How To Build Email Lists

An important tool to help build email lists is the Squeeze page which was discussed in my last blog. How do you get people to give you their email address on your squeeze page? Well, the most important thing to do is to give them something for free in return for their email address. Here's 10 ideas for free offers you might want to consider on your squeeze page...

1. FREE Special Report or Article
This can be a physical item that you mail out or it can be part of your Lead Capture "Thank You" page. The key is to make the shared information compelling. Solve a problem, address a fear, or give your target market a secret tip or strategy that will help your Squeeze Page visitors get what they want.

2. FREE E-Book
This can simply be in the form of a downloadable .PDF file. You can easily compose your content in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice (free at OpenOffice.org) and then just save it as a .PDF file.

3. FREE Product Sample or Trial
This is great if you are selling physical products or membership services. Remove the buying risk and build your list at the same time.

4. FREE Consultation or Coaching Session
People like the idea of talking with a real person. The Internet is usually cold and impersonal. Offering a free consultation or coaching session on your Squeeze Page also takes away a lot of fears that many people have that they are on their own to figure things out for themselves. The more you can add a personal human element to the process, the more effective you'll be.

5. FREE Software
This is similar to offering a free downloadable report or ebook. There are lots of private label rights software products that you can purchase and re-brand as your own. Just do a Google search using the term "PLR software" and you'll find lots of results. This can be a great Squeeze Page incentive depending on your niche.

6. FREE Newsletter or Mini E-Course Subscription
All you need for this one is an auto-responder and some good content. When your prospect opt-in through your Squeeze Page web form, they can automatically be added to your e-mail auto-responder campaign. This series of e-mails can include a monthly newsletter or can even be broken up into a series of training messages (i.e., an e-course).

7. FREE Novelty Gift or Trade Show Item
These physical items can be great Squeeze Page incentives, which can also be branded with your contact information, website and slogan/message. For example, I know some Internet marketers promoting fitness/weight loss products gave away free digital pedometers for opting into their Squeeze Page. This was a nice gift for those who wanted to lose weight and get in better shape by monitoring the amount of their walking/jogging. And, of course, the phone number and website address printed on the pedometer acted as a constant reminder to order/re-order the product that would assist them in their efforts.

8. FREE Chance To Win (Raffle/Contest)
Sometimes it pays to offer something of greater value than what you could offer each and every person who opts-in through your Squeeze Page. You could offer a chance to win a special prize in a drawing for every person who opts-in. Pick a specific date for the drawing and then randomly choose the winner(s). You determine the value of the prize and the number of prizes you want to give out. If done right, you should get a whole lot more valuable opt-in leads worth much more than the cost of the few prizes you give away. You may also want to give out consolation prizes for all those who participated so all your Squeeze Page Leads will feel like they got something for their time. This consolation gift can be a digital item that doesn't cost you very much, like a free ebook, special report, online presentation, etc.

9. FREE CD or DVD
This can also be a very good incentive for a Squeeze Page. It has a higher perceived value than a digital/downloadable product. Of course, there is more cost involved, but you can cover your costs by charging for shipping and handling while giving the CD/DVD away for free.

10. FREE Instant Access Online Presentation
This is one of my favorite Squeeze Page Offers. It has a higher perceived value than an audio or an e-book and you don't have to worry about shipping costs. All you need is an inexpensive digital video camera or web cam. After you record your video, simply upload it to "YouTube" or another video sharing site. Then simply copy & paste the embedded code into the "Thank You" page of your Squeeze Page. A video presentation can also increase credibility and trust with your prospects. People are much more inclined to do business with a "real person" that they can see. A video which shows you speaking directly to your prospects is so much more personal and compelling.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5399997

Add Quality to Your Email Mailing List

It's not enough to just build a list. The real goal should be to build a quality list of people who are interested in your products or services. Building an email list is an integral part of this process. It allows you to stay in touch with prospects, develop relationships and make repeat sales to your customers.

There is plenty of hype online about how you can get thousands of people to join your email list in a very short space of time. This is possible but the key question you need to ask is whether these people are ever likely to buy from you. Always go for quality rather than quantity.

Here are 7 tips for building a quality email list of people who are likely to buy your products and become loyal customers.

