Opt-ins are a perfect way to get access to your audience in the future, long after they’ve landed on your website. But first, you have to entice them with a free offer that begs for them to give you their email address. They provide their email address; you give them a drool-worthy piece of value that they can’t pass up.
So what is it that will get your visitors’ attention and tempt them to type their email address in that opt-in bar? Shoot for something that you can offer for free and that provides immediate value, or value over a period of time. People today protect their email addresses in an effort to reduce the spam that lands in their inboxes. You need to convince them that what you’re about to give them is worth it.
As of this posting, I have an opt-in at the top of each page, just below my banner. It offers a free guide, delivered via pdf, to those looking to start a business blog in exchange for an email address. By collecting an email address, I can now stay in contact with those who were interested in my content and expertise. Here are some other ideas for opt-ins.
[bctt tweet=”Your opt-in is free content that provides immediate value and solves a problem for your audience.” username=””]
Free Course
A course that helps to solve a problem is a perfect opt-in for a new online entrepreneur. It provides educational value to someone who wants to learn something new but isn’t sure she’s ready to hire a coach or make a big financial investment. It’s a great introduction into who you are and how you work with your clients.
How-to Guide
Give your audience some value with a printable how-to guide. This is something you can pull from a course or an exercise you do with your clients. While they won’t get the full benefit of working with you through this freebie, they will get some value that may encourage them to work with you down the road.
Membership to a Group
A Facebook group provides a long-term strategy for delivering value to your audience. As an added bonus, it provides you a place to sell your products and services to a group of your ideal clients on a daily basis. A group is a huge investment of your own time.
[bctt tweet=”A FB group is a great opt-in that keeps you in front of your audience consistently.” username=””]
Webinar
Similar to a free course, a webinar provides value about a specific, narrow topic that your audience needs help with. Whether your webinar is live or pre-recorded as part of your sales funnel is up to you. But it will give you access to your audience via their email address and should also include a link to a sales page at the end of the webinar.
Contests
Contests are fun and a great way to stimulate some excitement and engagement with your brand. Those who enter the contest have to provide an email address, and if those voting in the contest are your ideal clients too, you can collect their email addresses also.
Ebook
Some people prefer written content to videos or courses because it allows them to work through it at their own pace. They can print it out, mark it up and really absorb the content in a way they can’t with a course. And you can also recycle the contents of an e-book. Pull together a series of blogs on the same topic and condense them into a short e-book. Or take one blog and expand on the topic until you have 20 pages of content. Do this three more times and you can rotate your e-book offering each quarter.
[bctt tweet=”Opt-in idea: Compile some blogs into an ebook. Simple, and it’s almost done already!” username=””]
No Offer
There are some business owners who don’t have a freebie for those who choose to opt into their email lists. The philosophy is that they don’t want to give away free content so someone can grab the freebie, then immediately unsubscribe. They want to build a quality list of people who truly want the value that business will provide over the course of time. While the no-freebie opt-in doesn’t work for everyone, there definitely is some value in it.
So what’s your opt-in offer? I’d love to see what you’re offering; share it below!
