Posted on May 17th, 2010
Internet marketing can take on several different forms, but many of the most successful professionals will quickly point out the power of the mailing list. By collecting as many leads as possible, you can give yourself the best chance at consistently reaching the largest possible audience.
This is quite different than conventional spam messages, because the list consists of people who have voluntarily opted into your list. This means that they are already interested in what you do and what you have to offer, but how can you convince them to take that step of giving you their email address? Here are five tips to set you in the right direction.
Optimize Your Squeeze Page
Easily one of the most powerful tools in your email marketing arsenal is your squeeze page. This is a webpage that has been designed specifically for collecting email addresses.
However, you shouldn’t just set it and forget it. Just like any other marketing effort, it’s important to optimize your squeeze page. Try different color schemes, different designs, different wording, and more.
Use split test techniques to determine which squeeze page is most effective.
Provide Secondary Offers
Standard practice for most squeeze pages is to offer the site visitor just a single option. However, this single offer may not be attractive enough to get enough conversions. To overcome this and to get more people to sign up, you can try a secondary offer.
This is when you use a smaller inset to promote a second product of some kind. This expands the scope of your landing page and can potentially attract more people than the single offer. As before, split tests will tell you what is and is not working.
Offer Something for Free
People love the price of free and one of the most effective strategies for getting more emails is to give away something for free. This can sound somewhat counterintuitive, since you don’t make money from that initial offering, but you are adding to your list and this helps in the long term.
The free product can be almost anything of value to a potential subscriber. Write a short ebook relevant to your niche. Provide access to a members-only area with exclusive content. It’s up to you.
Make Sure You Test Your Copy
After getting peole to join your list, you also have to work to maintain that list. If subscribers find that your content is not valuable to them, it’s very possible that they will unsubscribe. You don’t want that.
In this way, the content that you send out your list should also be tested accordingly, just as you would test the copy on your landing page. Yet once again, split tests prevail.
Consider Adding a Video
In addition to optimizing the copy and colors on your squeeze page, you can try two very different techniques with a split test as well. The standard landing page can be quite text-heavy and this may work with some demographics but not others.
Instead of going with a lot of text, try posting a short video on your squeeze page. This can be set to autoplay or not, and you can provide as little or as much information as you’d like. Split test the different variations and see which is most effective in generating confirmed leads.
