It seems that practically every webmaster understands (or has at least heard) that email marketing is important. The problem is, too many webmasters just stick an email newsletter signup form on their website and figure that they’ve got email marketing taken care of. Nothing could be further from the truth.

An email marketing campaign needs to be carefully planned, setup and optimized for maximum performance. There are many aspects of an email marketing campaign that need your serious attention – opt-ins, messages, deliverability, open rates, etc. This article will just cover one important aspect: email opt-in rate.

In this article, I want to cover three keys to a high opt-in rate that every email marketer should constantly work to improve. (For the purposes of this article, it does not really matter if your campaign is primarily a newsletter or autoresponder.)

Key #1: The Offer

The first step to maximize email opt-ins is to offer website visitors a strong value in exchange for subscribing. In most cases, just offering a newsletter is not a strong enough offer – you need something with a much higher perceived value.

One of the best offers is to give a free ebook or whitepaper to subscribers. It does not have to be extensive – oftentimes a 5-10 page ebook that is filled with solid, valuable information will work very well. Make sure that the free gift that you offer subscribers will be appealing and offer value to each segment of traffic that visits your website (or as many of the segments as possible).

An example of a free ebook offer:

(Note how the free ebook in this case is actually relatively promotional in nature. In small, product-focused niches, this strategy often works well. In other markets, you’ll usually need to offer a more educational ebook.)

Key #2: The Opt-in Form

The opt-in form on your website should be crafted and optimized to convert as many visitors as possible into subscribers. The form should be:

• Prominent – Place the opt-in form above the fold on your website and ensure that it is easy to see. You should split test various locations, colors, and designs.
• Compelling – Typically, you will have a small space to present your offer and opt-in form. Take the time to craft compelling copy for your opt-in form. Split-test different headlines, images, submit button texts, etc.
• Easy – Make sure it is as easy as possible for visitors to opt-in. Do not ask for more fields than you need (usually just name and email address should be enough) and make sure each aspect of the opt-in form is easy to understand and use.

Example of a poor opt-in form:

Examples of strong opt-in forms:

Key #3: Getting Your Subscribers To Double-Opt

Note: If you aren’t already, you should be requiring subscribers double-opt in. (We’ll just assume that you are for the rest of this article.)

It is essential that you optimize your double opt-in process, since a poorly constructed process can “leak” a substantial number of subscribers. A well-constructed double opt-in process, though, could reasonably get 70-80% of subscribers to complete the opt-in. (While losing 20 to 30% of subscribers may sound bad, realize that a substantial portion of those are probably users who mistyped their email or intentionally submitted an incorrect e-mail.)

Here are several factors you should look at to improve your confirmed opt-in rate:

• Thank you page – the page that subscribers see after completing the single opt-in is pivotal. This page should make it blindingly clear that the opt-in process is not completed, and that they need to check their e-mail to complete the process and receive their free gift.Example of a strong than you page header: “Important: Please check your email for your confirmation message”
• Confirmation email – make sure that the subject line of the double-opt in email makes it very clear that the user’s response is required for them to get the free gift that they requested. In the body of the email, make it clear that the user will be able to instantly download the free gift as soon as they click the confirmation link.Example of a strong confirmation message subject: “Response Required: Please confirm your ebook download request – _______”
• Deliverability – it’s a factor that is easy to forget, but make sure that your confirmation emails are being delivered and that they’re not being caught by spam filters. An easy way to check this is to signup for your list using several free email addresses from the top providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) and test deliverability yourself.

Summary

Achieving a high email opt-in rate is the starting point for a successful email marketing strategy. Hopefully the tips outlined in this article help you as you continually work to increase your email opt-in rate.

About The Author

Adam J Thompson is Senior Partner at RYP Marketing, providing search engine marketing, conversion rate optimization, and online marketing results to clients around the globe since 2006. You can follow Adam on RYP Marketing’s Facebook page.

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I find myself often on the hunt for that one great link. Many people simply do not realize the impact one text link could have on your website, its natural search ranking, and trust and authority of your website as viewed by the search engines.

People = potential text links

Wherever I am around people — community functions, industry events, sporting events, ANYWHERE pretty much—a constant thought is “Hmm, I wonder if this person could help me get a link, or do they know someone who can help me get a link.” It is unfortunate but Matt Cutts is right: the best links are not bought or sold or gained by email spam. They are ones you network long and hard to get, and they are not easily accessible.

Pardon me for a moment to clarify:  we all know that one link is not going to make your website the next Amazon.com.  But what this one great link can do is make everything else you have done to your website become much more important.  If you get the one great link you have been looking, for guess what happens? Every other link to your site typically becomes more valuable, every updated title tag on your website becomes that much more relevant, those hours of perfecting your internal link structure all seems to be coming together.

