List Building, How to Build a eMail List

I am always surprised at how many business owners who have already developed a website are missing an important element to their websites. This element can mean the difference between experiencing strong sales and leads of their products and services from your internet marketing efforts and not ever getting a website visitor to come back to your website.

If you are serious about using your website to create sales and leads for your business, an even more importantly, repeat sales and referrals from your website, this element is worth it’s weight in gold! The money is in the list!

What is the element I’m talking about? It’s a lead capturing system commonly referred to as an opt-in box!

An opt-in box allows you to capture the information you need from your website visitors (leads) in order to add them to an email list. An email marketing list gives you the ability to stay at the top of your visitors minds by sending them useful information, specials, and offers, through autoresponder messages.

Every opt-in box gives you the ability to create an offer and a call to action. A good offer and a strong call to action will entice visitors to sign up for your newsletter, special offer, report, or some other free offer that they are interested in and offers “value” to them.

Some list building methods will work better for one kind of business and other methods will work for others. As you read through these ideas, consider how you might customize the idea to work with your specific business. Remember to target your offer to your specific audience when choosing your list building techniques. You can test a couple of offers and see which one works best for you.

Todays ideas are about creating a sense of urgency for potential subscribers to sign up now. Limited time offers work like this:

Give your potential subscribers a “specific date” to subscribe by. Let them know that the special bonus offer won’t be available after a specified date or that it ends at a specific time. A call to action such as “Sign up before midnight tonight to get this ____.”

Give them only so many minutes to subscribe. You can have a count down timer running in place of an image for your offer. You can be certain that if your offer is good enough and they want the offer, they’ll sign up before time runs out.

Give potential subscribers a preview of what’s coming. Tell them what kind of information they will find in coming articles on your site. They will sign up right away so as not to miss the information that they want.

Tell them that you are only allowing “X” number of subscribers for your offer. After that, they’ll have to get on your waiting list for the next time you will make the offer available again.

Tell your potential subscribers that you are considering a membership fee for your free product. If they sign up now, they will continue to receive the information free even if you start charging for the information. People will want to subscribe quickly to avoid any potential future charges.

Make a special or additional offer available to “the next 100 subscribers”. They will quickly subscribe to make sure they get the special offer.

You may be asking yourself “But What should you offer?” A good source of ideas can be found from taking a look at your competitors websites or others in your industry that are not local to your area and see what they are offering.

Happy list building!