If youre anything like me, youve probably heard it a thousand times before, stored it in the back of your memory bank, and havent had the desire to go back there to get it. Well, nows the time to start acting on what I like to call The Undiscovered Gold Mine. What Im talking about is the marketing power of an opt-in email list.
To most recognized internet marketers, its really not an undiscovered secret at all, but to those of you who have not been practicing this powerful marketing campaign, youll be astonished by the capabilities this tool will provide you. Trust me, you will discover a whole new realm of profit once you maximize your loyal opt-ins and present your offer properly.
You may be skeptical about asking your potential customers for their email addresses. Its very understandable. I was the same way. Like you, I didnt want my visitors to think that I was snooping into their privacy. And these days, people are becoming increasingly wary about handing over their email addresses to just anyone. But theres a gold mine of opportunity in those e-mail addresses, and many marketers dont take the time to look for it. In this first lesson, Ill show you why an opt-in email list is so important to your business, and Ill hand over the most compelling opt-in offers that will have your visitors instantly signing up.
So many unsuccessful websites simply do not mess with creating an email list. And you know what This is why tons and tons of websites fail. Its sad to hear about a business owner who spent a small fortune driving traffic to their websites but the sales just didnt come like expected.
Its a fact that hardly anyone ever buys anything the first time they visit a web site. In fact, studies have determined that it takes a typical Internet customer about seven visits to a single website before they buy anything. If youre just depending on hits alone, youre in trouble.
The number one reason for collecting e-mail addresses and using them is for establishing an electronic, permission-based, relationship with loyal visitors and customers. It would seem that the practical benefit of collecting e-mail addresses is obvious. Yet conversations with novice marketers indicate that many not only do not collect them but hardly use them even when they do. Thats a shame.
Collecting e-mail addresses should be a no-brainer in an Internet-enabled market. E-mail is so commonplace and pervasive that its existence and use are many times taken for granted. Did you know that
69 percent of U.S. e-mail users have made purchases online after receiving permission-based e-mail marketing, 59 percent have purchased in retail stores, 39 percent have purchased through catalogs, 34 percent through call centers and 20 percent through postal mail. And, 78 percent of those surveyed say they want to receive e-mail from their favorite online merchants. *Source: Doubleclick.com
If youre not actively collecting opt-in e-mail addresses and using them for marketing purposes you are missing out on important relationship building, credibility enhancing, and advertisement improving possibilities that could translate into more sales! This is your chance to turn one-time visitors into your best customers. If youre not providing a way for customers and visitors to express interest in hearing from you in the future, youve just lost a potential sale.
Remember, your opt-ins are loyal visitors to your site. They have willingly asked you to send them newsletters, ezines, eCourses, promotions, special offers, and other free information. They want what you have to offer them!
So why not take advantage of this extremely powerful operation The more people you have on your list, the more potential customers you have. Its been reported that up to 10% of subscribers to a newsletter will be converted into a sale. And these people are truly interested in what you have to say. When done correctly email marketing can become your most powerful way to generate sales.
Your email list should only contain addresses for which people have willingly given you their contact info (i.e. opt-in subscribers) anything else is deemed spam. Most email addresses are submitted to lists via a form on a web-site. You can convince people to subscribe to your list in a variety ways, some more successful than others. In the next few lessons, I will supply you with the most powerful means of increasing your opt-in subscribers. But for now, I want to fill you in on the most persuasive and enticing incentives to offer your future opt-ins.
The Most Compelling Opt-In Offers --visitors will be signing up left and right!--
Offer a Free Newsletter. I know, youre thinking, Free Yesthis has been proven to be THE best way to collect opt-in email addresses. If you offer to provide potential subscribers with information they need (and dont have to pay for) information that they are actively looking for theyll be glad to subscribe to your newsletter. These people WANT to know more about what you have to say! These are the people who are most likely to be open to future offers from you once you have established a credible relationship with them. It has been reported through rigorous research that up to 50% in sales can be generated from newsletter auto-responder follow-ups! Its also been shown that offering free newsletters is the single, best way to increase your opt-in e-mail list.
Give away a free eBook. Its a great way of getting more subscribers and growing your online business. You need to make sure that the eBook is of quality information or you will lose ALL credibility with your subscriber. Your customer will see right through you if you give them a free ebook full of unattractive information. You dont want to lose these customers just because you were too lazy to write something of quality. Remember, these people are truly interested in what you have to offer them, so you dont want to lose their interest right from the get-go. If you do this properly, youll see return visits from these loyal subscribers. And you know what that means.more sales for you!
Offer a free article about a subject related to your product or service. This is a very powerful list-building tactic. Subscribers gained from articles are more predisposed to what you have to offer because they practically opt-in pre-sold. Plus, your credibility as an expert in your field has already been established. By offering information, which your visitors will find useful for free, you can get them to sign-up to your list (i.e. Enter your email address here to receive your Free Guide).
Give away a series of Free Reports. If you offer to teach your visitors about something they are interested in, at no charge to them, you will not only be able to build your list quickly, but youll also boost your credibility as an expert in your subject. The best way to distribute free reports are via an auto-responder delivery system. You can set it up so your visitors will receive their reports on specified days of the week/month. You should also offer your visitors the entire series of reports in exchange for their email address (or some other fair trade).
Give away a Free Download. You cant beat a free download of a trial version of software. If youre selling software, this is the ideal incentive for your future opt-in. Of course, since you collected their e-mail address when they downloaded the product, youll be able to offer them any special discounts on the full version of your software just before the trial version expires.
