3 Ways To Collect Email Addresses From Your Visitors

One of the most important keys to success in online
marketing is building your own opt-in list of potential
and prior customers. For those that are just starting
out online, this process should start even before you
start planning to publish your own ezine/newsletter.

As you launch your business you can begin to build your
opt-in list in order to followup with these prospects
and customers. It doesn't have to be a formal ezine
initially, it can just be a once a month update on
new products and services. When your list starts to
increase to a good size then you can consider a
formal ezine.

We started with 300+ email addresses of associates and
customers who we did business with offline. Today our
list has 15,000+ subscribers and is growing steadily.

So how do you capture the addresses. Here are a few
of the standard ways that we capture them:

1. A Web Site Sign Up Form

Place a sign up form on every page of your website. Or at
a minimum have a "subscribe" link on every page that goes
to a separate subscription page. Make sure that you just
don't put "subscribe to our ezine". That means nothing to
me when I see it. Why should I sign up? Just a short
description will greatly increase your subscription rate.
For instance. using "Weekly Marketing Tips and
Techniques emailed to you! Subscribe Today" would be better
than "Subscribe to Our Ezine".

2. Free Information Giveaways

Give something away free like a free report with information
that is geared to your site's content. Ensure that they have
to request the information so you capture their email address.

Use an autoresponder to deliver the information automatically.
There are lots of free autoresponder services out there. That
way the information is available around the clock. With most
good services you will receive a information copy as soon
as someone requests the information and it will have their
email address in it.

But, and this is important, just don't send them the free
information. Make sure that at the end of your autoresponder
text that you send them, there is a short blurb about your
website services/products and your ezine if you have one.
But don't over do it. I like to just keep it to one or
two little ads.

Another important item is that you SHOULD NOT just add
the person's email address to your opt-in list or ezine.
This would make it easy for them to file a SPAM complaint
since they didn't ask to be on your list. Offer them the
ability to get future mailings from you as indicated above
in the mailing itself. You want to create a true opt-in list.

An exception to this would be if you are offering them
a free gift for subscribing to your list. Then they should
be added to your list.

Many will ask - Is it alright to email someone that has
requested some free information report from you? My
position is yes if you do it the right way. I followup
many times with those that request free reports from us.

In using an autoresponder, you likely will be able to
send a number of followups automatically when someone
requests the initial information. Set your messages
up a couple of days apart but insure that you always
make a reference in them about their prior request. For
instance, if they requested your free report on free
we site resources, start the followup messages with
something like:

"Hi, several days ago you requested our free report on
'Free Web Site Resources'. I hope you found the information
useful. I have enclosed some additional information...."

You can customize it for whatever you are sending and
you should change each subsequent message lead-in
appropriately so it makes sense. This way you are reminding
them that they had initially requested the info and that
you are not sending the subsequent message out of the
blue.

3. Use Pop-ups

Many marketers feel that the use of pop-ups irritates
visitors to their site. Well I agree somewhat with that
and I have immediately clicked away from sites and never
looked at the information I was initially interested in.
I have been to some sites where I had to click and close
four or five pop-ups and/or pages before I was even able
to get to the main page that I clicked to. And on top of
that when I closed the site I was hit with three or four
exit popups.

So I would never go to that extent at my own site and
wouldn't suggest that you do it that way or to that extent.

I have a single small pop-up on many of my pages that
offers a free e-book in exchange for a subscription to my
ezine. However, this pop-up coding uses a cookie which
only allows it to pop-up once in 24 hours for that visitor.
So they will see it only once on their visit. When I
installed that particular pop-up our subscriptions had
a noticeable increase.

Those are three of the most common and probably simplest
ways to capture email addresses from your visitors.