A very common strategy to build a database of names and email addresses is to include an email marketing opt-in form or subscribe form on every page of a website, and experts will often tell you the upper right-hand corner of a web page is the most effective pace to place it. Now it doesn’t have to be in the exact top right-hand corner, but in that general area is preferred.

To entice website visitors more, many website owners will offer an Irresistible Free Offer such as a special report, free CD, e-book, video, or audio recording. But these offers aren’t really free because visitors are required to give their name and email address to receive the gift.

As more online marketers, entrepreneurs, and businesses use this approach to grow their marketing lists, inboxes around the world are being saturated with a barrage of less than stellar messages and spam. As a result people are more cautious when it comes to opting in.

An emerging trend that we are seeing is to provide downloads like audios, videos, reports and more without any opt-in required.

Now, I know you may be screaming, “I’m having a hard enough time with my Irresistible Free Offer, let alone a second or third item that I can give away without anything in return.”

Here is a simple strategy that we use and doesn’t require much additional work. After you have been blogging for a while, look at your most popular posts that cover a similar topic, and edit them into a focused free report and publish it as a “no opt-in required” download that is truly free.

This no opt-in approach to list building has two effects:

1. It shows you do really care about helping your prospective future client solve their problems, without expecting anything in return.
2. It makes the statement, “If your no opt-in required stuff is this awesome, just imagine what your opt-in required content must be like.”

The individuals, who opt-in after reading your truly “free” reports, will already be fans and be much more likely to receive your future newsletters and marketing messages. In today’s competitive online world, your focus needs to be on quality, not quantity.

If you are a Google Analytics user, you can track your downloads a few ways:

1. Enable event tracking and add the file type you want to track.
2. Record the download as a virtual page view when someone clicks on the link.

If you are a WordPress user and have the Google Analyticator plug-in, use the first method. The settings menu for the plug-in will allow you to add the file types to track without any advanced Google Analytics programming knowledge.

By tracking your downloads of your no opt-in required products, you can then compare them to your opt-ins that require an email address. Have the expectation that the numbers will probably be greater for the no opt-in required information, but over time you will be able to measure how well your content is resonating with your audience. If it is good, they will come back and give you their email address. If it needs work, you will know and be able to have a measurable goal to work toward.

It is difficult to talk about email marketing and not talk about list building. In fact, many experts make it seem as if building a big list is the only thing Internet entrepreneurs need to worry about. But when it comes to your list, does size really matter?

Yes and no. At several of the conferences I have attended, experts say that the tipping point for a truly successful ezine is 1,000 subscribers. But I am here to tell you that HUGE results can come from small lists, as long as your readers are engaged and you are actively working to build long-lasting relationships.

Tips for Building Your Email Marketing Opt-in List

Give Them Something Free! We live in the holy land of the “free gift with purchase.” This sales technique repeatedly draw hundreds shoppers to retail establishments daily and it is just as effective when used online. While retail stores provide a gift in exchange for a sale, online marketers provide a free gift in exchange for an email address.

In Internet marketing, giving away something that is relevant and valuable to your prospects and customers not only helps you build your list, but it gives people a sample of the caliber of products and services you and your company offer and a feel for what it would be like doing business with you.

Here are some ideas of the type of items you could give away:

• Special Reports
• A teleseminar or teleclass
• Audio Recordings
• E-books
• A Coaching Session
• Monthly Newsletter
• Product Reviews
• Prizes
• Re-brandable Reports
• Physical Products
• Coupons and Discounts
• Trial Memberships
• Tips, Tricks and Strategies
• Checklists
• And more!

Are you interested in learning more strategic list building tips? Check out the email marketing blog posts listed below for ten more marketing savvy list building tips.

Top Ten Email Marketing List Building Tips – Part 1.

Top Ten Email Marketing List Building Tips – Part 2.

Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative One of Only 12
Women Experts for List Attraction Week, March 8-12, 2010

Sacramento, CA – 2010 is shaping up to be the year for building business, thus increasing the need for low-cost, high-return marketing tactics by entrepreneurs. With the exponential growth of social networking for businesses in 2009, online marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing trends. However, most entrepreneurs don’t know how to get started with the most basic element, their “marketing list”.

Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative is a web designer and online marketing expert who helps her clients leverage the power of the Internet and use it to effectively attract new clients and leads. Bourn was recently selected by the International Association of Women in Business Online (IAWBO) to sit on a panel of 12 experts who will host a teleclass series during “List Attraction Week”, March 8-12, 2010.