1. Understand what your potential customers want. I know this sounds rather obvious but believe me it's not! It's possible to spend a long time creating products for which there's no demand. Don't fall into this trap. Do your research - spend some time online, listen to what people are saying in forums about the problems and challenges that they face. Then you'll get a good understanding of what potential customers want.

2. Establish your credibility in your market niche. People want to know why they should join your email list. If you're able to demonstrate your expertise by providing quality information and solutions to their problems, do you think that they'll want to sign up to your list? Of course - people are hungry for this sort of help.

3. Deliver excellent quality content on all your platforms. This is how you will make a name for yourself as someone who is worth listening to. Make the effort to ensure that your website, social media, blog etc are giving people the answers and information that they're looking for. Let people see the quality of your material so that they will be much more likely to buy your products and services.

4. Make sure your website and blog are optimised for the search engines. Your aim is to get people to your site when they're searching for information online. If your website is on page 85 of the search engine results for your keywords then people aren't going to find you. So when you're creating content make an effort to use the right keywords in the right places. This isn't difficult but it is easy to overlook in your rush to get content on your website and blog posts.

5. Get people to your website using paid advertising. This will give you quicker results than search engine optimisation but it's a good idea to use both approaches. Be careful to target your advertising at the right sort of people, otherwise you will be wasting your money.

6. Work with other people in your niche. By doing this you can build your list quickly. Find other businesses that are complementary to yours but don't go for direct competitors. As an example, if you have an eBook on 'How to grow roses' you could get in touch with a company selling roses. Ask them to email their list with a great discount offer on your eBook and then reward them with a percentage of the profits. You benefit by getting more people on your email list and they make money - a win win scenario!

7. Make it as straightforward as possible for people to join your list. Once you've succeeded in attracting visitors to your website the last thing you want is for them to read your content and then go without leaving their email address. Your number one objective with all visitors should be to capture their contact details.

So don't just have one sign up box on your homepage. Consider placing sign up forms in various locations e.g. pop ups, footer area, sidebar and on blog posts. You can easily create attractive web forms that link to your autoresponder service. Offer them something that they value in order to get their email address - you'll find this an easy task if you've understood their needs and created high quality content.

To summarise, by following these 7 tips you'll make great progress in building a quality list of prospects who are genuinely interested in your products or services, appreciate your expertise and are likely to become your loyal customers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6937664

How To Build Your Email Mailing LIst Important Steps

How to build your email list fast is something that successful internet marketers recognize as one of the biggest problems that people have. You may have heard previously from online marketing professionals "The Money is in The List".

This is probably the most important step you will take in building your online business - building your email list. Some online marketing professionals will tell you that for every person you have on your email list you could reliably stand to make $1/month. This means if you build a list of 2,000 people you could easily make $2,000/month in "passive income" - income generated from affiliate product promotions.

There are two types of internet marketers, those that put in the time and effort to build their list and reap the rewards and those that cannot be bothered to put in the effort and just go around trying to sell their product to anyone.

If you are the second type who does not want to put in the effort then I suggest you stop reading this article now. This is only for those who truly want to be successful online.

Let us start with the basics. In order to build your list you have to get the persons e-mail address. In order to do this you first have to get the persons attention. The best way of doing this is to offer them something of value that will solve a problem that they are having or will make life easier for them. The best method is to send them the item by e-mail. Most people are willing to do this but they often do not give you their primary e-mail address. This is OK though because you just need to be able to contact them.

So what sort of page captures the person's attention so that they will give out their email address? Firstly the page has to look as professional as possible. You can either create your own page or get one made by a professional. This page is what is called a squeeze page and its sole function is to captures the persons email address. Do NOT try to sell to them at this stage; you are only after their email. Now you have to decide what your free gift will be. One of the best ways is a free ebook that solves the person's problem. This can be sent to them only they give you an email address to send it to.

Here's a great piece of software you can use to create a squeeze page. With this software you can be creating squeeze pages in about 5 minutes! I figure that if you can find software that makes the mechanics of building your list quick and easy, then you have more time to get on with other parts of your online marketing.

