3 Tips For Creating Content That Builds Mailing Lists
Posted by Deirdre Jones on Fri, Sep 02, 2011
One of the most effective strategies for building your mailing lists is by offering 
your audience quality, niche specific content. It does not matter whether you are focusing on organic gardening or horse breeding, the most important element of your online content is quality.
Here are 3 tips for using online content to build your mailing lists:
Offer an E-course or Special Report
Your audience will always appreciate a no-cost resource. The key is to make sure that what you offer is valuable to your readers. Just because they do not have to pay for it does not mean that you can offer recycled, worthless junk. Getting visitors to subscribe is only the first step to building your list. Once they have subscribed, retain them by building a reputation for offering valuable and useful information. Otherwise, your efforts are wasted.
The best part about offering an e-course or special report is that you do not even need to prepare the content yourself. By regularly visiting and contributing to forums in your niche, often you are able to interact with experts who will willingly partner with you to provide low cost, high quality content.
Blog on a Regular Basis
Virtually everyone seems to have a blog these days. But what good is a blog if you are not contributing useful information and posts to it on a continual basis? You do not have to overexert yourself by posting daily, but you should add new content once a week at the bare minimum.
A blog is an excellent way to provide useful online content while building your mailing list at the same time. However, it must always provide a fresh perspective. Remind your visitors to subscribe to your mailing list in order to be updated whenever you add new information to your blog. In your updates, include a brief overview of your newest post and direct them to the blog to read the entire article.
The added bonus is that this method provides regular visitors to your blog as well. If you are providing valuable content, you will have no problem building your list while maintaining current subscribers.
Use Video
Interactivity is a huge factor in a technology driven world, which is the reason video works well as online content. Many people prefer watching a quick video rather scrolling through lengthy articles. Use video to provide an overview of your site and to entice visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. Offer both options – written content and video – for maximum effectiveness.
Another innovative way to utilize video to increase your subscriber base is by offering an e-course created from video based content. Allow your visitors to watch the first installment online, but require them to subscribe to your mailing list to view the entire series.