By Pawel Reszka

YNOT EUROPE – “Opt-in rates” refers to the percentage of website visitors who choose to add their email address to a site’s mailing list. Laws in the U.S. and other countries now require email marketing be sent only to those who have chosen to receive the messages. Everything else is spam, and penalties for sending spam can be steep if one is caught.

However, a carefully created and maintained list of opt-in email addresses can represent gold for online marketers. A significant opt-in rate can increase a website’s profitability over time. The trick is to convince website visitors they will gain more than they will lose by signing up for your list.

Here are some tips for increasing your opt-ins.

Make it obvious. Place a subscription box in a strategic location — or several strategic locations — where visitors will stumble across it often. The top right-hand corner of a page often works well in Western cultures because that is the spot to which gazes naturally gravitate.

Adopt a clear privacy policy. Before a subscriber signs up for any newsletter or other such material, they want to be sure their email address will not be used haphazardly or shared with others. Having a privacy policy helps reassure the nervous. Place your privacy policy or a link to it in a conspicuous location near the place where visitors sign up.

Double-confirm everything. After a visitor has signed up, it helps to send an email asking them to confirm their registration. This prevents malcontents and fraudsters from registering email addresses they don’t own and also reassures visitors that your website takes extra precautions to ensure legitimate transactions. Making a consumer feel confident about your email list may make him feel more confident about buying from you.

Provide an unsubscribe mechanism. Always provide an easy way for list members to unsubscribe, and always honor unsubscribe notices promptly. Failing to do either gives visitrs the impression you may be laying a trap.

Offer engaging content. People want substance in the material they’ve signed up to receive. If all you send is promotional messages, you’ll lose your audience quickly. Instead, mix sales pitches with regular updates about products and services of interest. Consider offering freebies and/or conducting regular contests to keep interest alive and give email subscribers something that’s not available to non-subscribers. Only by providing additional value to your email subscribers will you reap additional value from your list. This can’t be overstated: Email offers must mean something to your customers in order for them to mean something to your bottom line.

Make the content attractive. Make sure the emails you send to your list are well laid-out and easy to read and understand. Craft catchy headlines and body content. If messages are drab looking, confusing or downright boring, readers may skim the content of the first few but ultimately will unsubscribe due to lack of interest.

Encourage sharing. Many marketers have discovered that by offering a “send this page to a friend” or “share this newsletter” link, they increase the viral nature of their email messages. Of course, the message has to be worth sharing for that to happen.

This article originally appeared at MainstreamWebmasters.com. It was updated and reprinted with permission.