First let me try to give you a little background as to why focusing on creating or expanding your email list is so vitally important to your web business. The first thing is that to have a successful internet business requires traffic (meaning people that visit your site). It doesn’t matter whether you have a blog, a web shop, a forum or any other type of website. The fact is that the more quality traffic you are able to attract to your site, the greater opportunities do you have to convert that traffic into customers/income.

Note that I said “quality traffic”. Traffic come in many forms and traffic from people that will only spend 2 seconds on your site is worthless and will only take up bandwidth. There is absolutely no need to attract that to your site. You would rather have a site with 100 interested visitors that are likely to buy from you than having 1,000 visitors doing the “hit and run routine” on you.

There are many way to attract quality traffic and one of the most basic ways are from searches performed in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. When people come through search engines it is because they have found your site from a search phrase that the search engine found matched your site. That means that this individual will very likely be a “quality visitor” that you can possibly sell something if you can get his or her attention.

Now it is a fact that generating a lot of search engine traffic is a very time consuming task and it can take you months and years to build a site that will gain a decent amount of traffic to provide you with an income worth your while. But what if you were able to multiply this traffic with a factor of 2, 5, 10 or 100 within a few months? Wouldn’t that be something to spend some time on?

The fact is that building an email list does exactly that. You have a visitor that comes by once and unless you somehow get a hold of this person they’ll never ever come back to your site. They’ll be lost forever and that is a petty because they are probably still interested in the topic that your site is about.

Let’s say that you have 100 visitors to your site per day and you are able to catch only 10% percent of their email addresses. That would be 10 (otherwise forever gone) people that you can send an email to and have them re-visit your site. The result will be that the day you send out the email you can potentially have 110 people visit your site.
After one month you would have approximately 300 people on your mailing list, which means that whenever you send out an email where you inspire those people to visit your site, then you can potentially have 400 people visit your site in one day. Going from 100 to 400 people in one day is a 400% increase. Now I do say “potentially” and that is because you can expect everyone you send an email to come visit your site. But you get the idea.

So let us look for more ways to increase the amount of people that you have opt-in to your site.

42 Ways to Build and Maintain an Email List

1. Rent or Buy: You can always rent or buy other people’s email lists. This is one of the fastest ways to increase your list rapidly but it is also one of the most expensive ways and therefore it might not be the right solution for you if you’re just starting out. One disadvantage with these lists are that you can never be 100% sure where they got the email addresses from and that can potentially hurt your image if you’re accused of spamming.

2. Offer Content: Most people will not give their email address away for nothing and that is why offering people content is a great way to collect their emails addresses. You can send them information via email or you can have them download an ebook. You might even send the videos or podcasts if you want to get a bit more technical. Offering content is one of the most commonly used ways to have people opt-in and it works really well.

3. Make It Easy: Place the opt-in form in the most prominently place on your website. It is vitally important that people see it and can act on it with the smallest effort possible. You’ll see that this is one of the things that most internet marketers fail at by either not having their opt-in form present or by having it tucked away in the far bottom corner of the site. Make it stand out in front of your visitor.

4. Privacy: We have all heard stories of people that have signed up for email newsletters only to find themselves being spammed with 10-100 emails a day because the website sold, rented out or gave away their email addresses. People are scared of that happening to them so you have to assure them that you will keep their information safe. The best way is to place a privacy link right next to the opt-in form so that people can click and see that you will play nice. You can also make a statement that “You’ll Keep Their Information Safe” next to the form.

5. Don’t Use Force: Some sites will not let people in unless they give their email information upfront. The result will often be that people click away and they never come back. That is not what we’re looking for. Secondly you don’t want to have people enter too much information. Normally you will do just fine with just the first name and the email address. You can even make the first name optional or remove it completely if you like.

6. Give Away Gifts: This is somewhat like the information you gave in point number 2, but the difference is that this gift should represent some kind of value. It doesn’t have to be a physical gift and you can still use ebooks or other content as a gift, but if you attach a value to it (e.g. $9.95) it’ll change from being information to being a gift.

7. Send to Friends: Make sure you place an option to pass the email or the offer on to a friend. This is also called viral marketing (in a light form) and if you are passing on valuable information this can truly spread like wildfire. Be sure not to underestimate this little tool.

8. Multiple Choices: When you’re asking people to opt-in, you can have a greater percentage of people opt-in, if you offer more than one thing. Some people might be interested in receiving the free ebook, while other might want to receive the podcast or the newsletter. Multiple offers will appeal to more people and thereby have more people opt-in.

9. People That Know You: If you didn’t think of having an opt-in form on your site from the beginning then why not call or write to the people that have already bought something from you and ask them whether they would be interested in receiving your free newsletter. These people already know and trust you and most of them would therefore be likely to accept your offer.

10. Have an Opt-In Form on Every Page: This goes along with point #3 but it is vitally important that you have an opt-in form on every page of your site. Your visitor will probably not enter your site through the main page anyway so don’t miss out on the opportunity to collect email addresses from visitors entering through a backdoor.

11. Show Samples: If you’re sending out newsletters then why not show the visitor what previous version of the newsletter looks like. This will not only work as valuable content on your site but it’ll also show the visitor what they’ll get and if your information is great they’ll be more inclined to opt-in.

12. Show Testimonials: Have you had people from your mailing list write you back with testimonials saying that the value the information that you have sent them? If you have then why not show them to the people that haven’t signed up yet? There is nothing that converts as well as great testimonials from other “regular” people.

