Copyright 2005 Sandi Clements

In order to make a success of your website or online business, it is obvious that you will need customers. Although everyone who visits your page will not become a customer, they must have some interest in your product or service that brought them there in the first place and therefore they are a potential customer. Potential customers are much more likely to become actual customers if you make an effort to keep in touch with them. This essential marketing tool is called and opt-in list.

An opt-in list will allow you to keep track of your potential customers by obtaining their email address in order to keep them informed about the latest updates for your product or service. You can create your own opt-in list or you can use an opt-in list creator that is available online from several sources. The benefits of creating your own opt-in list is that you will be able to send personal messages to the potential customers and they will not need to do anything, whereas with commercial opt-in lists, the customer will receive a generated message and will be required to verify their acceptance of the message.

An important part of creating a successful opt-in list is to keep in mind that potential customer will visit your site from many places and may not see your homepage. Therefore it is imperative to have the ability to subscribe to the mailing list from all pages of your site. You should not, however, make the subscription information a focus point of every page. It is a good idea to put it at the bottom or top of the page where it is visible but not distracting. It is also a good idea to promote your mailing list by using a give-away. You could offer a service, a discount, or an ebook. You can also drive potential subscriber to join your mailing list by writing articles that will benefit the reader and at the same time, build your credibly as an expert. You can include the subscription information in the byline of the articles. You could also write an ebook with your subscription information on each page, which will allow the customer to easily access the information and join the list with ease.

Once you have created the mailing list and now have your potential customers within your grasp it is your responsibility to keep them updated and interested. Provide them with quality information that is up-to-date and of interest to them. Offer discounts or a newsletter, something that the reader can use. This will keep them interested and will drive them to your site over and over, eventually they may make a purchase and if not, they will be informed enough to use word of mouth advertising for your site.