Using Incentives to Build Your Email List

Does using an incentive to entice visitors to signup create a tainted list of people truly not interested in your content or just or is the list just as legitimate as one craeted without an incentive? This is a subject that I struggled with twice first when I initially built my subscriber base and then again when I wanted to rebuild my list.

My incentive was offering 1 entry into a drawing to win products from Carol's Daughter for every subscriber to my newsletter. Both times the registrations poured in. But I could also see that a portion of my list failed to even engage with the newsletter. It seemed as though people only signed up to win the free product and really didn't care to read any communication I sent to them afterwards. I've learned in situation like this though all is not lost.

My goal now is to find a way to reengage those subscribers who don't even open my newsletter or get rid of them by asking if they really want to remain on my list because I do pay per subscriber and would rather unload those that aren't interested than continue to pay for them.

What is odd is that when the drawing was over I had another surge in registrations which showed me that you don't always have a lure to catch a fish. If someone is truly interested in what you offer they'll signup anyway. But that doesn't mean that I will totally abandon the idea of offering incentives in the future but I will weigh it a bit more heavily and it's effect on the quality of my list.

Here is my advice if your thinking about using incentives to boost the size of your list:

1. Offer something related to what you offer on your site. For example, I offer content on beauty and fashion for women of color so my incentives were all-natural hair and fragrance products from a much coveted line. I think that this increases the chance that after your incentive no longer exists you may be able to keep them interested in what you have to say.
2. Segment your list to track exactly the behavior of registrants that signup for freebies. You never know their true motivation so you might want to keep them seperate from no freebie subscribers.
3. Those of you offering free e-books or white papers go for it. Your freebie is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only do those type of free gifts increase your brand recognition but may be printed and kept, passed around or forwarded to a friend.