There are no hard and fast rules about how you should hold or store your email list (though online auto-responder services are great tools) but it must contain the ability for people to unsubscribe (i.e. people must be able to request not to receive any further emails from you). Providing this ability shows you operate a respectable list and you are far less likely to be accused of spamming.
Without a doubt, the hands-down best, and most compelling opt-in offer is a Free Newsletter. You will not only get a truck-load of opt-ins, but you will also be able to expose them to your company and your offer many times over the course of a few months!
When done correctly, email marketing can become your most powerful way to generate sales. Your opt-in incentive needs to entice potential subscribers with a benefit that is strong enough to overcome the common objections of not wanting to share their personal contact information. But once you have their email address, you must design the proper strategy of promoting your product if you want to boost your sales from your opt-in list. These devoted subscribers are sitting there waiting for your offer so make sure you know how to present it in a way that will entice your new best friend.
Matt Callen has been working online as an Email Marketing Expert and Internet Marketer. He has experience consulting small online business owners by using advanced tactics he had taught himself and learned from the great marketers of our time. From this knowledge and expertise in email marketing concepts, Matt has recently developed a powerful marketing software that creates attention-grabbing, unblockable popover ads at InstantPopOVER.com
Learn more about building your email list and tapping into an undiscovered gold mine of profit. You can start with a few dollars and a good idea to make lots of money online! I did and Ill show you how. To find out more and receive a 30% OFF DISCOUNT on my new popup creating software for reading my article, please visit
How many email messages do you receive a day Do you read them all
The average person is hit with nearly 300 commercial advertising messages per day. Three Hundred! Billboards, bus signs, taxi cab banners, television advertisements, radio advertisements, magazines ads, newspaper ads, direct mail...
Then they check their email.
The first thing they see and in most cases the only thing they see (if your message has gotten past their filters) is your subject caption.
Is it compelling Does it say who, what, when, where, how, why now Does it remind your subscriber why they signed up for your messages Does it convince them to actually open and read it
I dont want to say for certain that it doesnt but chances are, many of your emails are being deleted without even being opened.
If you want your target audience to take action on your email message, that is open it and read it, youd better have a compelling reason why that action must take place NOW. A compelling subject line is KEY.
But you have to remember that the person youre sending the email to has permissibly signed up and volunteered to receive your newsletter, eCourse, or whatever other free info youre sending them. Treat them accordingly.
You need to keep in mind that your FIRST message to them needs to be very personal.
The subject line should always have their first name written in it. And make sure to describe what they signed up for in as short and descriptive of a sentence as you can. Theyre interested in what they signed up for - not the product that they may eventually buy from you in the future.
Give a gentle, short reminder of how important and worthwhile your message will be for them to read. Once they reach the body of your email copy, theyll remember exactly why they signed up. But its difficult sometimes to actually make sure your message will be opened.
Writing a compelling Subject Headline is an art, and it takes practice and constant testing. Its OK to experiment. But if you do change formats, stick with it for a while dont change with each message.
Be it a new technology that will save them time or a process that will reduce their loss of money, or what have you, your subject line must to be timely, and it must be believable and you must spell out its urgency and its reason, its purpose, and its answer to why in your subject caption.
Most of all it must be believable.
I know I keep harping the importance of trust and building a relationship with your subscribers, and youre probably thinking Yeah, yeahI got it! I understand. Now quit reminding me. This is such an important aspect of email marketing that I want to make sure you have it written on every wall of your memory bank. Yes, every wallheck, you should probably write it out on every corner, crevice and inch of your memory. ;-)
But making your subject line believable is not the end. You have to come through with your promise. If once they open your message and realize it doesnt hold true to your subject line, theyll quickly send it to the Trash Can. And your subsequent emails will all be deleted as well.
This is where many marketers stumble.
Its the believable part and fulfilling the promise that many marketers stumble on because they fail to tie together the real, the now, and the why into the two seconds they are allotted before the reader hits the delete key.
Writing a compelling headline. Its nothing new. All of us have heard of its importance again and again, but few of us has heeded the call. I know this to be true, because I delete thousands of pieces of email every day and millions of others do the same. You most likely do it also.
How do you make your message compelling
Always compose your subject caption with this in mind.People will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Like a good story, the first paragraph should entice you to read the second paragraph, and the second paragraph should entice you to read the third paragraph, and so on and so on and so on.But it all starts with your email subject line.
As stated in an earlier post I believe every action you take in your marketing approach should motivate the reader to take another action, which takes them deeper into your sales process.What has developed is that the same compelling reason must resonate throughout your marketing promotion to keep the reader involved until they take your final most desired action, buy your product or service.
Thats pretty much why we all do what we do.
But the profit only comes when people honestly believe your product will benefit them - when they are informed and convinced. In this medium they are informed and convinced by trusting what you have told them, and they will only read what you write when it grabs their attention at first glance. You can grab their attention with flash and glitz, with shock and awe, or with a compelling subject headline.
Establish an undeniable reason in that short 2 second period so that the reader will take your most desired action, opening your message and reading it.
The author, Matt Callen, has been working online as an Email Marketing Expert and Internet Marketer. He has experience consulting small online business owners by using advanced tactics he had taught himself and learned from the great marketers of our time. From this knowledge and expertise in email marketing concepts, Matt has recently developed a powerful marketing software that creates attention-grabbing, unblockable post-it-note style popups at InstantPopOVER.com. Check out the 40% discount just for reading this article, at
Learn more about building your email list and tapping into an undiscovered gold mine of profit. You can start with a few dollars and a good idea to make lots of money online! I did and Ill show you how. To find out more and receive a 30% OFF DISCOUNT on my new popup creating software for reading my article, please visit