Screw ROI - Think LOI (Loyal Opt-Ins)

Someone signs up to receive your blog feed or email updates from you - what do you do? If you're answer is "nothing" or "We send them an email when the next campaign rolls around" then you should read this post.

Generate Loyal Opt-Ins or LOI

There is an article by Stefan Pollard on ClickZ called A Good First Impression Equals Stronger Opt-In Relationship in which he provides some easy tips on how to respond to those people who have signed up for updates from you. You can do any one of the following things (and some of my own):

• Send a special offer for new subscribers
  
• Send a request for additional contact information for a mail-in offer
• Ask for additional lead qualification questions - eg: age, sex, purchase time frame, annual revenue (depends on whether it's B2B or B2C).
  
• Links to the most recent newsletter, products, press releases, white papers, webcasts, events etc...
• Customer support information
• Instructions on how to add your email address to their protected list
• Information on what type of emails they can expect and when. You can also include ways for them to select the emails they want to receive
  
• Survey/Feedback forms soliciting data from them - For example: what interests you the most?

Here's the most important tip: Send this initial email out right away! Don't wait a few weeks. If someone has opt-ed in, show then value right away. Don't just think about ROI but also LOI (loyal opt-ins).

Bloggers Can Make New Subscribers Feel Special Too

Sending a quick follow up to opt-ins may seem easy for organizations to do this with their regular corporate websites but how can blogs take advantage of this? Many bloggers such as Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak allow you to sign up to receive email updates. Therefore you not only have the option to sign up for their RSS blog feed but you can get an email update as well. For those new subscribers, send them a quick follow up email with some of the tips I've outlined above. Obviously not all of these apply but even a quick "Thanks for subscribing, here are some of my better posts may really build your LOI.

For RSS subscribers, this is more difficult as it's tough to tell who the people are that have subscribed to you (unless you have more sophisticated tracking - hey, am I right here?). One thing that you can try is including a standard footer in your blog post that is directed to new subscribers. It could be something like the following:

New to Anything Goes Marketing? Thanks for subscribing! Have a look at the following posts that may interest you:

• How to Start a Business Blog or Corporate Blog
• Email Marketing 101: Tips and Best Practices
• Feed Icon Library: Add a funky feed icon to your blog
• How to lose traffic on your blog in 10 days: A good laugh if you want to tank your blog
  

If you're looking for some additional information, have a suggestion for a new post, looking for an interview or to do a podcast or would like to exchange some content, give me a shout at aquachad@gmail.com. I'm also available to do book reviews!

Try this out and see how it works. Let me know if it drives higher blog traffic. I'll let you know as well!

Until next time,

Chad H.

PS - my wife and I just bought a place in Toronto so we've been busy with that. We'll need to do some serious packing in the next few weeks and hence the lower number of posts.

Tags: email marketing, blogging, email opt-ins, LOI, problogger, yaro starak, ROI, clickZ