What’s the main reason for people unsubscribing from your email list? Hint: it’s not offensive emails, and it’s not too much clutter in their email inbox.

The real culprit, according to research by MarketingSherpa, is… irrelevance.

eMarketer reports that for the first time since tracking began in 1945, both U.S. spending on direct mail and the volume of direct mail sent have dropped.

Direct mail spending dropped from $58.4 billion in 2007 to $56.7 billion in 2008. The Winterberry Group predicts spending to decline by another 8 to 9 percent in 2009.

Based on hundreds of case studies, MarketingSherpa has compiled a list of 10 proven, low-cost tactics to increase the size of your email optin list.

MarketingSherpa explains each tactic in detail in its article (free registration required). In the meantime, here’s a summary of the 10 tactics it lists for increasing your email optin list:

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The other day a valued client asked me what I thought of safelists. Funnily enough, the question came at a time when I’d just come to the uneasy conclusion that I must be on someone’s safelist.

Why else would I be constantly be bombarded with promotions from Internet marketers I don’t recognize… and certainly haven’t opted in with or bought from. (Actually there are other explanations, but let’s go with the safelist…)

Now, to some extent, being on a safelist is my problem as an email recipient. But it’s also a problem for the Internet marketers sending out all these emails. Put it this way, if someone has added me to a safelist… and I don’t read any of the emails being sent to me… how many other subscribers are in the same situation? How many other people have been added to a safelist without any interest whatsoever in receiving the various promotional emails being sent to them?

And how many marketers are sending emails to these lists – perhaps having paid for the privilege expecting a decent response, and getting negligible results?

I think we all know the answer.

Perhaps safelists are cost-effective for some marketers. If you’ve had good results from them, please click on the ‘Click here to comment’ link below and let us know why and how they’ve work for you.

Otherwise, I recommend you think carefully before using a safelist. Don’t forget – you’re also risking being added to blacklists by people who have no clue they’re on a safelist. To them, you’re a spammer.

And if do want to try out a safelists… expect little or nothing by way of results.

Based on its survey of 1,400 consumers across the United States, MarketingSherpa has concluded that most people WANT to opt-in to a list.

In particular, at least 50 percent of people are at least ‘somewhat more likely’ to subscribe if offered any of the following benefits:

• A guarantee that you won’t share their address with other companies: 43 percent much more likely, 23 percent somewhat more likely.
• Special pricing for email subscribers: 32 percent much more likely, 29 percent somewhat more likely.
• Ability to customize how frequently you receive emails: 27 percent much more likely, 30 percent somewhat more likely.
• Ability to customize the information you receive to meet your needs: 25 percent much more likely, 32 percent somewhat more likely.
• ‘First look’ at new products, services: 22 percent much more likely, 28 percent somewhat more likely.

Of course, don’t take MarketingSherpa’s – or even these 1,400 consumers’ – word for it. Your own test results will be much more conclusive.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide Excerpt”, MarketingSherpa, October 8, 2008

If you ask an experienced Internet marketer what’s an average visitor-to-customer conversion rate they’d probably say 1 percent. 3 percent is generally regarded as good, and anything above that is viewed as outstanding.

But whether you’re achieving 1 percent or 12 percent, the vast majority of visitors to your website are still leaving without buying. And most of them won’t return either. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to buy from you! There are many reasons why they didn’t buy the first time they visited your site.

So, will you (a) just let this huge majority of potential customers leave your site never to return, or (b) get them to come back and buy?

I hope you answered (b) because it will add hundreds, thousands, maybe millions, of dollars to your bottom line (depending on how big your enterprise is, and want it to be).

So how do you do get people coming back? There are two ways (and ideally you should use both). The first is to provide “sticky” content on your site. Sticky content is new, fresh and constantly changing content that appeals to your visitors. News, blogs and forums are three examples.

However, sticky content is often not the most effective way to convert prospects into buyers. (Do you want them to buy or visit your sticky content?)

A more targeted way – in which you have some control – is to to entice visitors to give you their name and email address.

Now you can communicate with them one on one, garner their trust and appreciation for the value you offer… and persuade them to buy!

