When deciding on what to offer as an encouragement for people to signup-to your email marketing list there are two simple criteria:

1. You need an item that the demographic you are aiming for would value highly, have not already got and are unable to get elsewhere at that price,

and

2. It won’t cost you a lot of money.

There is another way of putting it and that is: the choice of offer for an email marketing campaign to gain subscribers to an email marketing list is a compromise. It is one which will vary depending on your product, the budget for the campaign and how much each individual subscriber is worth to you.

There are any number of things which cost you little that can be worth a lot in the eyes of those you are targeting. As a personal example, I once won a chance to meet Ron Dennis, the CEO of McLaren F1, in the pits at Silverstone during the Grand Prix. It was something which you could not bid for on Ebay, and was, for a nerd like me, something to sell your soul for. I would certainly have exchanged my email address for the chance to enter the draw.

So think carefully. What have you got in your coffers that could excite those you are after, at least enough to make them fill in the application?

Information that you gain through your business often has a short sell-by date. Once your competitors have similar information it probably has little or no value to you. However, your customers might be very excited by the details.

You might also have commissioned some research which gave you some very interesting insight into your type of business. The statistics are somewhat out of date for anyone involved, but might be almost invaluable to those you want to sign up.

This is not a case of disappearing into the stores and comparing the amount of dust on various products. This is working out what you have which others would like and would cost you little to give away.