The Engine in Your Business

If you have been around the internet marketing circles for more than a day and a half, then you have heard how "the money is in the list". Then you read about terms such as opt-in, autoresponder and squeeze pages. What's this all about?

Building and maintaining an email list is the most significant activity you can make in your internet business. It's your way of following up with your site visitors, affiliates and your customers. For now let's talk about turning visitors into customers.

In a nutshell, it's about building a database of prospective customers. If you are able to sell 1 to 2% of the visitors that you bring to your website you will be doing well. Of course with testing and tweaking your goal should be more than that. But generally speaking most online marketers consider a 2% visitor to sale conversion ratio very acceptable.

If your visitor to sale conversion rate is 2%, then that means that 98% of your visitors are leaving your site without buying your product. It would almost be a crime to lose that traffic due to not having a strategy for a follow up of any kind.

Perhaps they didn't buy because they had questions or needed further information. Don't count on them emailing you to ask those questions. Yes you have tried to cover everything in your sales letter in regards to your product, but you are bound to run into some questions and/or objections you hadn't considered.

Other folks just need nudged a little bit and they will make the purchase. Perhaps they are the type that needs to "think about it". Maybe they are the analytical type and just need to run the numbers or something. But the fact is, you will never know unless you can follow up with your non-buyers after they leave your site. With effective follow-up you should be able to sell another 1 to 2% of your visitors that signed up to join your list. We refer to the act of joining the list as an "opt-in".

The Tool of the List Building Trade

I am sure you think the thought of building a list makes sense to you, but the act of initiating it all probably sounds a bit intimidating. It doesn't need to be intimidating at all. The tool that you will use to setup and build your list is called an "autoresponder". You can learn more about the technical side of how an autoresponder  (AR) works by reading that section here on the Net Biz Boardroom site.

The process of obtaining a new sign up to your list begins with an 'opt-in box". You can see an opt-in box on the main page of this website. It is what is referred to as an inline opt-in box (form) because it appears on the page.  When the page loads the box loads with it. You can also setup your opt-in box to appear as a pop-up. You will determine how you set it up from within your autoresponder control panel.

Here is a fair warning. Many people can't get by this very important first step in list building. If you want to be successful with your internet marketing business, then you have to overcome this first obstacle, which is setting up an AR. This is one of the more technical aspects of setting up an online business. Be determined and seek the type of help I offer right here on this site and you shouldn't have any trouble. You can do it I promise.

Squeeze Pages

Once you decide to add an opt-in form to your website you will need to decide how you will go about collecting the opt-ins. You have a couple choices. You can add an opt-in box as an element situated on your webpage as I have done here at Net Biz Boardroom, or you can create a "squeeze page".

Placing the opt-in box on your main website page is not a "hard sell' type of situation. I am sending the message to my visitors that I have some great information on this site for you to take a look at, and I also offer a fantastic free guidebook if you are interested. No hard selling there right?

On the other hand a squeeze page is a bit more aggressive in that obtaining the visitors name and email is the only objective of the page. If a visitor is not willing to submit the requested information, then there is nothing for them to do but close the window and move along. If they are not willing to give up their info and opt-in, then they are not allowed to access your sales/information page.

Here is a screenshot of a squeeze page I built as an example;
 

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