Building Your Mailing List with Free Downloads
You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant free download on your website. For example, let's take a look at a very good example -- apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via -- guess where -- iTunes!
In reality, you do not need to offer such a "heavyweight" download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You can attract candidates equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers decent value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.
However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won't be enough to attract qualified candidates. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating system to work well for you.
First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, devote a webpage to it and link to that page from every other webpage of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you'll get some of them converted into your prospects!
Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download,
