Do you own a business website? Do customers come to your web site to purchase products and/or services? Do they always contact you in regards to doing business with you or your company? Probably not.

Not everyone who happens upon your business web site will need your products or services, now -- at this very moment. In fact, many potential consumers and/or clients will do a lot of research before they decide which company to do business with. What happens if those potential customers and/or clients lose that little slip of paper they wrote your web address on, or what happens if their computer crashes, and they lose their "favorites?"

How will they find you again? Most likely they won't. Instead of searching for your company, they will go with the first company they find. They won't want to redo all that research or put in all those hours, just to save a few bucks; especially if they cannot remember your company name!

If you don't want to lose a potential customer and/or client, you'll need to offer your visitors a way to stay in touch, such as a free newsletter! And the cheapest way to offer that newsletter is through email.

Do you want to purchase a list of names and pray those people are interested in your business, services, or products? Absolutely NOT! You need to target your newsletter to the needs of those who would actually purchase your services/products. If not, you're wasting your time and money.

It is better to slowly build your newsletter subscriber base, while gaining "qualified" leads, than it is to have a large subscriber base that isn't interested in what you have to offer.

Should you offer freebies for signing up? That depends! If you offer a freebie to every person who signs up for your newsletter, you will end up receiving a lot of free publicity, but not the publicity you want. In fact, many of the subscribers will only be those looking to receive something for nothing.

However, if you want to reward loyal customers who choose to stay informed about your company's products and/or services, you could always offer a drawing. Your drawing can be held once a month, once a quarter, semi-annually, or yearly. It can be a small item that markets your product, a product from your own company, a one-time service, or prizes sponsored from other (non-competing) businesses.

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