Increase your sign-ups, conversions and get more customers.
Simon, 29 May 2005

The most efficient and rewarding way of building a profitable mailing list is to offer an incentive to your visitors on your website and capture their details using the GetResponse web form.

"What kind of incentives can I offer on my website?"

If you do not yet have a free incentive on your website, you could be losing business as you are not converting all of your visitors to prospective customers.

There are several ways how you can add a conversion system to your website for higher profitability of your business:

• newsletter sign ups
  
  Running a regular publication by email is a great way of staying in touch with your prospective customers, sharing vital information, building trust and credibility and establishing yourself as an industry expert.
  
  GetResponse offers advanced newsletter hosting features that make it very easy and manageable to run your newsletters, ezines and online publications with our service.
  
  
• free ebook download
  
  Offering an ebook download on your website is an excellent lead generator, as it doesn't require the ongoing maintenance of running a newsletter and creating it is effectively a one-time effort.
  
  Your free ebook could present important information about your industry, sharing useful advice, offering tips, building rapport with your readers and gently plugging your products for future sales.
  
  Creating ebooks is a snap if you have the right ebook software. We highly recommend eBookGold which is used by Internet marketing industry veterans such as Marlon Sanders.
  
  
• software trial download
  
  If you are marketing a software product, consider offering a free trial download that would give your visitors an opportunity to try your software before they buy.
  
  You may also limit the functionality of the trial product, plugging the paid version when the prospective customer attempts to use some of the advanced features.

"How do I maximize my sign-ups, downloads and conversions?"

By signing up for the free incentive, your visitors give you their permission to send more email. In the long term, with the right follow-up email marketing system this will inevitably translate into more into more sales, more customers and higher profits.

Many marketers assume that a simple matter of capturing visitors' information and instantly taking them to "Thank you" page with the download does the trick.

Unfortunately this may produce dismal, as studies show that many people will provide a fake email address instead of the real one just to download the software or ebook. This is bad for your business, as you cannot then follow-up with these prospective customers and convert them to paying customers with the effectiveness and persuasiveness of your sequential marketing system.

"What can I do to combat this behavior?"

Our research shows that you can significantly increase your sales by changing your lead generation system to confirmed opt-in model, where visitors must confirm their intention to subscribe before they download your product.

Here are the steps to maximizing your free downloads to paid customers conversion ratio:

1. Put a GetResponse opt-in form on your website. You can create your own HTML code or use GetResponse's easy Web Form Wizard to choose among different formats and layouts, matching the form to your site's design.
2. Provide clear, compelling benefits as to why the visitor should subscribe to your list. Use the bullet format if possible, as it's proven to be effective.
3. Be upfront with your visitors that the download link will be provided in the email they receive after confirming their intention to subscribe.
4. On the "Thank You" page where your visitors are taken upon submitting the form let your subscribers know that they need to confirm their subscription. Tell them to check to check their inbox and look for a specific Subject line, so that they know what they are looking for. Mention that they need to click on the confirmation link contained in that email to be taken to the download page.
5. You may put the download directly on the subscription confirmation page, which is the page that shows up when the subscriber clicks on the confirmation link. You may configure this page in your GetResponse's account Settings / Confirmed Opt-in / Subscription confirmation page URL.
6. As your prospective customer has already confirmed their email address, you may also send her the download link in your autoresponse message (interval 0).

This strategy ensures maximizes your conversions and increases your profitability by eliminating subscribers signing up using fake email addresses in order to download your product. Even if the subscriber try this, she will quickly discover that the confirmation is needed and chances are that she will re-attempt the process, this time with the correct email address.

Simon Grabowski, CEO of GetResponse, an Implix Company. GetResponse is an opt-in email service provider with over 7 years of managing autoresponders, newsletter hosting and follow-up for small businesses and large corporations.

Learn more: http://www.GetResponse.com

This article has originally appeared on GetResponse Blog.


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