This is Part 2 in the Email List Building series, you can find Part 1 here if you haven’t already. In this post I will give you some ideas of stuff you can give away to give people an incentive to sign up for your list. No one will sign up for your list unless they see a benefit of doing so. It’s the age old “What’s in it for me” syndrome. A simple “Sign up for updates” message is not going to cut it.
If I want updates from your site, I’ll pull your RSS feed into my feed reader or I come back to your site when I want to. Anyway, here are some things you can easily give away to get people to want to opt-in to your list. Whatever option you choose, make sure the content is relevant to your target market.
eBook
Think of a topic your target market is interested in and make some form of cornerstone content around it. This can be in the form of an eBook which you give away. The advantage of this approach is you can put up a nice graphic of a book that attracts people to sign up. Writing an eBook is easier than you think, I will recommend this guide from Pat Flynn on how to write eBooks the smart way. You will have to sign up to his list to get the book. This is a great example of offering an eBook to give an incentive.
Free email course.
This is similar to the idea of writing an eBook in the sense that you are delivering good useful content. The difference is that your free email course is delivered over a period of time. With an eBook, your subscriber can get overwhelmed with all the information you provide, but an email course can be broken down into bite-size chunks that is easy to consume. You also build a bond with your subscribers because they get used to receiving valuable content from you early on.
A series of videos
Recording videos is actually easier that writing content. If you have the correct tools, you will actually enjoy editing them. This is why I have chosen to record a video for the next post in the series. So watch out for that.
In a couple of hours, you could have recorded 5 10-minute videos showing a technique that your subscribers would like to know. In terms of bonding, this beats all the other incentive methods because they get to consume your content, hear your voice and if you do more than a screencast, see you all at the same time. His makes the message more personal.
A good resource that will show you how to record, edit and publish screencasts can be found here (Affiliate link). Rob has a series of videos that will help you get up and running in no time.
Free software
There are a lot of open source programs you can give away. Although people can easily download these programs themselves. You can make your offer exclusive by bundling a list of programs into one and write a report on how to install them.
For bloggers, a list of Wordpress plugins that accomplish a certain job would be ideal. You can also buy the extended rights to some Wordpress themes and give that away.
You are only held back by your creativity here, so think of which of these incentives you would like to give to get people on your list. Let me know in the comments which you have chosen or have any other ideas.
The next post in the series will be a video screencast showing you my favourite service which I use to maintain the relationship with my subscribers. Stay tuned.
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