Another avenue 95% of Internet Marketers use in order to turn visitors into customers is a mailing list. But how do you go about doing encouraging people to join your mailing list or buy your products?
Opt-in lists allow you to keep in contact with your potential customers by obtaining their email addresses and compiling them with an automated mailer system. With this system your able to stay in contact with them and provide them up to date information on new products and articles. At this point it's a good time to explain that emails that you have not requested to receive from either a company or person is considered spam and is illegal. An opt-in list is not the same as you have been given your customers email address in order to receive updates. It's also a good exercise to ensure a verification email is sent to the customer to ensure that they have indeed requested to be added to the mailing list and their account has not been mis-used in anyway. The last thing you want to happen is for your businesses email address to be considered spam and sent directly to the junk box.
As forementioned on previous pages of this guide that one of the best SEO techniques to employ on your website is content. Remember the phrase"Content is King" and what does that phrase have to do with the current subject? What this means is that chances are you have multiple websites linking off your home page and each one of those pages should be optimized to draw customers and and improve your ranking with Search Engines. What this also means is that you should have an opt-in list for each one of those pages, but you don't want to place it on your website where it overpowers the page itself. It's usually a good idea to put it at bottom of a page or to the side. It's also a good idea to sweeten the prospect of signing up by giving away a free product, service, ebook or discount on a certain product or piece of software. You'll find alot of opt-in lists will provide articles relating to a persons particular interest. Another great way to get customers is to write an ebook where you also provide the ability to subscribe to your mailing list.
Once you have created your mailing list and have a good network of potential customers, it is your responsibility to keep them updated and interested. I've found one of the best ways to turn a potential customer into a customer is to build a trust factor. No doubt you yourself have subscribed to opt-in lists and have received articles which have proven to be useful and interesting. Unfortunately for some owners they have taken this market tool and have used it as a legitimate way to spam people, by bombarding them with product after product. Personally I think this is a stupid practice. Unless you make it known that the potential customer is going to be subscribing to product information then I suggest not using this tactic. I found the best way to turn a potential customer into a customer is to provide them articles on different aspects of the topics they have subscribed for always directing them back to your site. Another method I have used to great effect is sending an update when I have added new content to a website and have provide them with a overview and then direct them to the site itself for a more in depth analysis of the information.
When you start looking for autoresponder software I would highly recommend using icontact.com. Not only is it easy to set up it, they also have some of the best and easiest features to incorporate int your mailing list from confirmation messages, welcome messages and auto responders to mention a few features. One of the best features is it's 15 day trial offer where you can mail upto 250 subscribers on your list. It's definitely one piece of my web business which I highly value and the customer support is excellent. One of the greatest advantages is the fact you can create 5 newsletters, the 1st one goes out immediately once the customer has confirmed their subscription and then you can set it up where the second, third, fourth etc are sent at 7 day intervals. You can also have as many list as you want set up. You can have one for newsletters, products and the latest ebooks. You can also send out broadcasts which are one off emails sent to everyone on that particular list or lists. And the amount of lists you have is unlimited. So lets say you have someone whose only interest is software. You can create a list for that person or people with a similar intrest without bombardihng them with information on ebooks as well. You can then move that person to your list which provides information on ebooks as well at their request and have them subscribed to both lists. With price lists depending on the amount of subscribers it's definately one piece of webware which is geared towards both people just starting with a limited budget to those with thousands of subscibers. icontact.com.
One important point I would like to stress to you is that no-one (and this includes you) wants to be bombarded daily with emails pushing products or software to purchase. Remember that you need to keep a person interested in what you have to offer. You can do this by sending them free articles or writing an ebook on a particular subject with affiliate links to products pertaining to that subject. You then send this to your customer as a free gift and thank them for being part of your mailing list and having an interest in your site.