Viral Opt-In Lists

The flu bug strikes every year all over the world. It has been around a very long time and no matter how hard scientists work at it, they can’t eradicate it. Why do you suppose that is? I can tell you, it’s because the flu bug reinvents itself every year. The flu virus that strikes us this year won’t be exactly the same as the one that struck us last year. It mutates. Scientists can identify last year’s flu virus but they can’t identify this year’s bug until it strikes. And predicting the identity of next year’s flu strain is out of the question.

That mutation is what keeps it functioning and mutation is what will keep your opt-in box functioning. Your opt-in box needs to have a viral quality. We aren’t talking about the same kind of viral quality here as we talk about when we are discussing viral advertising. We are talking about the viral quality of mutation....change.

It is a well known and recognized fact of Internet marketing that the average surfer has the attention span of a mosquito. You have about five seconds to convince a surfer to opt in to your mailing list. That’s it! If you don’t grab them and grab them quick...they will be gone. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that they may return and provide you with another 5 second opportunity to get them to sign into your opt-in list if you add more relevant copy to your site and they see the listing during a search or see your link to the new material in a forum or on a blog. So you need to use the viral quality of mutation in order to get them to opt-in.

What they were offered as an incentive on their first visit didn’t work but what they are offered on the second visit might be just what they are looking for. Use the mutation quality of a virus to entice visitors to sign into your opt-in program by changing the incentives regularly. Every 3 to 6 months, take a look at what you’re offering to get them to sign up and see if there’s anything better you can now offer – and if there isn’t, it’s time to get busy writing or to get your ghostwriter off their butt and into motion creating some new opt-in bait for you!