This is what we call email marketing – and there’s an art and science to doing it right. But for now, I hope you’ve got the key idea – don’t ignore the 97 percent. Aside from the people who’ve already bought from you, they are your hottest target market.

Next time we’ll talk about how to construct your optin offer and what exactly you should send to list of subscribers.

Email service providers (“ESPs”) are increasingly encouraging – if not forcing – their clients to build “double optin” subscriber lists.

“Double optin” – more accurately known as CONFIRMED OPTIN is where someone signs up to your list and, before you send out any real content, you send them a message asking for confirmation that they really did sign up to your list and want to receive your material.

This process is designed to weed out subscribers who give you a fake email address, someone else’s email address, or who are unsure about, or not all that interested in, your material.

By all accounts, the result is that those who do confirm their subscription are more motivated – and more qualified – leads.

The downside is that you don’t get any “lukewarm” leads – people who may be legitimate prospects, but aren’t sure enough of you or the quality of what you have to offer, to confirm their name and email address. Nor do you get people who, for whatever reason, accidentally ignore your confirmation message (it happens!)

While this is a shame, the fact is, if you use an ESP you may not have any choice but to use a confirmed optin process. I don’t know of any ESPs that make this compulsory yet, but I do know that if you select confirmed optin for a given list with some ESPs (e.g. GetResponse and Aweber) they won’t let you change your mind and switch to single optin later.

You see, ESPs allow numerous clients to send email from the same mail servers. If someone uses one of these mail servers to send unsolicited email (spam) and this causes one or more ISPs to block email from this mail server, EVERYONE – including the legitimate emailers – using this server will have their email blocked.

Understandably, ESPs are no longer putting up with this… which means that YOU may eventually have to switch to confirmed optin.

What’s the immediate impact of this? Get used to lower (legitimate) signups to your list.

While fans of confirmed optin will say that “it’s the quality, not the quantity” of your list that counts, single optin advocates point out that you will end up missing out on a lot of legitimate leads that, for one reason or another, just don’t confirm their sign-up.

Blame it on the spammers.

Nevertheless, if you use a confirmed optin approach, there are things you can do to maximize the number of people who confirm their subscription. I’ll send you some tips on this in a future issue of the newsletter…

You’ve probably heard many Internet marketers extol the virtues of “name squeeze” pages – pages designed to force a visitor to give you their name and email address – and join your email list – before allowing them to enter your website. I’ve certainly discussed the benefits of doing so too – the major one being to yield a much higher optin rate than is typical for an “open” website.

But here’s a timely newsflash: a name squeeze page may be killing your sales.

For a few of our own sites we tested (a) having a name squeeze page fronting the website and (b) providing open access to the site i.e. allowing visitors to navigate all public pages in the site, and to choose to optin to a mailing list if they wished. We found that while having a name squeeze page certainly yielded substantially more optins, sales were much higher when we did without the name squeeze page.

Looking at customer orders in these particular niches gave us a clue as to why sales were higher – the vast majority of customers bought when they visited such sites for the first time. It seems that having a name squeeze page caused a lot of people to sign up who were curious about what lay within our site… or wanted the free offer available as part of signing up (i.e. each of our name squeeze pages had a free report, email mini-course or something else to entice subscribers). But not necessarily customers.

Meanwhile, legitimate customers seemed deterred by our name squeeze page. Perhaps, in these particular niches, our name squeeze page undermined the perceived trustworthiness of our site and product/service offering among potential customers.

We are certainly not alone in finding that most of our customers in these particular niches were more likely to buy on their first visit to our site rather than later. The head of a large corporate Internet marketing department told me that 60 percent of his company’s online purchasers bought when they first visited the company’s website. Furthermore, 80 percent of customers bought within two days of visiting the website for the first time.

So… what is YOUR sales data telling you about your customers? If they tend to buy on their first visit to your site… and if a name squeeze is likely to detract from your perceived trustworthiness or legitimacy… you may be better off ripping that name squeeze page off your site. Sure, it may mean you build a smaller list… but if your main aim is to generate sales, it may be the way to go.