Do you see how it works now? Explain how your free gift will solve their problem and list some of the benefits of getting this ebook. You want to make them feel that they must get this ebook. To further encourage the persons to get it straight away you could say that the offer will be taken down very soon so they must act quickly. Encouraging urgency is the key, use your imagination to come up with ideas. You could say that after a few days they will have to pay to get it, which is why they must act now to get it for free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7318080

Basic Tools for Your Online Marketing - Email Marketing

Whether you have a physical business or you are purely online selling through an online store or marketing affiliate products, there are some basic structures you'll need to put in place to be effective.

The number 1 item which all marketers know is your key to massive income online is an email list. To do this effectively you'll need to have an email marketing system. Professional marketers will tell you that for every person you have on your email list you will make $1/month. So you can see it's in your best interests to figure out very quickly how to build your list if you're wanting to generate passive online income (income ticking over on auto pilot).

There are many programs available but the one I recommend is Get Response. The pricing is highly competitive and it is probably one of the simplest setups I've seen. I was surprised how easily I was able to setup an auto responder/signup form for use on my website, blog, squeeze page, etc.

Of course you'll need an email system to receive your emails on your computer. That could be as simple as setting up a gmail account. Whether you're on PC or Mac you should have an inbuilt email program there as well. So get your email receiving program setup, sign up with Get Response or other similar email marketing program and you now have the basic structure to start driving traffic to your marketing ventures.

The last item in this part of your online marketing structure is the squeeze page. This is a one page website which usually has a bold heading with a call to action, maybe a video of your offer, a signup form and sometimes a Buy Now button if you want to sell directly from this page. The first method mentioned using just the signup form would be to help you build your email list. Later on, you can use these squeeze pages to market a product to your already existing email list. For now you will most likely start out using your squeeze page to build your email list.

These days, social media is probably the quickest method for driving traffic to your squeeze page or optin page, so you'll be needing to setup an account in Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Linkedin, Blog and others. We'll cover that in our next article here.

10 Basic Steps for Online Marketing

It is not enough to have a great website with attractive images and informative content. You need to market it and marketing is an ongoing process. Web marketing is quite different from web development or web design. When it comes to online business you should focus on website advertising.

Before you go for online marketing you should know the basics of it. Here are 10 basic steps that you can follow.

Directory Submission:

It is one of the most effective ways of online marketing. There are thousands of directories.Just choose the right category and submit your website. Go for manual directory submission and try to select important directories like DMOZ first and then move on to specific directories.

Article Marketing:

Article marketing is a very crucial step that you should take for increasing visibility on the Internet. Write informative articles covering the areas of your expertise and submit those articles to relevant article directories. Article submission will undoubtedly boost your online traffic.

Blog Marketing:

This is probably the best Internet marketing technique that you can follow.If you have your own blog then fine enough. If not,create your own blog first. Write useful and relevant content and submit your blog to well known blog directories so that blog search engines can track your blog.

Link Building:

Another great way of getting your business listed in major search engines is link building. Try to get as much inbound links as you can. This will help you to get a good page rank in search engines like Google,Yahoo and MSN.But remember that you should get relevant links means if you have a hotel website you need to get a link related to hotel,travel,tourism etc.

Email Marketing:

It is almost impossible to get in touch with each of your customers or business partners without having an organized mailing list. Take help of email marketing when you launch a new product or service or organize an event or share some industry news and so on. Try to send emails at least once a week if not more.

Press Release:

Other than reaching your business partners or customers it is also important to reach media websites and online publications. The best way to do so is press release. It is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website.

PPC Advertising:

Pay per Click or PPC is one of the greatest online advertising tools.It is not a free service. You need to pay the search engine for every click but it is worth your money. PPC offers good return on investment.

Video Marketing:

Video marketing is an attractive way of drawing your customers' attention.It will surely improve the traffic of your website. Video is probably the fastest way of communication.Therefore you will discover Youtube has millions of members.

Social Bookmarking:

If you want to share your web pages for free social bookmarking is the best option for you. You can be a part of any gigantic network of people.You can share your interests with them.People can easily find your website giving relevant keywords.

Social Networking:

It is the most effective online marketing strategy. If you want to reach your target audiences create a profile on various social networks,add your profile to relevant categories and create groups. It can immediately put you in contact with millions of people you wouldn't have reached otherwise.

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