You've heard many veteran internet marketers and established gurus preach these very words time and time again, and for good reasons at that. It has been established as a fact that most of your sales would come after the 4th to the 8th contact. But before you could ensure that you'll be able to keep in touch with your prospects for such number of times, you'd have to capture their contact details first.



This is accomplished through an opt-in list. An opt-in list, basically, is a system that would allow you to capture the contact details of your visitors. The way it works is that your visitors would be presented the choice to leave their contact details (usually their email addresses) so that you could follow up on them later on. This is the reason why an opt-in list is also called as a follow-up system.

An opt-in list is essential for your online business.

For starters, as we have discussed in the statistics above, most of your sales won't come after the first contact. Your prospects should be given time to warm up to your offer. You'd have to contact them again, and again, and again, to assure them of your credibility and to make them believe that your offer would be truly beneficial for their needs.

Also, they may not be interested with your current offer, but this shouldn't be taken to mean that they won't be interested with what you could come up with in the future. An opt-in list would allow you to contact them for the future deals you will bring to the table.

There is no doubt that a follow-up system, or a mailing list, or an opt-in list, whatever you want to call it, would be very important for your success in the online field.

But the question is: how do you build the same?

I will not sugarcoat any answers. A lot of internet marketers are struggling to acquire subscribers for their mailing lists. They may have been in the business for a couple of years already, yet their mailing lists are composed of only a dozen or so subscribers.

If we are to peg an average, the conversion rate of your mailing list would hover around the range of 1% to 3.5%. Hence, the success of your mailing list would greatly depend on the number of users who would decide to subscribe to the same. If you only have 10, 15 or 20 subscribers, you won't be able to make the most out of this system.

So again, how do you build your mailing list? How will you be able to acquire thousands upon thousands of subscribers at the soonest possible time?

There is only one answer to give. It's not even a secret, as it is quite simple.

Incentive.

Your visitors should be given a reason to sign up with your mailing list. You cannot just expect them to leave their email addresses without receiving anything in return, right? If you were in their shoes, would you even bother to give out your contact details without deriving something from it?

The mistake that most internet marketers make is that they expect people to sign up by simply promising future updates. This isn't enough incentive. People need something more than that, something valuable, something that is very much worth their time. If you will be able to give them such in exchange for their subscription, you'd be able to boost your number of subscribers really fast.

Here are some incentives that are guaranteed to work:

? Ezines or newsletters. Information is always a valuable commodity in the World Wide Web. If you could commit to create and deliver a regular eZine or newsletter for them, you'd be able to win their subscription and eventually their trust. Just make sure that your eZine or newsletter would be of premium quality.

? Freebies. Who would say no to something that is offered for free, right? It may be an eBook, a special report, a PLR product, a software program or another kind of digital item which your prospects could download in exchange for their subscription.

? Contests. You could offer a valuable digital product as a prize for a random drawing, with your prospects? subscriptions serving as their raffle entries.

Any of the suggestions above are sure to make your prospects take notice. And as such, you'd have greater chances of bagging their subscription and building your mailing list to enormously profitable levels.

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