A 'black hole' that eats website visitors!

By Derek Gehl, CEO, Internet Marketing Centre

Whenever I surf on the Web, I always come across dozens of sites that are missing a VITAL ingredient to online success.

I wish I had to time to contact the owners of all these websites personally and tell them what a fatal mistake they're making!

Because the absence of this vital ingredient is like a giant, sucking black hole into which the vast majority of their visitors are vanishing, never to be heard from again....

What is this key element they're missing?

An opt-in form!

An opt-in form is simply a small script-based form on your site that allows you to collect people's names and email addresses and add them to a database, so you can send them relationship-building emails in the future.

If you don't have an opt-in form to collect your visitors' contact information on your site, I can guarantee that you're only making a small fraction of the sales you could be making!

That's because the vast majority of online shoppers DON'T make a purchase on their first visit to a web site. Most people need a minimum of 7-8 points of contact with a business before they feel comfortable enough to buy from them.

So if you don't reach out to them and give them a compelling reason why they should give you their contact information-- so you can stay in touch with them and overcome their buyer resistance -- you'll never realize your full income potential.

Here are some more reasons why it's essential that you start building an opt-in list as soon as you possibly can...

• Your "opt-in" email list is made up of people who want to hear from you. They've visited your site, or they've come into your shop, and they've decided that they like what they see enough to give you their email address. They are actually inviting you to sell to them!
• You are giving your customers and subscribers something they've ASKED you for. When someone gives you their email address, they understand that you'll be using it to send them information they actually want to receive — meaning your opt-in list will be highly responsive to any email promotions you run in the future.
• You are developing valuable lifetime relationships with your customers and subscribers. Email allows you to contact the people on your list over and over again, so you can build genuine relationships with them. There's simply NO WAY you could do this offline without spending a fortune on printing and postage!
• Every time you send a mailing, the response is 100% measurable. Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, email allows you to evaluate the success of your campaigns within just a few hours. This will save you thousands in wasted advertising dollars!
• Opt-in email marketing is effective... instantaneous... and FREE! This is my favorite thing about email marketing: You can contact your customers and subscribers whenever you want, with whatever offer you want, and it never costs you a single dime!

So those are the "whys"... now here are the "hows":

The key to growing your opt-in list is to convince your visitors to give you their contact information by offering an enticing free gift that's so valuable they can't say "no" to it. What kind of free gift am I talking about?

Here are some ideas that have proven to be incredibly successful for us and our clients:

• An eBook on a topic that's of interest to your visitors
• A free report full of valuable information
• A free subscription to an online newsletter that covers topics your visitors want to know more about
• A free "how-to" course, delivered as a series of emails
• Entry into a contest for a fabulous prize! (Just make sure that prize isn't the product you sell... after all, who's going to BUY a product when they have a chance to win it for free?)

It doesn't matter if you're currently set up to deliver email promotions or not... You should get an opt-in form on your site and start building your opt-in list NOW.

Then, once your email marketing efforts are set up and ready to go, you'll have a large list of people you can start mailing to!

If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of email marketing, and how it can boost the profits of ANY business (online OR off) -- I suggest you check out my best-selling course, Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business on the Internet.

It will tell you exactly what you need to do start running highly lucrative email campaigns that will boost your profits by at least 50% -- or more!

Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to start profitable Internet businesses that make $100,000 to $2.5 Million (or more) per year. To get instant access to all his most profitable marketing campaigns, strategies, tools, and resources that he's used to grow $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: MarketingTips.com.