Building your own email opt-in list is very important to your email campaigns. It's one of the lessons I learnt when I started online business and it's what you, too, should take as your first priority. I started collecting email addresses as soon as I put my site up. Developing a list of targeted potential customers is a must if you are to succeed in your online business. Build your own email opt-in list.
What's an email opt-in list? It's just a list of people, who have accepted to receive your commercial emails on specific information. The list contains mainly their email addresses and any other contact information you may deem necessary to ask from them. These people agree to receive SPECIFIC INFORMATION from you such as a newsletter. It's therefore wrong to send other unrelated information they have not agreed upon to receive just because you have their email addresses. When you do so, then you are engaging yourself in some form of spamming. Take note of that when using your email opt-in list.
Building your own email opt-in list has several advantages over purchased opt-in lists. Although buying saves time, an email list you have built yourself is safer and more effective than a bought list. You have the advantage of sending your commercial mails to already interested subscribers and making a sale is quite easy to your targeted customers. Take time to build your own email list for it's so rewarding in the long run.
To build your own opt-in list is an easy process that only requires you having a landing page, a good auto responder program, a capture form and a product or service to offer. I would like to explain a little further on what you have to do with each of them.
1. Create a landing page: This is a single page designed for promotional purposes. It's a page with little but specific information, intended to grasp the attention of your visitors so that they can sign up, make an enquiry or buy a product. Since it's a page where you send your visitors, you need to design it professionally to compel your visitors to take the desired action. The onus now is on you to learn how to build an effective landing page to meet your marketing needs.
2. Select a good auto responder program: To create an effective email opt-in list, you have to invest in an auto responder program. Auto responders ease your work by receiving contacts of your subscribers on your behalf, at any time of the day, without your physical involvement. Your auto responder sends a "Thank you letter" and also delivers programmed follow-up messages to subscribers in your opt-in list. It will take your subscribers through the confirmation process in your absence.
You need to select a good auto responder service with features and options that enable you to send personalized follow-up messages, update your messages, track the performance of your adverts, allow you to write your texts with any length, notify you each time someone requests your information, schedule your emails and create a capture form.
Some of the best auto responder programs include getresponse.com, aweber.com and trafficwave.net, which you can get at a reasonable monthly fee. They are user-friendly and have a customer support system, which enables any user to easily use the features of the auto responder .
After selecting a good auto responder of your preference, you then have to use it to write your email messages, program them accordingly and create a capture form that you will use on your landing page to receive new subscribers and to build your email opt-in list.
3. Place a capture form on your landing page: To build your email opt-in list, you need to use a capture form. This is a data form used to collect information from your targeted visitors, who accept to sign up for your products or services. As you carry out your marketing and advertising campaigns, you direct your visitors to your landing page where they can sign up, using the capture form. The capture form is connected to your auto responder, which once they sign up, begins its work of sending your follow-up messages to them as per your schedule.
With your capture form, you should be able capture all the information you wish to collect from your visitors such as name, email address and many others. However, it's advisable to ask for the most important information because requesting for too much information can scare away some of your potential customers.
4. Offer a free product or service to attract your visitors to sign up. Your visitors will not give you free information in exchange for nothing. You must have a product or service they are interested in. A free product or service related to your niche will persuade them to sign up. For example, you can offer a free e-book, a free trial in case of software or a free service. Even if you do not have your own free product to offer, look for free downloads (e-books) with resell rights and use them as your free offers as long as they are related to your niche.
As I wind up, I would like to remind you that building your own email opt-in list is a simple process, though it takes time to set it up and to create a reasonable list of targeted customers. But once you have set it up and you have a good product to offer, you will enjoy all the benefits of building your own email list. I wish you the best in your email marketing endeavors.
About the Author
Charles Kiyimba owns http://www.CashWithGoleza.com and http://www.golezadesigners.com where popular home business ideas and opportunities are tested rigorously to find out what works and what doesn't. Visit today to discover the secrets behind building a successful home business.
