What is an Opt-in? [Video]

Download My 10 Favorite “Opt-In Pages” PDF

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of Frequently Asked Questions Friday. In this week’s video episode we’re going to be answering the question “What is an opt-in?“. Before we get into how it works let’s first define what it is. An opt-in is when somebody has opted to join into your e-mail list. That many mean that they’ve come to your website, they’ve given you their e-mail address by putting it into some sort of form, and they have given you permission to be able to e-mail them afterwards.

The simplest way that this is done is having a join our newsletter button on our website. Somebody can put in their e-mail address, maybe their name and e-mail address, and click subscribe. That is them opting into your newsletter list. There’s a couple of other ways to do this as well. You may have a free PDF on your site. Maybe you allow people to download your rates, a free report. When somebody wants to get access to that they have to again, opt-in to you e-mail list in order to get access to that PDF download or free report.

I do this on my site with a free video series, and it’s called The Seven Secrets of Websites that Sell. It’s completely free, and if somebody wants to get access to it, they have to again, opt-in to my e-mail list. There’s a couple of things to remember when you start doing this.

Somebody’s giving you permission to be able to contact them, but that doesn’t give you cart blanche to go to send them any sort of offer or junk that comes up. You want to make sure that the thing that they opted-in for, whether it’s marketing advice, whether it’s your rate sheet, whatever sort of service that you provide, that what you’re e-mailing them is related to that original offer. That doesn’t make it feel like your spamming them with whatever you’re trying to get in front of them.

Another thing is to use double opt-in, which means somebody puts in their name in an e-mail address. What happens is that get an e-mail automatically through your autoresponder software that makes them confirm that they were the ones that put in the e-mail address in the first place. What we don’t want to happen is that spammers out in the internet can put your name or your e-mail address into any list in the world and it bombards you, your inbox, with all these offers that you don’t want. Using double confirmation opt-ins is really important as well.

If you want to see more about how this works, I’ve actually put together a PDF of the 10 best opt-in pages that I’ve come across on the internet. I’m kind of obsessed with this sort of thing, so I take screen shots of the best stuff that I come across. If you want to see how an opt-in works from the inside, click the button below, download the PDF, and again, it’s going to ask you for your name and e-mail address. Your going to opt-in to my newsletter, and in return you’re going to get a swipe file of the 10 best opt-in pages that I’ve seen.

You’ll get to see it from both sides. What it’s like to do it as a consumer, of getting that information, and then it can also help you think about what can you do on your own site to be able to build your e-mail list as well. That’s it for today. That’s it for the video, “What is an opt-in?”. If you like this video please comment, share, click the like button, and download that free PDF, and tell me what you think. That’s all for now, Happy Friday, we’ll see you next week.  And if you didn’t see last weeks video “What social media should I use to promote my business?” You can find that on the blog or on our youtube channel.