A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online
business. The old adage "the money is in the list" cannot be true
enough -- if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time
you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by
marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects. You can
actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in
your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For
example, let's take a look at a very good example -- apple.com. When
you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site,
they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that
they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via -- guess
where -- iTunes! In reality, you do not need to offer such a
"heavyweight" download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You
can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a
simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that
your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to
give away his/her own email address to get it. However,
slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website
won't be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do
some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well
for you. First of all, you must place your download form
prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link
to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is
no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do,
you'll get some of them converted into your prospects! Also,
you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain
and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors
should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a
freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort
to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the hard
disk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your
visitors why they should download your freebie.