How to Create an Effective Free Opt-in Offer

Getting traffic to your site is great, but what do you do when half of the traffic leaves without purchasing or leaving any trace they were there? Here’s where an opt-in offer comes into play. An opt-in offer will grow your email list and continuously generate profits. The tricky part is convincing someone to give you their email.

The most important things to keep in mind when designing your opt-in offer are:

• What’s in it for them?

• What message will resonate with my audience?

• What plan do I have to ultimately convert them into a customer?

When you ask for someone’s email, offer them something valuable for their information. It’s a must! Offer a resource that has significant enough value to be a good “trade” for their email address.  As well, be upfront about what your subscriber can expect once they give you their email address. How many time will they get an email each week?  Tell them what they will receive and it’ll greatly improve your chances of getting their information.

There is a multitude of different offers to use for the opt-in offer incentive including:

• Coupon Code

• Webinar Content

• Educational information i.e.- video tutorial

• E-Book Download

• Contest Entry

• Exclusive offers

Another method to consider is to get an email address and other information with a loyalty points program.

Starbucks is a perfect example of great customer retention through a loyalty program that allows people to earn stars every time they make a purchase. Customers redeem their stars for free drinks, food, and products.If you offer people incentives to create an account and recurring incentives for goal completions, they’ll be 10 times more likely to return.

Once you’ve established your offer, the next step is deciding what to do once you get the email address.

This is the time to make your company’s message stand out from the emails that fill people’s inbox daily. Choose your message and how you want to deliver it, then design your email to display your message engagingly.

We hate to break it to you, but not all emails get read!  If you can get a 35% open rate on your emails you are doing well.  That’s why you need an offer that helps you gain a volume of new subscribers.

Your main message must pop off your email right away.  The subject line often makes or breaks whether the email is read.

So now that you have your email list and message, you need to think about how to get them back to your site.

Your emails should have easy to read call to actions that will bring people back to your website. Offer a promo, show a new product offering, or include an excerpt from a blog that requires people to go back to your site to continue reading. Offer your subscribers solutions to their problems or something entertaining. Make your contact list look forward to your emails and you will see your conversions rise.

There is proven growth in email marketing you just need to be creative to stand out among the millions of opt-in offers.

Your best bet in creating a successful opt-in offer is to get into the minds of your ideal customers. What do they want to know? What would make them give you their information? Answer that and your opt-in offer will do the lead generation for you.