There are two steps to converting a prospective subscriber to a customer.
• You need to convert your visitor into a subscriber: you will need to offer an ethical bribe that your potential subscribers will really want. No one will want to join or stay on your list if your ethical bribery is mediocre, available everywhere on the internet, or not targeted at your chosen niche.
• You need to convert your subscriber into a customer. You will need to build a relationship with your list, get them to trust you and your recommendations, and see you as an expert in your chosen niche.
Always follow these tips for better open rates and therefore more conversions:
• Make sure your subscriber can easily identify you as the person who sent the message. You need to set up your autoresponder so that your name appears in the ‘from’ field.
You may want to use both your name and the list name like this: Your name (List Name). Since many people will not recognize just your name, especially if they are new subscribers, including the name of the list can increase open rates.
• In every message you send, address your subscribers by name in both your subject line and your greeting when greeting your subscriber.
• Your subject line should CLEARLY state what the message is about. At the same time, it should spark your subscriber’s interest, highlight a benefit for your subscriber, or better yet, both. The ONLY purpose of your subject line is to convince your subscribers that they want the information within the message and therefore should open it.
• Once your subscribers open your message, they will decide in seconds whether to continue reading or close the email. In order for your subscribers to continue reading your message, greet them by their first name, which will subconsciously make them think that the email is for them specifically.
Follow your greeting with a provocative question or one-sentence statement. The idea here is that you want to provoke their curiosity about what the message contains. Never start your message with a long, boring paragraph.
• Make the body of your message as easy to read as possible. Use short sentences and only two or three sentences per paragraph. Include lots of white space.
Please format your email so that it does not span the entire width of the email. Many marketers think that 65 characters per line is a good number.
Use an easy-to-read font if you’re sending your email in HTML (and you should). A non-sans-serif font like Arial or Verdana is best.
• You may want to include a link to a newsletter or blog post that is full of suggestions. If in your next message, you include a link to something like a great video tutorial, and then the following message also includes a link to something valuable, your subscribers will quickly realize that when they click a link in your message, it is likely that they get something beneficial in return.
They will be more willing to click on the links within your posts and therefore more willing to click on the links in your promotions.
• At the end of your message, tell your subscribers what to expect in the next one. This will make them anticipate and open your future message.
However, if your message is a promotion, include a call to action. TELL your subscribers what you want them to do. This is a vital step that many marketers ignore.
