Do YOU Need a New Opt-In Gift?

For the past few weeks I’ve been hard at work on a new gift to give to people when they opt-in to my newsletter list. I’d say 90% of my subscribers join my list BECAUSE they wanted the gift; the *ahem* great content in the weekly newsletter is a bonus. The other 10% find my blog, read a great article and decide they want more articles delivered to their inbox every Tuesday. So an opt-in gift is CLEARLY a really important thing to create and create well!

When I first started with email marketing, back in 2003, it wasn’t really much of a requirement to offer a free gift to encourage people to sign up. Emailed newsletters were still a novelty. (And in some industries they still are!)

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When I sat down to create my new gift, here’s the thought process I went through:

1. Who do I want to attract to my list?

My original opt-in gift was targeted to ANYONE who was interested in self-publishing. But over the course of a year since that gift was new, my target subscriber has been refined to be a coach, speaker, or author.

So when I created a NEW gift, I targeted it directly to who I wanted on my list.

2. What are they interested in?

While I like writing articles about business blogging and “other” types of writing for business (like THIS article!) my target subscriber is REALLY interested in a book: writing, publishing, and promoting it to bring in new clients to their coaching or consulting business.

3. What’s the end goal?

Of COURSE I want people to subscribe to my list! But after they subscribe, what do I want them to do? I want to help ALL my subscribers get their books WRITTEN and PUBLISHED so it can help them get their message out and make more money.

So the goals of THIS free gift are:

  1. Subscribe to my list
  2. See how a book can help build your business
  3. Show how I can help get that book written and published!

[Tweet “Do you need a new #opt-in #gift? 4 tips!”]

4. How should I deliver it?

99.9% of opt-in gifts are delivered digitally. But that means it can be an eBook, MP3, video, or some combination. And I realized that MY ideal subscriber would really resonate with an eBook. I made the choice to offer it “old school” as a .pdf because it’s universally readable. Not everyone had an eReader or knows how to put a file on their eReader device.

Once I had these four questions outlined, it was just sitting down to write the copy!

And you can find my new opt-in gift HERE.

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Kim Galloway
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