Dear Friend,

Man, it’s hard to believe we’re almost already through the first month of 2012.

Tempus fugits. 🙂 (That’s my theater reference for the day.)

Anyhoo…

Since this is the year the world is scheduled to end (at least that’s what a few conspiracy theorists are telling me), I thought I’d exit this planet giving away one of my most valuable pearls of wisdom ever.

It’s a secret that’s helped me put a lot of fiat currency (i.e. greenbacks) into my Federal Reserve holding vessel (i.e. my bank account).

Use this one secret alone, and you’re going to wish you did this decades ago.

In fact, this secret works so well, I should be locked up and gagged by my fellow marketing pals for giving away this gold for nothin’.

Instead I should crank out a 257-page, Dr. Seuss-style PDF along with a few fill-in-the-blanks swipe files and sell it as a BSO (Bright Shiny Object) for a cool thousand smackeroos.

But I’m not going to do that to you. I think that sucks. Instead, I’m just going to pull back my sunny Florida curtains and reveal it all to you right now:

My #1 secret for getting more subscribers to opt into my email list is to…

Give away a free
high-quality bonus gift!

Now before you start emailing me and screaming that I’m a hypocrite, let me be CLEAR. As I’ve advised in the past, this nonsense about “moving the free line” is just crap. This tomfoolery is put out by the “gurus” to give us the idea that they’re giving us golden nuggets of information (when in reality they’re merely telling us what-to-do, not-how-to-do-it clap trap disguised as a clever sales pitch).

What I instead suggest doing is giving away a free gift as a bonus in order to ethically bribe your visitors to gleefully hand over their email address.

Because giving away a gift as a bonus is so important (and so worth it), I invest almost as much time and energy on my giveaways as I do on my paid offerings. (Because giving away a lame bonus is well, just lame. Plus, it conditions our new prospects to expect lame stuff in the future.)

But by offering a high-quality gift as a bonus, our prospects are blown away because no one else puts much time and effort into a giveaway.

Here’s my secret for turning a free bonus gift
into the most amazing online salesman…

Let’s face it. It’s getting harder and harder to convince our visitors to hand over their email addresses these days. And I don’t blame them.

Their inbox is littered with spam or blatant, worthless pitches. (Studies show close to 8 out of every 10 emails are perceived as spam. Yikes!)

Even worse, more and more people are concerned about their privacy (and who can blame ’em) as the alphabet agencies continue to monitor us like lab rats.

With all that said, everyone has a level of greed in them. Whether it’s financial greed or ego greed… people who visit our websites are looking for that quick fix. They’re willing to enter our sales funnel if we offer a painless solution to their perceived problem.

Knowing this, I offer a valuable bonus gift that shows up on every single blog post on my site. Check it out:

It’s true. No matter what blog page you’re on, there’s an offer for my free bonus gift as a trade for your optin email address. And it works REALLY well…

But there’s a nasty problem we marketers face daily… getting our new subscribers to confirm their subscription.

I looked this problem straight in the eye and overcame it:

How to get higher-than-average
double-optin rates…

If you use an email service provider to put your email marketing on autopilot, you know it’s tougher than ever to get your new subscribers to confirm their subscription.

There are many reasons for this including distractions (e.g. a text from a friend), confusion (i.e. not clear on how to confirm a subscription) and other oddball stuff.

For example, while I LOVE AWeber as my email service provider, they have a well-kept secret skeleton in their closet that just baffles me… each confirmation email takes at least 30 seconds to get delivered.

In order to nullify these issues, I use a cleverly-crafted thank-you page template that’s displayed just after a visitor of mine subscribes:

This thank-you page kicks major booty because my double-optin rates are some of the highest in the industry. It’s true… more than 8 out of every 10 of my new subscribers “jump through this hoop” to get my bonus gift (and confirm their subscription request).

This is a far cry from the double-optin rate of 5 to 35% (the industry standard).

Why not give it a try on your site and see how it works?

All the best,