List building seems to be the core of internet marketing these days. Everywhere you go, people will tell you just how much of an impact a list can do for your business. And this saying is actually an understatement. Perhaps the biggest discovery to modern marketing is the use of an email list to market a product. However, email marketing in itself is not an easy task. The biggest problem one will have to face when building a list is definitely going to be how can you get more subscribers into your list?
While many will answer this question by saying how much you need to get the right traffic to your landing page that gives away an incentive or gift in exchange for an email list, one must actually look deeper into the fundamentals of list building. And to do that you must learn to think like a potential subscriber. Only when you can understand how a typical subscriber think and full understanding the entire thought process that a potential subscriber has to face before actually deciding to join your email list… will you be able to tweak your campaign for a great improvement.
Less is more.
The first thing that you need to understand when it comes to a landing page is that less is more these days. In the olden days, marketers will try to cram a lot of information into their landing page. You will see countless bullet points and benefits being listed out on a landing page. Not only that you might even see some marketers asking for a lot of information from the visitor in order to get subscribed. It is not surprising to see some old school landing page that has a video and a lot of text on it which almost make it seem like a mini sales letter.
All of that has to change because people are very busy these days and they do not have the time to go through all your materials just to get a freebie. What you need to do is to just place a powerful headline, a call to action, your most important benefit and then a quick opt-in form. The shorter and more precise your landing page is, the more people will start noticing you. Imagine landing on a page that is full of information. Not only is it very overwhelming, it can also frustrate some of your visitors and thus causing them to leave your landing page as soon as they land on it.
However, if your visitor lands on a simple landing page with a nice picture of you or your product and a quick promise to give it to them free, they will not be intimidated and instead if indeed they are interested in your incentive, they will actually give you their contact information in exchange for your gift.
Landing Pages and gifts.
Now when it comes to your landing page, we now know that we should always try to keep things simple. There are however some elements that you will absolutely need to have on your landing page. One of it is the ‘we hate spam as much as you do’ disclaimer and a little logo of the can-spam act should be placed near your opt-in form. Note that this is the industry standard to help the public battle spam and also it will help reduce the fear of getting spammed if they were to join your mailing list.
By telling your subscribers before they actually join and ensure that you will not spam them, you will see a significant increase to your opt-in rate. The next thing you want to do in order to improve your opt-in rate is that you need to make sure that your incentive or gift that you’ve prepared really matter to your target market. A lame or junk product will never get you the kind of response that you hope for. Instead make sure you are giving away gold. You’ll be surprised at just how much more response you will get with the same amount of traffic.
For example, if you are in the fishing niche, you can’t expect a good response if you are giving away an ebook that says ‘A-Z types of fish’. Instead show them your skills in fishing and send them a gift that says ‘How to fish like a pro in 7 days’. Now that is by no means a very strong title yet… but you should get the point.
The more the merrier
One of the psychological tactic you can use to improve your opt-in rate and get more subscribers is to actually get them to think that other people are doing the same thing. Hence you can use a headline that says ‘Thousands of others have downloaded this…’ or use a social button that shows all the likes from people who already downloaded your gift.
Another way to get people to see just how many other people are getting this gift from you is to actually use a download counter to show how many people before them have downloaded your gift. What this do psychologically is to show your subscribers that they are not making a mistake to join your mailing list because other people are doing the same thing as well. Humans hate to be left out so they will try their best to do what others are doing especially if they do not have the time to do all the research for themselves.
Facing objections early.
Lastly but not least, you should always try to think in the shoes of your subscribers. What could be the possible objections that they will be facing when they are on your landing page? List them all out and then address them in a point form on your landing page. But be sure to keep it short because you do not want to place too much stuff on your landing page anyway. If you can clear all their doubts in their mind you should then see a huge surge in your subscribers list very soon.
