Should you use a “squeeze page” on your website, or have these pages lost their effectiveness?

What is a “squeeze page”? It’s simply a page you place in front of the rest of your site that requires visitors to give up their name and email address before they get to see any information.

Making a free offer to your site visitors in exchange for their name and e-mail address is a great way to grow your e-mail list, but it has to be done carefully so that you don’t also drive away potential customers.

Here are some things to think about

Growing your email list is the surest way to grow your business, sales and profits.

The problem we run into these days is simple: people are more reluctant than ever to give up their email address. The squeeze page is still the best way to build your list, but it requires more thought today than it did even a few months ago. Using a squeeze page carelessly can do your business more harm than good.

First, know that the most effective squeeze page is used on “salesletter site” - that is, one built to sell one product. Using a squeeze page as the “gatekeeper” of your salesletter sifts and sorts potential buyers by level of seriousness. It also gives you a list of prospects who are clearly interested in your offer (or at least in your subject).

There are many kinds of sites that should not use a squeeze page.

Don’t put a squeeze page in front of your portal site, your branding site, or your blog. Putting a squeeze page in front of those kinds of sites does not make sense. Those sites have a very different purpose than sites that are intended to sell one targeted product or promotion.

Just keep in mind that your squeeze page is a barrier to what is behind it.

It keeps people out of your website and it can potentially scare off your customers.

When you offer the right kind of bribe, however, you can get people to opt in through the squeeze page — building a valuable, targeted email list.

Why are people more reluctant and wary about giving up their email address? Spam, viruses, scams, and spyware are a few reasons.

The answer to this issue is simple, in my opinion. Squeeze pages can build your list super-fast; you just have to choose the right websites and scenarios in which to use them.