If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard it a thousand times before, stored it in the back of your memory bank, and haven’t had the desire to go back there to get it. Well, now’s the time to start acting on what I call “The Undiscovered Gold Mine.” What I’m talking about is the marketing power of an opt-in email list.
To most recognized Internet marketers, this is no “undiscovered secret” at all, but to most “newbies” and those of you who have not been practicing this powerful marketing campaign; you’ll be astonished by the capabilities this tool will provide you. Trust me, you will discover a whole new realm of profit once you maximize your loyal opt-ins and present your offer properly.
You may be skeptical about asking your potential customers for their email addresses. It’s very understandable. I was the same way. Like you, I didn’t want my visitors to think that I was snooping into their privacy. And these days, people are becoming increasingly wary about handing over their email addresses to just anyone. But there’s a gold mine of opportunity in those e-mail addresses, and many marketers don’t take the time to look for it.
So many unsuccessful websites simply do not mess with creating email lists. And you know what? This is why tons and tons of websites fail. It’s sad to hear about a business owner who spent a small fortune driving traffic to their websites but the sales just didn’t come like expected.
Notice that I keep referring to the plural – “Lists”. The more you have, the better your business will be. You’ll develop relationships with each one, figure out what each list needs, likes, and wants.
Remember: “The more lists, the better.” It’s a fact that hardly anyone ever buys anything the first time they visit a web site. In fact, studies have determined that it takes a typical Internet customer about seven visits to a single website before they buy anything. If you’re just depending on hits alone, you’re in trouble.
The number one reason for collecting e-mail addresses — and using them — is for establishing an electronic, permission-based, relationship with loyal visitors and customers. It would seem that the practical benefit of collecting e-mail addresses is obvious. Yet conversations with novice marketers indicate that many not only do not collect them but also hardly use them even when they do. That’s a shame.
Collecting e-mail addresses should be a no-brainer in an Internet-driven market. E-mail is so commonplace and universal that its existence and use are many times taken for granted.
The first thing you need to do is sign up for an autoresponder service. There are online services and few software programs out there that can allow you to store and retrieve email addresses, and I’m sure that your WebHost also provides this feature. However, I always recommend using online services as opposed to using a software program or your WebHost. You can find much better services through an online autoresponder, without all of the hassles that you’ll get from the latter services above.
I’m not going to go into all of the details about each autoresponder service on the ‘Net, but I would like to give you a list a few services that I find to be very user-friendly and exceptionally effective. In fact, I currently use one of them right now for all of my lists.
- Aweber.com – This is by far the easiest and most effective autoresponder service on the
‘Net. And the best part is that they have an unlimited follow-up autoresponder service and
offer an unlimited number of lists. Not all autoresponders can boast this. - GetResponse.com – Find new customers and build your email list with lead generation tools that turn anonymous connections into loyal fans.
- ConstantContact.com – More than 350,000 customers in 183 countries trust GetResponse, the world’s easiest email marketing platform, now available in 27 different languages.