Online marketing is fast becoming the most important marketing resource for entrepreneurs. In December 2009, Entrepreneur unveiled its “10 Web Marketing Trends for 2010” and e-mail marketing was in the top three. John Arnold writes, “…invest in your e-mail list and in producing valuable content to nurture leads and attract repeat customers.” The Harvard Business Review also stated that “with groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more ‘exclusive’,” thus making it even more imperative for entrepreneurs to start building their list immediately.

“I’m honored to have been selected to join such an esteemed group of talented women entrepreneurs and online marketing experts for this teleseries,” explained Bourn. She will be in good company with some of the most respected online marketing experts and information marketers in the U.S. such as Gina Bell, Alexis Martin Neely, Mary Kay Morgan, Kim De Young, and Amy Porterfield.

Bourn will lead a teleclass which will focus on the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and website traffic generation for online marketing. “From web design and coding, to copywriting and blogging, or even developing press releases, SEO is a critical piece of any successful online marketing strategy. Smart SEO will directly impact your Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engine rankings and thus the unique visits to your web site,” added Bourn. “Those web hits are what you are then able to monetize.”

Bourn was chosen as the SEO expert because it’s been her number one priority when building client web sites as a web and graphic designer for the past twelve years.

Other teleclasses in the series will focus on other important aspects of effective list building including:

• Autoresponders
• Double opt-ins
• Squeeze pages
• Ethical bribes/freebies/pink spoons
• Ezines/newsletters
• Virtual events
• Joint ventures
• Speaking
• Copywriting (i.e. article marketing)
• Blogging
• Social media
• Follow up strategies
• How to monetize your list
• And much, much more

“Registering for this teleseries should be a no-brainer for entrepreneurs,” explained Bourn. “The live teleclasses are FREE and only $25 if you can’t listen live and would like to listen later to online recordings. A gold VIP IAWBO membership is only $225 so there is tremendous ROI with any package.”

To register for the List Attraction Week Teleseries please visit www.listattractionweek.com.

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So, what do they do? They put it off and procrastinate.

Soon, it has been weeks, or sometimes even months and nothing has been sent out to their list. No announcements. No marketing. No helpful tips or information.

Unfortunately, their list of warm leads is growing colder by the minute!

Here is a quick list of email newsletter topics or content ideas that you can use to help put an end to writers’ block:

Adding an email newsletter and email marketing to your marketing strategy should be a stress-free task. If you don’t enjoy writing and implementing your ezine each week or each month, consider delegating or outsourcing your email newsletter. Copywriters and virtual assistants can handle various parts of your email marketing implementation, or you can outsource your email newsletter headache to the expert team here at Bourn Creative.

Whether you need a turn-key solution, including copywriting, design, programming, and implementation, or you just want someone else to format your content in your template, Bourn Creative is the perfect partner to add to your team! Contact us today to learn more.

1. Add a Sign Up form or Opt-In Box on Every Page of Your Website
2. Advertise in Another Ezine
3. Promote Your Ezine in Your Email Signature
4. Send Out a Press Release
5. Announce Your Ezine to Your Network

Remember, with a personal, relevant, value-added ezine, you can attract new customers and prospects to join your list. And, that’s what it’s all about, building your list and getting contacts into your marketing funnel.

With that in mind, let’s move on to email marketing list building tips six through ten:

TIP 6: Use Your Business Card

If the back of your business card is blank, print new cards and include your mini ezine advertisement on the back. Include a call to action or an irresistible offer that drives them to your website to get a free gift and a complimentary subscription to your ezine.

TIP 7: Attend Live Networking Events

The people you meet in person will be your most loyal and valuable prospects and customers, and if they opt-in to your ezine list, the probability that they will purchase something from you skyrockets. After all, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Taking the time to connect with people in person, accelerates the “know” and “like” factors, and a consistently well done ezine will build the “trust” factor.

When you are networking, be sure to mention your ezine in your commercial. If you have time, or someone wants to know more, chat about the benefits subscribers receive. Let them know when your next issue will be sent and offer to add them to your list. If they are still unsure, offer to send them a sample copy to review.

TIP 8: Use Article Marketing to Promote Your Ezine

Article marketing is the use of a written article to market and promote your business, products, services, or programs. You can write value-added articles on any area of expertise and post them to several article marketing websites, such as www.ezinearticles.com and www.articlesbase.com. Attached to each of your articles is your author resource box that contains more information about you! Here you can include a link back to your website, a plug for your ezine and special offer, your tagline, and more.

