Build Up Your Membership Site List

I’m going to assume that you already have some kind of traffic coming to the sales letter for your membership site? I am going to assume that you’re already building some kind of a list but how do you make that even bigger? Well, even if you think you have your site pretty well monetized, you might be missing out on a few very important steps. Those include an email opt-in process after they register, a squeeze page before they see your sales letter, and even a two-step order form between the sales letter and the payment checkout page.

The no-brainer improvement you can make to your membership site is to have an opt-in process after registration. Most membership solutions such as Wishlist member will integrate your membership software with an autoresponder such as AWeber. If somebody signs up to your membership site, they also get on a mailing list.

If your membership software does not have this functionality, also put your opt-in code on the sidebar for your blog. In WordPress, this is very easy. Simply go to the appearance area and add what’s called a widget. A widget is a block of something on your sidebar. You can add a widget called the Text widget, but the secret about the Text widget in WordPress is that you can also add any HTML code you want including links, images, and most importantly, your cut and paste autoresponder code. Add a Text widget to our sidebar, drag it over to your sidebar and paste in your autoresponder opt-in code. And now, magically, you will have a place for people who have already bought your membership access to get on to a mailing list.

Another very popular way of getting people on a list is a squeeze page or a forced opt-in page before seeing your sales letter. If someone wants to go and they want to read your offer, well you stop them. You have a page that they see first with the forced opt-in. They have no way of getting to the sales letter unless they put in their name and email address, they get on your list and then they are redirected to your sales letter. You don’t necessarily have to bribe them with anything. You could bribe them with the information contained on the sales letter. You can bribe them with the 100% free details they are going to get just as soon as they fill out their name and email address.

If you don’t like the forced opt-in page or you’re advertising somewhere that does not allow forced opt-in pages, there is a loophole, and that loophole was called the two-step order form – because many shopping carts require people to type in their first name and email address before making a purchase. What you do is you have your sales letter, they click on what they think is the buy button, which is really a new page that has nothing but a forced opt-in on it. They read the sales letter first, they click over to the forced opt-in, and the forced opt-in says something like “step 1 of 2, enter your details here.” Then it has the forced opt-in page and after they fill out that forced opt-in, then they are sent to the checkout page, where they can pay. The idea behind this is that many marketers report a 50% or higher shopping cart abandonment rate. This is people who click over and/or about to buy but then for some reason, checking out and leave.

You can build a list based on people who are simply checking on the price or who almost buy it but don’t and then market to them afterwards. Those are three techniques that you should be using for your membership site. Most importantly, an opt-in after registration and optionally, either a squeeze page which is a forced opt-in before your sales letter or a two-step order form, which is a forced opt-in after your sales letter but before the checkout process.