Build Email Lists

Before you get all excited about building an opt in email campaign through a capture page, ask yourself which is more important: the quality or quantity of the contacts in your list?

If you ask me, I would rather have people on my list whom I have previously communicated with, rather than a list of prospects I have yet to get to know.

In the Small Business List Building book I advise small business owners to attract, engage and develop a relationship with prospects first, before directing them to a capture page to become part of their business email lists. Call your prospects, send them relevant emails, invite them to seminars or give out freebies.

Whatever you do to get their attention, make sure it is valuable to them, not to you. By doing this, you can be sure that your prospects are more likely to opt-in to your contact list when they get to your capture page.

Using a capture page or landing page is a great marketing strategy to build an opt-in email list, but as I have said, it is more effective when you have already established a relationship with your prospects.

Small business owners should understand that capture pages are not the end-all and be-all of email list building. Sure, it can help drive traffic to your site, but it is the quality of prospects in your opt-in list that matters. Someone who has already been to your website, has responded to your emails or has commented on your blog is a warm prospect and a potential buyer. This is who you should be going after.

Creating capture pages should be an essential part of your customer relations building system and I know you are excited to learn how to create effective, quality capture pages. You definitely need to learn what makes a great capture page -- one that attracts prospects to sign up for your emailing lists and produces a high rate of conversion.

Small Business List Building discusses this in more depth, but have a think about these two important issues first: WHY should you want to lure your prospects through a customer relationship building system and ultimately, to your contact list, and why should you never bombard them with every offer under the sun. I will be exploring this in a future article.