Your Mailing List: Building with Downloads

As you might already know, a mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old saying that "the money is in the list" is actually quite true -- if you had a well targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, it will be possible for you to save a lot of effort through marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

It is actually possible for you to build up a targeted list of prospects that might be interested in your products through offering a relevant download on your website. For instance, a very good example could be apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, you are usually asked to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that can be bought via their sites.

In actual fact, you don’t need to offer such a "heavyweight" download like iTunes. It will be possible for you to attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, free wallpapers, etc. The important thing is that your download should offer sufficient value for the prospect to want to give away his or her own email address to obtain it.

Nevertheless, putting together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be sufficient to attract prospects who are qualified. You will have to do some research for your lead-generating mechanism to function well for you.

Firstly, you will have to place your download form outstandingly on your website. If possible, try to devote a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, it will be easier for your visitors to find the download page, and when they do, you will be able to get some of them converted into customers!

Further, you will have to put a little time and effort into promoting your download. Try to explain the details and values of the download, along with why your visitors should download it. Although you might think that nobody would want to pass on a freebie, most of your visitors might just be too lazy to take the effort to download it, due to the fact that most of their downloads just end up sitting on the hard disk collecting virtual dust. It will hence be important for you to explain to your visitors first why they should download your freebie.

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