TIP 9: Get Published in Other Ezines and Blogs

Bloggers are HUNGRY for fresh content and if you approach them the right way, will usually welcome a well-written guest post. Make sure you look at who the bloggers target market is and what the content theme of the blog is prior to contacting them. You want to submit a post idea or post content that fits their market, stays in the same genre of content the blog readers are expecting to receive, and provides information that will benefit the readers.

Just as bloggers are looking for new fresh content, so are ezine publishers! Many entrepreneurs that publish weekly ezines will occasionally publish feature articles by guest writers. The same criteria apply for ezine publishers: 1) Make sure the article provides information of value to the readers and 2) Make sure your article topic fits the overall ezine theme and reader expectations.

It also doesn’t hurt to offer a reciprocal post for them on your blog or in your ezine. Check out what they are doing in their business. Are they planning an event or getting ready to launch a product? Offer them a post around that time to promote their business efforts.

TIP 10: Start Doing Some Public Speaking

Public speaking is a great opportunity to do some ethical, permission-based list building. And with an ezine, your post-event follow up can be easy and inexpensive. As the speaker at an event, you already have the audience’s attention, now it is your responsibility to give them an easy way to sign up for your ezine.

Here are some ways you can build your list as a speaker:

• Offer to send a free copy of your presentation notes, or a copy of your PowerPoint presentation to attendees who give your their business card.
• You mention your ezine in your presentation and pass around a signup sheet to collect their names and email addresses. Make sure your signup sheet includes a compelling headline with your ezine name, a short description, and your opt-out terms or privacy policy.
• If you have a table or booth at the event, you can hold a drawing for a free gift or an hour of consulting time. To enter the drawing attendees simply drop their business card in the bowl!
• You can offer a free gift or a prize during the close of your presentation. First, mention the item or offer you are promoting and all of the fantastic benefits attendees can receive as a result. Make sure you get them really excited about your offer. Second, announce that one lucky person in the room is going to get it for free along with a free subscription to your ezine! Third, tell the audience to get out their business cards. You can either have someone collect them, or have people hand them in.

Everyone knows that giving something away for free is one of the best ways to get people to opt-in to your marketing list. Your free offer may be an ebook, a special report, or even an audio recording. In this blog post, I want to share with you ten additional tips for building your marketing list.

TIP 1: Add a Sign Up form or Opt-In Box
on Every Page of Your Website

Adding a subscribe form or opt-in box to every page of your website ensures that no matter what page a visitor may land on first, they will learn about your valuable ezine and your special offer.

TIP 2: Advertise in Another Ezine

One of the best places to spend your advertising dollars is in email newsletters, email marketing, and ezines from other entrepreneurs and businesses that target the same market share and audience that you do. Think about it. The audience is already subscribing to one ezine and the likelihood that they will subscribe to another is pretty high. Plus, the cost of advertising in an ezine is relatively low when compared to other forms of advertising.

An Advertisement in an ezine is also a great place to test out different headlines and calls to action. Just be sure you commit to run your ad multiple times and track your links. Remember, a mediocre offer seen several times will have better conversion rates than an irresistible offer made only once.

TIP 3: Promote Your Ezine in Your Email Signature

At the end of your email signature, after all of your usual contact information, include a quick 2-3 line mini advertisement for your ezine. If you’ve got a special offer or free gift, let people know about it!

TIP 4: Send Out a Press Release

Are you launching a brand new ezine? Are you tapping an emerging market that people want to know about? Have you hit a milestone such as a specific number of subscribers or a specific number of issues published? Did publishing your ezine bring you a huge new opportunity, contract, book deal, etc.?

No, the press release isn’t dead. In fact, with more and more media outlets cutting staff, the reporters and journalists who are left have a much larger responsibility and a lot more work to do. Reporters do still look at well written, relevant, timely press releases.

Also, optimized press releases with the right keywords and longtail key phrases are amazing tools for search engine optimization and increased online visibility for you, your ezine, and your business. Reporters use online media sources to search for press releases that are relevant to their stories. Bloggers use press release distribution sites to see what content is popular and to get ideas for new blog posts, and potential interviewees. You should be using press releases with links back to your website, services, and products to boost your search engine ranking.

TIP 5: Announce Your Ezine to Your Network

Be sure to send out a promotional marketing piece to announce your ezine to your clients, prospects, business networks, and friends. You can also send them a single sample issue to read through with an invitation to opt-in to your list and continue receiving your ezine. Also, if you belong to any professional organizations or associations, find out if you can place an ad in their newsletter or trade publication.

Check back tomorrow for the post Top Ten Email Marketing List Building Tips – Part 2.

