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Capturing Opt-In Subscribers
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Opt-in email has become highly popularized recently in response
to the spam backlash generated by so-called "direct marketing"
campaigns.

The idea is simple: if people give their permission for you to
send them email, it cannot be considered spam. It takes time to
build up base of opt-in subscribers, but every single name you
add is one more person who can be contacted over and over again,
so you can build a real relationship with them.

To help you out, I've compiled this lit of tips on how to capture
and retain opt-in subscribers:

1. Run a good publication with real, interesting content. Don't
just offer a "site newsletter" that hypes your own products and
little else. People will read valuable information they can
actually use, or compelling content that actually interests them.
They will not read blatant sales pitches.

2. You must automate everything! Messing around with manual
additions and removals from your list can waste an incredible
amount of time that is better spent elsewhere. If you don't have
techies to setup your own opt-in subscriber management, consider
outsourcing your list to somewhere like http://www.listbot.com,
or http://www.egroups.com.

3. Establish a privacy policy and make sure every potential
subscriber knows that you are a fanatic when it comes to
protecting their privacy. For help with this, visit
http://www.truste.org.

4. Establish a mix of your own original content and high quality
content from other authors. Web-Source runs a great mailing
list where articles get submitted to potential publishers (see
http://www.web-source.net/). You can easily scoop up excellent
articles for inclusion in your publication to spice things up.
This helps put some real meat in your publication without taking
too much of your own time.

5. Let them opt-out! Don't hide your unsubscribe info in hopes
of retaining those who want to leave. It's horribly annoying and
will cost you subscribers in the long run.

6. Offer them something for subscribing. In some ways it's a
tired old ploy, but it still works like a charm. It could be a
free sample of your services, a free article or tutorial, etc.
Or failing all else, there are several free ebooks floating
around that can be freely redistributed. Check out
http://www.web-source.net/free_ebooks.htm.

7. Make it super-easy to sign up. Don't present a large form
asking for their age and shoe size. People hate filling out
forms, and will not take the time to help you invade their
privacy. The ultimate way to do this is with a small box on the
front page of your site that simply describes your publication in
a few sentences, and has a single text box asking for their
address. For an example of this, see the front page of
http://www.babblebot.com.

8. Confirm their addresses in some way. People make an enormous
number of typos and this can fill your subscription list with
dead addresses, wasting your time and your ISP's bandwidth. List
managers like ListBot and Egroups will do this for you.

9. Show them a sample of your publication, and make sure it's the
best issue you've ever produced. Compel them to subscribe. Make
it so enticing that they cannot afford to pass up the
opportunity. For more info on how to pitch this sort of thing,
just visit http://www.babblebot.com/ezine/ezine.html and see if
you can resist. I dare you!

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About the author:
Darcy MacDonald operates Babblebot, an excellent new site
dedicated to search engine submission, ranking, and
optimization services.

To find out how you can use the new doorway page
generator to get a top ranking position in all the major
search engines, visit http://www.babblebot.com today!
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