Of course , a name squeeze page may still be optimal in other circumstances – for example, where your primary goal is to build a list. One site where we have kept our name squeeze page is the website of our motivational newsletter, Success Accelerator at http://www.successaccelerator.net Because the main aim of that site is to build a list of subscribers and to subsequently promote various of our own products, affiliate products and advertiser products, a name squeeze works best.

All this just goes to show that, as Internet marketers, we can’t afford to blindly follow what others – even experts – advocate. By all means, try lots of things, but always look at results and data to work out what works, and what doesn’t, for your particular niches and offerings.

Today it’s my privilege to share the steps Fabian Tan of Explosive Traffic System.com has used to build his list to over 19,000 subscribers in just 16 months… WITHOUT a major product launch or any joint ventures with major list owners.

According to Fabian, list building is his obsession and he’s spent countless hours poring over list building reports, traffic blueprints, and training videos. Better yet, he’s distilled what he’s learned into 10 steps that have consistently worked to bring traffic to his websites and build his lists.

Here are Fabian’s 10 steps:

Step 1 – Write and submit articles to article directories. I’m not talking the occasional article though. Fabian has 2,469 articles on EzineArticles.com alone!

Step 2 – Participate in highly trafficked forums in your niche(s). Create a signature file promoting your site and regularly post helpful content.

Step 3 – Contribute products to giveaway promotions. According to Fabian, this is an ultra-fast way to build a list.

Step 4 – Use the co-registration service offered by Get Subscribers.com to funnel leads straight into your autoresponder account.

Step 5 – Run a Google AdWords campaigns to attract traffic to your optin pages.

Step 6 – Run classified ads on Craigslist, eBay Classifieds, US Free Ads and Yahoo Classifieds.

Step 7 – Purchase the List Joe premium account. This enables you to blast an ad out to 3,000 subscribers every 3 days. Fabian says this is a great list builder.

Step 8 – Get in touch with potential joint venture (JV) partners and arrange a solo email swap. Your JV partners will send an email to their lists promoting your opt-in page, while you promote theirs to your list. Fabian reckons this is the fastest strategy to build a targeted, responsive list.

Step 9 – Create a blog at WordPress or Blogger and post new content daily. Be sure to ping your new posts at Pingomatic to get instant search engine recognition.

Step 10 – Buy some ezine ads. Join the Directory Of Ezines and search for ezines that are related to your market. Continue to advertise in those ezines that continue to cost-effectively deliver subscribers.

What does Fabian say are his very best list builders? Co-registration (GetSubscribers.com), joint ventures and participating in giveaways. The latter two are more one-shot bursts of huge traffic, while co-registration is more of an ongoing, continual process.

Interesting insight by MarketingSherpa: ask for people’s phone number and you’re likely to get a lower optin response rate.

MarketingSherpa conducted a follow-up presentation to a recent teleseminar on business-to-business (B-to-B) email lead generation. In the course of addressing some of the 100 questions they received from marketers following the teleseminar, the company’s founder, Anne Holland, and senior reporter, Sean Donahue, discussed optin forms.

Granted they were talking specifically about business-to-business – and like so much of direct response marketing, this stuff should be tested – but I wonder if some of their insights aren’t so off the mark for other niches too.

For example, despite the prevalence of “white papers” (in other niches, “free ebooks and reports”), these are NOT losing their effectiveness. The standard expected by consumers has just increased. So a good white paper (read: ebook or report) can still be a great lead generation tool IF it is of high quality and value to the target audience.

About asking people for their phone number… According to Anne Holland, this has the potential to lower response rates (i.e. deter a lot of people from signing up) or cause a lot of people to LIE. So think twice before requiring people to give you their phone number… or, at least, test it.

I’ve seen a lot of marketers in the Internet marketing niche include the phone number as “optional” or place “VIP” beside the phone number field. Definitely worth testing these variations.

And it should also be mentioned that although asking someone for their phone number may lower optin rates… or cause people to type in fake numbers… it may also yield valuable contact information about your hottest prospects.

For more insights from the MarketingSherpa presentation see the MarketingSherpa presentation.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “MarketingSherpa B-to-B Presentation: Answers to Lead Gen Teleseminar Questions: MP3 and Transcript”, MarketingSherpa, July 31, 2008