Many Internet marketers do not realize the critical importance of building a large opt-in mailing list.  They think it is enough to be making sales from their website.  While it is good to be making plenty of sales directly from your site, you will lose a large percentage of potential customers if you fail to build an opt-in mailing list. 

Having a list allows you to communicate with your site’s visitors and slowly build a relationship with them.  If done properly, this can convert a high percentage of otherwise uninterested prospects into paying customers.  So what exactly does it take to build a great opt-in list quickly and easily?  Here are some useful tactics:

· Offer an incentive to get people to leave their email address.  This is one of the best ways to encourage people to sign up for your list.  I like to offer a special report, free Internet marketing course, or anything else that my visitors find useful.  It is essential to give them something for signing up for your list.  This tip alone can easily double the number of signups you receive.  I see so many people trying to build list without offering any kind of incentive for signing up.  This is a big mistake.  Incentives are so easy to create that it doesn’t make sense to not offer one.  Anything with perceived value that you offer free will help boost signups by 100%.  I’ve tried both ways of list building and I can assure you that offering incentives will give you far superior results.

· Include a clearly written privacy policy.  One of the main reasons people refuse to leave their email address is because they are afraid of being spammed.  This has been a huge problem on the Internet for years.  Everybody hates spam.  If people have any reason to suspect that you will share their email address with others they will usually not let you have it.  Give them a rock solid guarantee that you will not share their email address with anyone.  This will put to rest the worries of people wanting to avoid spam.  At one point I did not have a clearly defined privacy policy.  After I added one I saw a 61% increase in the number of signups I was receiving.  Simple things like this can make a huge difference.

· Create multiple, tightly targeted lists.  Very few people realize the power of this tactic.  By offering different lists on one site you drastically increase the chances of people finding something that interests them enough to sign up for.  One of the lists could be for general updates, another could include tips your market would find useful, while another could be a monthly newsletter.  No matter which option they choose you get their email address.  Think about what lists your market might be interested in, then offer those options on your site.  A visitor may have no interest in your general announcements mailing list but have a great interest in your newsletter.  If you had not provided multiple options that person would have signed up for nothing.  Usually three options are enough.  If your visitors have not found something that interests them after three choices they are generally not worth going after.

· Be sure to make all your lists double opt-in.  Double (or Verified) opt-in lists require people to first sign up on your site, and then activate their subscription by replying to a confirmation email.  There are many good reasons to use the double opt-in format.  First of all, it will take away any chance of being labeled a spammer.  You can show proof that people requested your emails.  Also, a double opt-in list will generally be of significantly higher quality readers, rather than those from a singe opt-in list.  The reason for this is because since these subscribers are interested in your messages enough to reply to the confirmation email, they are much more serious about what you offer.  Therefore, they will be much more responsive to your offers compared to those who half-heartedly sign up for your list without a lot of interest.  Having a high quality list is critical to making sales.

By putting the above tips into use you will be able to build a massive, high quality list in the shortest amount of time possible.  I have personally tested all of these methods and they work marvelously.  They will work for you too.