesn't take long for today's surfers to
decide if this page is going to be worth further
attention.
- Make sure your visitors know just what they will find
on
your website. They are looking for information on a certain
subject and they need to know that you have their possible
answers. Therefore be sure to use the keywords that best
fit your web page because when your visitor clicks on a keyword with his browser he wants to find the corresponding
content.
- Be sure you have numerous cross links to various pages
on your site so the visitor can browse through it. If he
finds it helpful and pertinent he will be more inclined to
bookmark your site and come back again. Be sure your links
are well designed to catch the reader's eye.
- Design your site so
your pages can load quickly. Don't
load it up with too many pictures and long blocks of text.
Leave enough "white space" so one's eyes can be drawn down
the page. Articles should be broken up into short
paragraphs and adjust your text so it is easy to read-not
too small nor too light. Difficult in reading the content
will discourage a visitor from continuing.
- Proofread your pages so
you don't make grammatical and
spelling mistakes. You need to appear a professional. If
you are not sure of the effect the page is presenting let
someone else take a look. Forums are a good area to ask
members to view your site or particular page. (You will probably receive all kinds of opinions!) But you should
definitely get some valuable help.
- Offer your visitors freebies-ebooks,
software, articles
etc.that they can download from your site. Ask them if
they would fill out a survey which could help you find out
for what type of information they are looking, or ask if
they would like to sign up for your newsletter. If a
visitor does nothing else than to become one of your
subscribers and be put on your opt-in email list you have
won the first battle.
Now that you have a means to add to your opt-in list by way
of your website, you also need to build your list in other
ways, especially if you don't yet have too many hits on
your site. That takes time but by building your list you
will increase them.
Here are 5 more possibilities outside your website.
- Advertise a free ebook. You can have it downloaded from
your site as mentioned before or you could have the visitor
send you an email and you could attach the ebook to an
answering one. This ebook doesn't have to be more than 7-10
pages.
- Advertise your newsletter and send responders to your list
via your autoresponder, which will take care of the opting
in, and startup of your emails. Be sure any email, whether
yours or your autoresponders has an opt-out feature.
- Use email signatures,
which you can add to the bottom of
your emails. In 3-6 lines you put your name, short
description and appropriate link to your site or offer.
- Send an email
to an individual email address and ask the
recipient if they would like to sign-up for your mailing
list or offer the option to decline from any future
mailings. Be careful here because anyone receiving your email could consider it to be spam. To me this is the least
desirable method.
- If you have a newsletter in which you have just
about
exhausted your material and want to start another
newsletter on a different area you could send a broadcast
and invite anyone nearing the end of your letters to change
to the new newsletter. You may be able to keep some of
those who are ready to make a change. You won't gain any
new subscribers really but you may be able to keep some of
those you might otherwise lose. Let them know that you are
proficient in different areas.
As you can see building your opt-in list need not be
difficult. Use your imagination and I am sure that you can
find many other means to get results.
Kevin Sinclair - is the publisher and editor of Be
Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how
to
succeed in your own home or small business.
http://BeSuccessfulNews.com/
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