(2) Free Report

Another kind of opt-in list involves offer of a free report, or series of reports. However, be careful with this!

By offering a free report, you are restricting number of times you can mail to your list, it's not a good idea to capture names and then bombard them with a continual stream of sales material when they were only expecting one or two reports.

This would be considered spamming! If you offer a free report, it should contain "real" information and a reason for them to visit your website again.

(3) Free eZine/Newsletter - A great way to build an opt-in list is by offering a free subscription to an electronic newsletter or ezine.

Newsletters are a really good way of regularly reminding your subscribers about your website and products. By writing a newsletter that contains copy which is both informative and compelling, you draw subscribers back to your website again and again!

Having an ezine/Newsletter is one of best ways to build credibility and rapport with your readers and customers. If you understand value of a "Lifetime Customer", then you know exactly how powerful an ezine or newsletter can be!

So now that you know how to get your opt-in mailing list, it's time that you learn how to run your email promotions effectively when you do it.

Below are 6 tips to consider for successful email marketing:

(1) Perhaps most critical step in guaranteeing success of your e-mail promotions is that you e-mail a targeted list of opt-in subscribers who have specifically requested to receive information on a particular topic from you. You'll be wasting your time and energy if you don't.

(2) Personalize each and every email. A phrase like "Dear John" will have more impact than just "Dear customer". For that person assumes you know him. (3) Write benefit-oriented subject lines or you can ask a question or trigger curiosity.. Subject lines are very critical in ensuring whether your email gets opened or not.

(4) Make it easy to read. Check grammatical errors and proof read everything. Keep paragraphs short, between 4-6 lines.

(5) Give opportunity for your readers to opt-out of your mailing list. At end of all e-mail you send, it's extremely important that you give people opportunity to opt-out or be removed from your e-mail database. This is really, really important!

(6) Test your email promotions. Before sending your e-mail to your entire list, take an extra 15 minutes to test how it looks in a variety of e-mail clients like hotmail, yahoo, outlook express, eudora etc...

Email marketing is an excellent way to increase exposure of your website and advertise any special offers that are currently available through your website. Executed well, a targeted email campaign can have a dramatic influence on your traffic, acquisition of visitors and traffic behavior.

© 2003 by Jean Lam

All that is left for you to do is come up with content for your news letter, even if it's something as simple as site updates.

Promotion

You will want to promote your news letter because you will find that just a simple link or banner that says subscribe isn't good enough. You may want to use a popup or a pop under window letting people know about you news letter. You can use pop up upon visitors entering or exiting your website. I suggest using pop under as it is far less intrusive.

A great place to generate this code for free is: http://willmaster.com/possibilities/members. You will only have to sign up for weekly news letter. For all great free tools and you can use for having a free membership, it will be well worth it!

Offer an incentive to subcribe to your news letter or ezine, like a free E Book, free membership, or maybe a chance to win a prize. Your subscription rate will double!

Another far more effective way of promoting your news letter is through a subscription service. You can learn how to build your subscriber news letter base. quickly, easily, and inexpensively with valid, 100% double opt-in subscribers guaranteed! You can choose from number of subscribers you would like to have every month so you wont have to break bank. You won't have to waste your time with worry about hassle and aggravation of having to track your results -- you only pay for what they deliver! Click now to learn how: http://www.freeandfrugal.com/cgi-bin o.cgi?l=listopt

This is most likely one of best methods of paid advertising online. These are your guaranteed return visitors. You want to keep your subscribers so don't bombard them with emails or you will lose them. Daily and a couple of times a day are to much! Let them know how often they will hear from you so that you are not loosing them. This mostly is directed at those of you who want to email your subscribers more than once a week.

About the author: Niki Mcelroy is the owner, editor, and webmaster of www.freeandfrugal.com. We currently have two employees and a very busy Internet site. I run a Christian based freebie news letter, a weekly inspirations E zine, and a news letter to help business owners increase there sales, traffic, and subscribers. When you are looking for a job you can operate from the comfort of your home office, remember, if I can do it so can you! If you can't find the job, create it!