You're Crazy To Market Without A Mailing List

Written by Philip Lim


The whole reason email marketing is done: to drive clients to your web site, where you can sell your products and services to them. But in order to bring them to your site, you need to have addresses to mail those exciting messages to.

You can always buy or rent email lists, but this isn’t always repparttar best strategy. It’s expensive, and there’s no guarantee that repparttar 109536 company you choose got their addresses legitimately. Opt-in email lists (people who ask you to send them information) are always a better method for marketing purposes, and you have a guaranteed target audience.

Increasing your opt-in list of targeted email clients isrepparttar 109537 most important email marketing strategy you can use. Your email list is actually a group of potential "sales leads" and you should treat expanding your email list inrepparttar 109538 same manner you would your leads offline: develop it, and develop it aggressively.

The more effort you put into developing it,repparttar 109539 more potential customers you will have. Conversely, if you fail to collect email addresses, your online business growth will halt. It’s that simple.

Tip #1: Offer Them Content

People don’t just like to give out their email addresses online (and with good reason nowadays!) But if you offer them something in return, such as an informative newsletter, a free ebook, or free software, they will be much more likely to give you their email address when subscribing.

Offering subscriptions, whether to a newsletter, ezine, ebook, software, or online course, isrepparttar 109540 number one legitimate method of increasing your email list (and is used by all ofrepparttar 109541 largest and most successful sites online). People have indicated that they go online for a major, basic reason: to learn. Are you meeting this need? You will be, if you offer them high-quality information through one ofrepparttar 109542 above methods.

Don’t just send them ads (unless they have specifically requested news on current specials); spice it up with information that they can use. They will remember you, will pass your newsletters around to their friends, and your name and company will get known.

Tip #2: Make It Easy For Them

It’s amazingrepparttar 109543 number of sites that have subscription forms tucked away deep within their site hierarchy, or don’t even have interactive subscription forms for signing up. Don’t just rely on repparttar 109544 customer takingrepparttar 109545 initiative of sending you an email asking to subscribe to your content; have a web designer create an easy-to-use form that they can fill in and subscribe to.

Place your subscription box in a prominent area. Normally,repparttar 109546 left top side of a web site isrepparttar 109547 area that a visitor looks at first. This is a natural area to place a small box that says, "Subscribe to our informative newsletter" or "download our free software" to increase your email list. Alternatively, you could create a pop-under that appears before they leave, asking if they would like to subscribe to your quality content. Don’t let them leave your site without offering themrepparttar 109548 chance, with an attractive ad, to sign up - and give you their email address.

Be sure to have a link on each and every web page on your site, offering visitorsrepparttar 109549 chance to subscribe. Otherwise, they may go to your site, click around, and by page four, forget that they meant to sign up for your newsletter or ebook. Remind them frequently with a tasteful link or box on each page, and watch your subscriptions rise.

Tip #3: Assure Their Privacy

When a person visits a web site online, they often hesitate to give out their email address. Since they don’t know you, they often fearrepparttar 109550 worst: that you could be an unscrupulous email harvester, who will turn around and sell their information to sleazy porn sites or lending companies charging high interest rates.

Of course, you don’t do this, and one way to overcome this natural hesitation is to place a prominent privacy notice near your subscription form that states: "Your privacy is important to us. We will never sell or discloserepparttar 109551 information that you provide us with." You have just overcomerepparttar 109552 number one reason that people don’t give out their email address, and increased greatlyrepparttar 109553 chances that your opt-in list will grow.

Tip #4: Don’t Use Force, and Don’t Ask for Too Much Information

Nowadays, some sites have become quite aggressive in their techniques for getting email addresses, torepparttar 109554 point that they won’t allow you to enter their site without giving it. Most people will click away from sites that use techniques that don’t offer choices. Instead, make subscription their choice, and never, ever forcerepparttar 109555 issue.

Let The Email Wars Begin

Written by Jim Edwards


Things just got a lot hotter inrepparttar hyper-competitive world of online email providers.

In response to Google's announcement that their soon-to-be- launched "Gmail" service will offer users 1 gigabyte of email storage, Yahoo! announced an upgrade of their free email service to allow users 100MB of free email storage along with other enhancements.

Microsoft's Hotmail will surely also announce a free upgrade in email storage space.

Onrepparttar 109535 surface it might just appear like a simple case of one-upmanship, but it actually represents major forces digging in online and preparing to do battle.

It appears Yahoo! simply wanted to takerepparttar 109536 issue of email storage space offrepparttar 109537 table as a consideration for users as to which email service to choose.

Google enjoyed considerable media and public attention overrepparttar 109538 past few weeks withrepparttar 109539 media marveling at how Google intended to give hundreds of megabytes more space to its users than Yahoo! or Hotmail.

With this move, Yahoo! made storage a "non-issue," butrepparttar 109540 real war has only just begun.

Email ranks asrepparttar 109541 number one most popular online activity according to virtually any survey you care to read.

When people go online, they spendrepparttar 109542 single biggest chunk of their time sending, receiving, and reading email.

Online email providers understand that eyeballs on a page looking at advertising and responding to offers is what makes them money.

By increasing loyalty among email users in order to repeatedly draw them back torepparttar 109543 same website (often several times a day), email service providers like Yahoo!, Hotmail and Google can keep people looking at revenue generating ads.

Despiterepparttar 109544 best efforts of government regulators, private organizations, software filters, ISP's and others, over half of all email sent online rates as unsolicited commercial email (SPAM).

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