Sending messages and information to people who have given permission for you to contact them is a great way to build the kind of relationships that foster a steady stream of targeted website traffic to your website, and significantly increase website traffic and your online sales!

All online businesses can benefit from having a choice of niche mailing list of some sort! Opt-in email lists generally fall into 4 different types of categories.

     1. New Content Notification – You’ve probably seen sites that offer to notify you whenever they have updated their information, products or content. To tell you the truth, this is probably the least effective type of contact list, simply because most people do not register. Instead, they just bookmark your website thinking they’ll visit it again at a later date – but do not count on it. Of course, there are certain types of sites that can benefit from this type of list. For example, if you have a site that organizes contests, you may offer to notify people whenever you start a new competition.

     2. Free Report – Another type of contact list building is offering a free report or a series of reports. However, be careful with this. By offering a free report, you are limiting the number of times you can mail your list. This is not a good idea to capture the names and email addresses, then bombarded everyone with a steady stream of sales material after they were only expecting one or two reports. This would be considered spam! If you offer a free report, your report should contain “real” information and a reason to visit your site again.

     3. Updates on resources – You may offer to your subscribers an update on various topics or resources that you are covering on your website. For example, if you’re in the real estate business, you can send people a list of current mortgage rates for 10 or 20 financial institutions. You can send this information as often as you like, such as once a week, once a month, or whenever there are significant changes in rates.

     4. Free E-zine or Newsletter – A great way to build an opt-in list is offering a free subscription to an email newsletter or e-zine. The newsletters are a great way to regularly remind your subscribers about your website and products in order to increase website traffic. When writing a newsletter that contains a copy, which is both informative and compelling, you draw subscribers to your site again and again! Having an e-zine or Newsletter is one of the best ways to build credibility and relationships with your readers and customers. If you understand the value of “customer for life”, then you know exactly how powerful your e-zine or newsletter can be and will be your best resource to increase targeted website traffic!

Once you determine the type of contact list you would like to have, you need to get it all automated. Why? Because one of the secrets of running a successful online business is automating much of the work routine as you can!

      * On your website, put a simple opt-in box designed to capture names of people and email addresses. This information will be sent to your email address so you can add to your database. You may also use an auto responder, this I highly recommend you do, to automate your list building and to store your contact information of your subscribers. All Auto Responders will give you a piece of code to put on your website to capture this contact information.

      * When people sign-up, they should immediately be sent a confirmation email using your auto responder. In this email, they should be reminded that they have signed up to your newsletter and have asked to be on your contact list. Let them know how to unsubscribe (this information should also be in every email you send). Reiterate the benefits of them being able to participate in your opt in list. Let them know how often you will be contacting them with new information – will it be once daily, once a month, or only when there is something new to report? You should also confirm that you will not sell or let anyone else use their contact information.

      * A good auto responder software will subscribe and unsubscribe people from your list automatically. It will take the contact information sent to you and add it to a No Contact list or delete it from your database entirely. Doing this manually can quickly become overwhelming – particularly when your subscriber list starts to grow! These are the kinds of tasks you want to be automated – the time it would take you to do all this manually would be better spent on other things like website promotion and increasing website traffic!

Once you have set up your contact list software, and it is all automated, you can concentrate on what you are going to be sending to your subscribers. Your subscribers have opted in to your newsletter for a reason. You made promises, it is now time to follow through on those promises.

      * Your message, your report, or electronic publication / Newsletter should be content rich and very informative.

      * There should be a close relationship with the theme of your website and what your audience is interested in and should contribute in some way to the needs of your subscribers!

      * The information must be timely and relevant.

      * And it should also attract people to your website!

By building an opt-in list, which is building the future of your business. Your messages are a constant reminder to get people back to your site and visit again and again.

When they return, you have yet another chance to establish a relationship with your visitors. You also have another chance to sell your main or backend products!

Now, I’m not going to try to say that building an opt-in list does not require a lot of work, because quite frankly, Yes it does! But it is an important part to building a successful long term online business and it definitely is worth all the work involved! Add an opt-in list box for your site and you’ll be well on your way to building a valuable asset – a customer list that can be used to sell your products to over and over again, year after year and a quick way to increase targeted website traffic!

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