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1st Singapore Web
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The Power Of Opt-in Mailing List
After
researching your niche market, you develop a great product or service. You hire
someone to design a professional web site. You follow every tips on how to
write sales copies. You put everything up and start advertising campaign.
Search engine, banner ads, giving
away freebies, link exchange, even press
release. Now you have hundreds of visitors daily.
One further
problem presents itself: you are not making any sales!
Most of
people who reach this point give up and declare "people just
don't buy online".
This is when
most people bury their Internet businesses. Even though they are in
different industries and markets, almost every marketer seems to come to
this crossroad in their online business.
In order to make
money online, you have to keep in mind of this: Real
Business Comes From Opt-in List, not your web site.
More than 95% of
visitors will not buy on their first visit to your web site. The truth is,
most of your customers will have to see your message 7 times before they
buy.
Many people
believe that their main marketing tool is their web site. In fact, your
main marketing tool is your opt-in mailing list. A web site is just a way
of building your mailing list - by collecting the email addresses of your
visitors.
If you want to
be successful online, you must collect visitors' email addresses to follow
up!
This one aspect
of online business is so important that it divides up who has been
successful online and who hasn't. The successful businesses are constantly
developing new ways of collecting information about their prospects or
customers.
Web sites do not
make many sales. Email Follow-up Makes Sales. Ask any
businesses online and you will find that their conversion rate from web site
is horribly low. Most web sites get between 0.05-1% sales rate from their
visitors.
Once you
constantly follow up by email though to the same prospects, you can get
those same percentages up to 0.5-10% conversion rate.
A mailing list
program will help you do that exactly. It allows you to send out messages
to everyone on the list. It should also take care of subscription and
un-subscription automatically. Some more sophisticated programs have other
useful features such as invalid or bounce-back email address handling,
HTML or plain text message option, customization capabilities, etc.
Typically, you
set up a subscription form at your site, a visitor fills up the form and
presses "send", the mailing list service provider or a mailing
list CGI program at your own site will handle the subscription request
automatically. You can log into the list management area to send out
messages whenever you want to.
"Opt-in"
means the subscribers choose, or opt-in, to be included in the list and
therefore give you permission to send them messages. And they can opt-out
anytime if they don't want to receive your messages any more.
As I said, the
best way to make money on the Internet is to build your own opt-in list.
This way you can build relationship and creditability with thousands of
potential customers all over the world.
You have two
options to manage a mailing list: online services who
provide mailing list management or a CGI script running at
your own site. Either could be free.
Online
Mailing List Service Provider
The easiest way
to manage a mailing list is to use an online service. You don't have to
install any script or learn the technical stuff. All you have to do is
signing up for an account and inserting several lines of html code into
your subscription pages. Everything can be then nicely done via your web
browser.
You can log into
your account and view subscribers, add subscribers manually, export or
download subscribers list, and of course, send messages.
There are free
online mailing list services available among them Topica
and Yahoo Groups are very popular.
Both Yahoo Groups and
Topica
are advertising supported - every e-mail sent out includes an ad after the
message. They both provide excellent services for online businesses to
publish ezines and newsletters.
To build a much more professional image for your
business, you may want to use paid
online mailing list services since there will be no others
advertisings in your messages.
BambooBizOnline:
Formerly known as Postmaster Online, gives you 50 autoresponders that automatically follow-up and a complete integrated
email solution for a very low monthly price.
GetResponse:
Provides free, feature-packed, automated, personalizable follow up
autoresponder. The paid version includes so call "broadcast" function which is actually mailing list management system.
Aweber:
Offers feature-packed sequential autoresponders and mailing list management with reasonable monthly payment plans.
Mailing
List Script
If you know how
to install and configure CGI script, there are plenty of choices for you.
Even if you have never tried to install CGI script yet, I would say it's
not difficult at all! Go to this comprehensive CGI
tutorial if you want to learn.
SubscribeMe:
One of the most popular and feature-pack yet user-friendly mailing list script. Its Lite version is free.
Mailloop:
Complete email solution from Corey
Rudl, the most successful online marketer.
There are many
free scripts as well. One of my favorites is Mojo.
It's very easy to use and feature-packed. The only thing I don't like is
that you can't customize subscribers' name in the message body.
Remember, 95% of
visitors will not buy from your web site on their first visit. They won't
even do it on their second visit or contact. To sell the maximum number of
prospects, you must contact them over and over again.
The only way to
do this is to get them to opt-in to an email list.
By
building an opt-in list, you are building the future of your business.
People have invited you to send them information. Your messages are a
constant reminder for people to come back to your web site again and
again.
When they come
back, you have another opportunity to build rapport with your visitors.
You also have another opportunity to sell them your products or services!
Building an
opt-in list does require a whole lot of work and time. But it is an
important step in building a successful online business. It is definitely
worth the work! Add an opt-in list to your web site and you will be well
on your way to building a very valuable asset - a customer list that you
can sell to again and again, year after year!
By the way, please subscribe
to our free newsletter for more promotion tips and
techniques;-) You will also receive 5 online business ebooks and
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Web Site Does Not Sell! as free gifts.
Feel free to use this article in your
publication or web site.
It's pre-licensed to you.
The only requirement is to include this resource box:
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Article by Zac Hewlett at
1stSingaporeWebHosting
Visit http://www.1stSingaporeWebHosting.com
for more
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