If you have a website or a small business online, having customers is the one essential thing you need in order to be prosperous. In order to build a successful business you need to establish loyal customers who will give you repeat business. Once your customers have made a purchase from you or visited your small business website, you need to have a way that you can keep in contact with them in order to establish a business relationship. Using an opt-in list is a great marketing instrument that will help you to keep in touch with your customers.

The main purpose of an opt-in list is to gather the name and email address of possible customers that visit your small business website. After you obtain this information you will be able to keep in touch with them by sending selective information on your services, products, contests, free giveaways, or just some helpful tips that you feel they can benefit from.

The key to a winning opt-in list is getting your customers to sign up. You do this by placing an opt-in form on your website so that visitors can sign up to your mailing list. So where exactly is the best place to put an opt-in form on your small business website to encourage subscriptions? The answer is on every page of your site. No matter what page your customer visits on your website, you want to give them the option of subscribing by using your opt-in form to sign up.

You want to make your opt-in form list visible to the eye, but not a major distraction. It should not be the entire point of your webpage. On your home page a good place to put your opt-in form is in the upper half of the page, either on the left or hand right side, or as a pop up. Some visitors never make it to the bottom of a webpage, so you need to catch them before they leave.

If you have articles on other websites that link to different pages on your website there’s a chance that visitors could enter your site by this method, not starting out at your home page. No matter how or what page visitors land on first, you want them to be able to see the opt-in form. On the sub pages of your website you can place the opt-in form either on the left, right, as links in the page or at the bottom.

Use a pop-up form wisely on the sub pages of your small business website as they can become very annoying for your customers. On other pages of your website, such as your sitemap, you can provide a link to your opt-in form if you like.

Catching the eye of your website visitor can be done with the use of enticement in your opt-in form. Offer a free gift, eBook, contest, or a discount on products to get them to sign up. If you make it so that they can’t wait to get more information from you, the opt- in form will be a sure thing to getting subscriptions for your small business website.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Entrepreneur and outdoor photography adventurer Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating marketing communications materials and writing copy for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Her small business columns are syndicated online, and she publishes the popular e-Zine “Maverick Internet Marketing Secrets.” Learn insider Maverick Marketing secrets you can use immediately to find new customers and increase your sales. Get your FREE subscription at www.SmallBusinessMavericks.com today!

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