How to find the perfect link

These great links are not easy to find, even a creative full time link builder like myself can typically only produce a few of these per month, and this includes 12 years of experience, and 12 years of relationships. The average webmaster might only find one link like this per year!  Some webmasters  pass up link opportunities because usually it comes with a bunch of red tape, prerequisites and potentially gift giving to obtain it, so they procrastinate and just say no way. (And if you run across one of these great links and aren’t going to jump through the hoops to get it, email me, I will take it. )

However the value can be supreme: I have personally seen one link take a website in a somewhat competitive niche to number one after being in place for a period of 120 days. I’m not saying there’s a magic bullet, but the effects of your hard link building work pay off when powerful links come into place. Also this link continues to pay dividends as it grows more important over time.

You probably now want to know what this great text link looks like, so when it comes around you will be prepared to grab it. It will be from a website that has been online since the late 80’s usually around 1986-1988. It will have a minimum of a Google Tool Bar Page Rank of 7 but typically the great ones are PR8’s +.  It will be in the top 5000 in Alexa Ranking and have VERY few external links. As for backlinks, it should have so many that no one could possibly count, but if you do a link:www.thegreatsitelocation.com you will see Google showing somewhere in the 10K range and in Yahoo you will see 250K plus.

It may not be on a directly related website, as I am sure there are not many PR8 websites on the net selling baby strollers, but you can work around this when it comes to a fantastic link.  These are not the only prerequisites of course, you’ll need your own intuition built from your own link building experience, and I usually have a gut feeling when I find one. What any SEO will fully agree on is a link that fits this profile is very valuable and if you are serious about your internet marketing, then you better get out your check book or your scissors (so you can cut through all the red tape that is going to be involved) and get this link.

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Ask yourself, why are there so many wannabes in the SEO industry and why do they appear to be a brainless army of zombies dwelling in the realm of repetitive and low value activity.

Think about all the blog commenting, forum signatures, cheap and fluffy article distribution, countless  directories and paid reviews. The answer could be in the fact that a lot of these processes seem very easy to replicate.

Let’s look at online directories. There used to be a few, fairly well moderated, carrying a reasonable link value. Naturally some genius thought –

‘ Hey, why don’t we make more directories and give ourselves more links!? ‘

Soon after that, link directories were popping up like mushrooms after rain. What did search engines do next? Devalue! Great. Thanks guys.

The above mentioned scenario replicated in countless other cases, and all of them exhibited one common element – they were easy to do, and easy to replicate.

Let’s face it, there is no long-term shortcut to easy SEO results. Instead, we can hope occasionally catch a wave of a new strategy that search engines have not caught on yet, or we can choose to do it the other way – the hard way. The reason this strategy is worth adopting is the fact that people are lazy and only true professionals will bother with hard work and high quality. By eliminating about a ninety percent of spammers leaves us with true SEO professionals. Wouldn’t you want to belong to that category? The crop of the cream!

What is involved with creative link building?

1. Brain. Those creative cells in your brain will have to spark up and you will have to invent a new solution for every new client, scenario or situation.
2. Uniqueness. You cannot afford to think in the way of automation, replication, there can be no shortcuts. Think about the unique approach for each webmaster or content manager you are about to approach.
3. Personalization. Connect to people you wish to get links from on a personal level and try to understand what they do, what their motivations are for publishing content online. A retired general will not be interested in a $100.00 per link per month deal, but he might give it to you for free if he knows you’ve read his book or donated to the charity he is a member of.
4. Time. You will have to spend time getting that link, there is just no way around it. Be prepared to carefully plan your approach and execute it in an appropriate fashion. Your clients will push you for rankings, but you cannot push a webmaster for a link.
5. Contribute. Be generous, get involved, help and give without asking for anything in return. People will recognise your efforts and offer to assist you on their own, try to find a solution that will compliment both your efforts and their content or mission.

These are just a few key elements that characterize a unique link building strategy and all of them result in contributing to the quality of the web content. Not all links are difficult to get this way, at Dejan SEO we’ve been using these methods to stay ahead of the competition and it has paid off.

It’s not only our clients who benefit here but also our staff who are able to bypass the monotony of link building and enjoy their daily tasks knowing that every next day brings a new challenge.

Please comment on this post by sharing your creative building strategy or experience with other readers. Share this post http://bit.ly/TJV6g

This is a Li’l Engine guest post by Dejan Petrovic of Dejan SEO – Follow Dejan on Twitter if you like to get more tips on link building strategies.

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