Squeeze Page Bribes: are They Right for You?

Building an opt-in list often requires a marketer to entice potential subscribers with something akin to a gentle bribe. Most often the bribe comes in the form of a free ebook delivered as a "thank you" in exchange for the subscriber's name and email address. But is this really the most effective form of squeeze page bribery, especially for the beginning list builder who's promoting an affiliate product?

If you're like me, you've given your email address away in exchange for a free ebook countless times. It's no secret that most of these ebooks never get read. You probably have an entire graveyard of free-but-never-read ebooks somewhere on your hard drive.

This fact alone must give pause to anyone considering a list-building campaign that uses a free ebook to entice a potential subscriber to give up his or her email address. No matter how cleverly I fill my viral give-away with (potentially) moneymaking affiliate links, they're no good to me if no one ever reads a line of the book.

This scenario is made even worse if I'm a beginning marketer. Once I've given away my free gift, I've lost most of the leverage I'm trying to gain through giving a gentle bribe. Yes, I have a subscriber. But what do I do now? Most beginning email marketers don't have a convincing answer to this question because they don't yet know how to write a follow-up autoresponder campaign powerful enough to convert subscribers into customers.

Most people who try to build a list in this way take a pretty conventional approach. They drive traffic to a squeeze page, usually through PPC campaigns, forum posts, or article marketing. This squeeze page offers a free download in exchange for a subscriber's email address.

Good opt-in marketers then redirect their subscribers, sometimes after a double opt-in confirmation page, to the sales page of the product they're really trying to sell. Less successful marketers just let their autoresponder service redirect subscribers to a generic "Thank You" page.

While this redirection tactic occasionally results in a direct sale, this type of campaign ultimately relies on a follow-up autoresponder series or newsletter to make the sale. Because the free ebook seldom gets read, it's easy to see that if the beginning marketer can't write a powerful follow-up campaign or engaging newsletter, he or she is often destined for disappointing results.

To avoid these pitfalls, I've looked for - and found - a different way. Instead of offering subscribers a gentle bribe on my squeeze page, I offer them an incentive. The incentive is found on a pre-sell page positioned between my squeeze page and the sales page of the affiliate product I'm really trying to sell.

My autoresponder service automatically redirects my subscribers to this "welcome" page after they opt-in. The page then pre-sells the subscriber on the affiliate product and offers to sweeten the deal if they click through and buy that product within a given period of time.

This deal sweetener is usually a high-quality ebook, but can also be some other quality digital product, including a nice video tutorial or even a review of some other product created with Camtasia. On a high-priced item, even a cash rebate is possible.

Whatever it is, offering a time-sensitive incentive instead of an up-front bribe gives me more leverage over my potential customers. By customizing my autoresponder series to link back to the pre-sell page instead of the sales page, I can incentivize my potential customer over and over. All in all, my chances of converting an opt-in to a sale significantly increase.

All that being said, sometimes a picture, or in this case a process, really is worth a thousand words.

That's why I've included a link in this article's resource box that points to an opt-in page that will walk you through and help you visualize the whole process: squeeze page, pre-sell page and sales page.

Check it out for yourself and see if this idea makes sense to you, too!