Frankly, every time email marketing is mentioned at a presentation, seminar, workshop, or in written articles, this problem is addressed. So I know the problem isn’t due to a lack of information or ignorance.

So what is this huge problem? It is people adding other people to their list WITHOUT permission. Um, yeah … that would be called SPAMMING!

I am appalled at how many lists I get added to after attending meetings, networking events, and conferences. The funny thing is that I didn’t opt-in on their website, I didn’t ask to be added to their list, and I didn’t purchase anything!

Now, that doesn’t mean I am not interested in what they have to say or what they are doing. I just want to be granted the freedom to get their information on my own terms. I want to be given the freedom to subscribe to their blog in my Google reader instead of in my inbox. I want to be given the freedom to visit their website for new information. I want to be given the freedom to click on links posted on Facebook or Twitter.

The bottom line is that I deserve to have a choice as to what my inbox is being filled with.

With that in mind, here are some basic “what not to do” reminders on email marketing list etiquette:

1. Just because you asked for my business card at an event and I gave it to you, it doesn’t give you permission or the right to add me to your marketing list.
2. Just because you subscribed to my list, doesn’t mean you can add me to yours. It was your choice to join mine. Don’t I deserve the same option?
3. If you add me to your list without my permission and I ask you to remove me from your list, do not threaten to unsubscribe from my list in retaliation. Give me a break. If you want out, just click unsubscribe. It is okay and you won’t hurt my feelings. All it means is that you aren’t a good fit for me.
4. Do not automatically add everyone you know to your list. Respect overcrowded inboxes and give them a choice of how to receive your information.
5. If you don’t include an unsubscribe link in your email messages, you are a spammer and you are forcing your information on the recipient. Do not make it hard for people to unsubscribe. If you do, and they have to waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to get off your list, they will not like you very much.
6. Do not share your list with friends or strategic partners unless the people opting in are told in a very prominent and clear manner that they are going to be added to multiple lists.
7. Do not send me emails every day. My inbox is full enough and really, you should be a little more organized and group information together.
8. Your ezine has a specific focus, topic, or niche it serves. Stick to your niche and stay on topic! If I subscribe to an ezine from a nutritionist to get tips on eating healthy, I expect to receive just that. Don’t send me articles on marketing, or starting a business. Or if I subscribe to a business consultant’s ezine who is providing tips on running a business, he/she should not be writing about how their life stinks and they’re just hanging on week after week.
9. Do not fill your ezine with a giant laundry list of products that I should buy so you can earn affiliate commissions. Stick to just a couple that you actually use. Otherwise, it seems insincere.
10. If you’re not using a service that does it for you, make sure you process unsubscribe requests immediately.
11. If you are going to share some personal story about your weekend or what you have been up to, that’s great. But PLEASE try to make it relevant to what you’re writing about that week. Figure out a way to tie it into your topic or use it as a lead in to your article.
12. Respect your list. Do not waste subscribers’ time with fluff content and slick sales messages. Provide relevant, timely, and valuable information they can use.

Do you have any tips to add? Stories to share?

For example, when my client Melissa first came to me and asked me to help her figure out why she wasn’t getting the sales results she wanted out of her email marketing efforts, she was shocked to hear my recommended course of action – To STOP focusing on list building.

You see, Melissa had been focusing on steadily growing her list and had grown it to almost 3,400 subscribers. Not only was she was proud of her BIG list, but others were impressed as well, which lead to joint venture invitations, teleseminar guest speaking opportunities, and more.

But, her BIG list wasn’t producing results and her conversion rates were low, which means so were her overall sales.

Luckily Melissa was using an email marketing service provider for her ezine that offered robust tracking tools. Those tools allowed me to analyze previous email campaign reports and her list.

So what was the problem?

Melissa, may have had a BIG list, but her unique open rates and click-throughs were in the toilet. That means less than one-third of her list actually opened the emails she was sending, and of those one-third, even less actually took the time to read the content she was delivering! You see, Melissa had a high quantity list, but it was a low quality list.

My recommendation, and what she ultimately hired Bourn Creative to do for her, was to help her transition from a focus on list building, to a focus on list nurturing. Getting people to join her list wasn’t her problem, but she wasn’t engaging them and nurturing her relationships with her subscribers. She wasn’t connecting.

I told her she needed to STOP focusing on list building and instead start focusing on list nurturing.

By focusing on list nurturing, and making list building a secondary task, Melissa began to build relationships with her readers. She was focused on providing great content for her tribe and helpful, valuable information. Soon saw her conversion rates on email promotions and sales steadily begin to improve.

What do you think? Do you have any thoughts on list size? I’d love to read them!