Building Your Mailing List with Downloads
Did you know your mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business?
Well hell yeah! you say 
The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough. If you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you’ll be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.
Statistically, you have a better chance of making a sale to an existing customer, than trying to sell to someone who hasn’t brought before.
You can build a targeted list of prospects who are interested in your products by offering them a relevant download on your website.
To give you an example, let’s take a look at apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via — guess where — iTunes!
In reality, you don’t need to offer such a “heavyweight” downloads such as full-feature software like iTunes - you can attract prospects just as well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.
However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You’ll have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.
First, place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!
You’ll need to put some effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the benefits of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the hard disk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.
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