13. Archived Newsletters: Be sure to archive your previous newsletters on your website because they work as great and valuable content and will bring in more visitors from the search engines and that will in return result in even more people signing up.

14. Use Adwords: You can pay for traffic using Google Adwords. Whether you’re using Adwords to send people to your sales page or whether you are sending them directly to a squeeze page (that is a fancy word for opt-in form), you should be sure to provide them with the option of opt-in.

15. Snail Mail and Catalogs: Be sure to also let people that receive your printed marketing material see that you have an option for them to receive free information or ebooks from you.

16. Leverage: If you have people working for you, make sure that they include a “sign up for our newsletter” in their email signature.

17. Phone Opt-in: Whenever you (or your employees) call a (potential) customer, make sure to ask whether they would want to receive your free newsletter.

18. Send Out Postcards: If you have postal information on your customers (but no email addresses), then you can send them a well designed postcard asking them to sign up to your list.

19. Hand Outs: Whenever you are at an event (presentations, talk shows, seminars) make sure to hand out material that mention your newsletter and other free information offers that people can sign up to receive.

20. Transaction Emails: Even when sending out order confirmation emails or any other auto-generated email, be sure to include a passage about how to sign up for your newsletter.

21. Invoices: Even invoices that are sent out should include a passage about signing up to your newsletter.

22. Warranty and Product Registration: Like with the invoices even these hardcopy materials should include a passage about your free information offer.

23. Article Marketing: If you’re doing article marketing (which you should), then make sure to also let people know how to sign up for your free newsletter in the “authors box” of the article.

24. Press Releases: As with article marketing you should include your opt-in offer in any press releases that you send out.

25. Plug The Hole: If you find that a lot of people are leaving your newsletter then you need to find out what is wrong. Some people will always leave but if too many are leaving you need to find out why so that you can plug the hole. It is stupid to fill more water into the bucket without repairing the hole and hope for the water to stay in.

26. Let People Change Their Information: People change email addresses over time and it is therefore important that you provide them with an easy way to change their email address and stay on your newsletter.

27. Don’t Slam the Door on Opt-Outs (1): When people opt-out of your list, make sure to send them a good bye and thank you email. In the email you should offer people to receive fewer emails from you and even let them decide the timeframe. Maybe two to three times a week was too much for the so why not suggesting a weekly or bi-weekly alternative?

28. Don’t Slam the Door on Opt-Outs (2): Let people change the type of information that they receive from you. Maybe they are sick of all your promotional offers and they only want the weekly newsletter. Let them have that option.

29. Don’t Slam the Door on Opt-Outs (3): Make a list of all the ways that people can receive your information. If they don’t like emails then suggest that they subscribe to your RSS feed, your podcasts or IM deals. You might even suggest them to receive old fashioned catalogs by mail.

30. Don’t Slam the Door on Opt-Outs (4): Tell them how they can change their information easily as some of the people that opt-out are actually only trying to change their information. Provide them with a direct link (no password) to the page where their personal information is already filled out so that they can update with just a few clicks. Make sure to remove all thinkable barriers.

31. Don’t Slam the Door on Opt-Outs (5): Be sure to include double opt-out as well as you use the double opt-in. In the opt-out confirmation email, be sure to include a link to re-opt-in in case they unsubscribed by mistake.

32. Don’t Slam the Door on Opt-Outs (6): Ask why they are leaving and use the feedback to improve. Most marketers don’t take opt-outs very well but you need to see it as valuable feedback that you can learn from to keep even more people on your list.

33. Use Co-Registration: Another way to increase the number of people that opt-in is by using co-registration. This can be done by having people opt-in when they subscribe to other sites. Your opt-in information will be placed on the other site. You can enter into a partnership where their users have an option to sign up with you and your users have an option to sign up with them. Another option is to simply pay per email. Be sure that they use and “un-checked” option so that people have actually chosen to opt-in by choice.

34. Use Pop-Ups, Hover Ads and Pops When Leaving: Pop-ups and Hover Ads have been around for some time now and though most people hate them, they have proven to be extremely effective when done right. They have increased opt-in ratios by several hundred percent in some cases. If you don’t want to bother your visitor with them, then what not use a pop-up when the visitor leaves your site? They might be gone forever but you’ll just add that one extra change to capture their email address.

35. Use Out-of-Office Emails: Whenever you are out of your office make sure that your OOO email contains a message about how people can sign up for your newsletter.

36. Opt-In Through the Shopping Cart: Make sure that your shopping cart let people subscribe easily to your newsletter before leaving.

37. Voice Mail: If you use a voice mail, be sure to mention how people can sign up to receive your free newsletter.

38. Signatures: If you are posting comments in forums, news groups or blogs, be sure to include a link to your opt-in form with a compelling offer for people to actually click the link.

39. Use Radio and TV: If you are using radio broadcasts and TV spots, make sure that you mention how to opt-in to receive free information.

40. Yearly Updates: Every six to twelve months you can send out emails with user data to ensure that everything is updated.

41. Link to Other Newsletters: Don’t be afraid to link to other valuable newsletters that would interest your subscribers. They will be glad that you did and will share your newsletters with other people not currently on your list.

42. Have a Webinar: If you’re in a business where an online based seminar would be appropriate you can have users sign up to it in order to participate. At the same time you should encourage them to opt-in to your newsletter.

There are even more ways than these 42 ways to build and maintain an email list but I think you’ll have enough work on your hand for now. If you need more inspiration be sure to check out this post.

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