Listbuilding—Leading Them to the Opt In

If you’re having trouble with your listbuilding but think you’re doing everything right, it’s a good time to look at the copy on your website.  You may have a gazillion friends and followers on the social media sites; you may have an awesome freebie; you may even have top rank on the search engines; but if your copy isn’t pulling the viewers to the opt-in, it’s just a waste of time.  Here are some ideas about how to fix that.

Motivating Your Traffic to Opt In

How is your copy motivating your traffic to opt in?  No one is going to give out their e-mail address willingly without some convincing.  How much time do you spend talking about yourself?  How much are you relating to their problems?  How much are you promoting the product?  These are the primary questions to ask when evaluating your copy.

Selling Yourself Too Much and Not Enough

While an appreciable amount of your copy should be spent selling yourself, it’s easy to overdo it, and altogether too easy to not do it enough.  You should be able to do this in a couple paragraphs.  Emphasize that you’re now an authority in your niche.  Convince them that you know what you’re talking about and move on.  Just don’t spend too much time talking about your Ferrari, your “ginormous” house, and so on when a picture or two can convey that.  Windbags aren’t well-liked by clients!

The bulk of your message should be spent on the problems that brought them to your site to begin with.  What you should say depends largely on your niche, but ultimately you should connect with your viewer.  Use current events such as the current economy, crime rates, how much it sucks having a day job, how hard housecleaning is, whatever.  Say things along the line of “I had this problem until I found this product,” and you’ll get a better response than if you just said, “Here’s the opt-in.”

Having a Strong Call to Action

The problem fixation in your copy should build up into a call to action.  This is where you start screaming, “Had enough of these problems?  Find out how to end them here!” and show them to the opt-in.  If they continue down the page, offer them a freebie and again show them to the opt-in.

The point of all this railing in your copy is to show your sympathy to the reader, and let them know that the solution is just on the other side of the opt-in.  They may or may not buy the product once they’re through but that’s okay.  They’re now on your mailing list.

Now that you have them on your mailing list, you have to be able to keep them on it.  Rule number one is that you don’t overwhelm them with spammy offers.  You can send e-mails to them about the current product if you want to, but this can get irritating.  If they didn’t buy it in the first place, offer them other products that are similar to the one they almost bought.  You’ll have a better chance at getting your commission this way, and as long as they’re on your list, you can keep pointing them to products you are promoting.