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5 Ways to Grow Your List

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The quality and quantity of your opt-in email list will greatly affect the level of success you, as an internet marketer enjoy. Whilst beginners complain that they can’t get enough people to subscribe to their list, professionals are always looking for ways to refine their lists and improve quality by cutting down on quantity. Whichever approach you take, the bottom line is that you still need to constantly grow and cultivate your list – here are five ways to start building your list today.

Make Your Opt-In Form Highly Visible

Many internet marketers only place their email opt-in form on their homepage, assuming that this is the most popular page on the site. This is a mistake for two reasons – firstly, not everyone will arrive on your website’s home page (they may land on a splash page or a content page) – secondly, only having your opt-in on the home page simply limits its visibility. For these reasons, you should aim to have your opt-in available and highly visible on every page (or at least the majority of pages) of your website.

Provide Something of Value

Too many times, we see different websites offering the same cheesy, low value PLR (Public Label Rights) eBook in return for an opt-in. Whilst you may want to use a PLR product as a base to work from, and perhaps to gain ideas, you really should try creating a freebie that is both unique and that resonates with your site as a whole. By this, I mean, at least ensure that the colour scheme and graphics match up with that of your website. Most importantly though is that you provide something unique and of value. Taking a weekend off to put your own eBook together will pay huge dividends down the line. If you’re not a great writer, hire a ghost writer and provide them with the raw information.

Create Referral Incentives

Create an additional product (eBook, audio recording, etc) that your current subscribers can receive in return for referring three or five friends to your site (or opt-in page). You may want to display this offer upon initial signup (as a sort of up-sell), or promote it in your auto responder series. Either way, make sure its appealing, useful and of high quality. Getting this trick right can equate to a ratio of about 1:1, which means that for every signup, you are assured of another signup free.

Create a Contact Us Add-on

This tactic is particularly powerful, but needs to be implemented ethically. On your contact us form, create a checkbox that reads “Also sign me up for your newsletter” or something similar. What’s important is that you ensure that this checkbox is not checked by default, as that is unethical and will ultimately just lead to a lot of unsubscribes.

Hold a Competition

This is possibly the oldest trick in the direct marketer’s book, but is nonetheless still incredibly effective. Hold a competition with a decent prize (possibly one of your products or services), and allow people to enter by opting in to your competition list. Provided that you market the competition well (and offer a desirable prize), you should receive quite a few opt-ins. When implementing this tactic, consider the average value per lead, and then work out a marketing budget for the competition using that figure.

More than anything else, growing your opt-in list is a long term process. Commit to the process, continually research new ways to grow the list, and have a little patience – All of these traits will pay off in the long term.

Tags: email opt-in form, internet marketing, List Building