Everybody loves a good secret and people delight in having access to secret knowledge or to be a member of an exclusive club. When people are given this kind of special access this makes them feel special and will bring them back for more time and time again to continue to get that special feeling. For you, it is a great marketing tactic for your opt-in marketing list.
Bear in mind that it isn’t secret or special if just anyone can access it with just a little effort. You’ll get the best results if you make your offer truly limited. For example, you could grant access to the first 100 subscribers or make the secret pages only available for a limited time, such as 30 days. You can use your autoresponder system to manage this aspect of this opt-in mailing list campaign.
Creating secret pages on your landing web site is rather easy. You make a password protected directory on your web site. You’ll use a single logon ID and password that all of the subscribers you select can use. I recommend using a name for the directory that generates interest like “private-stash”, “secrets”, “treasure-trove”, “black-arts”. I think that names that imply something slight pirate-like, shady or hidden tend to generate the best interest while those that are blatantly marketing oriented, like “money-makers” are generally less well received.
Now that you have everything setup on your web site you are ready to distribute the landing page URL to your opt-in list via your autoresponder. Alternatively, you could work with other list owners and bloggers to distribute this information to their subscribers. However, it is best that you keep the offer limited to some degree. If everyone gets an invite then this lessens the special-ness of the offer. People want to feel like they’re going to get access to information that few others will be seeing. If they don’t, they’ll write off your offer as yet another lame marketing ploy.
In my opinion, you should make access to these secret pages free. I have seen some try to extract a gatekeeper up front fee of a few dollars. I don’t recommend this for most offers. People love something for nothing but don’t like feeling like they’re paying to get something sold to them.
Also, you must have something of value on your secret pages. One of the worst mistakes you can make in this kind of campaign is not having something of value there for them to collect on when they visit. If you just offer a page chocked full of affiliate links you’ll make your opt-in subscribers angry with you, probably enough for them to decide to opt-out of your list.
I know, you feel like you will be giving away something for free, that you’ll be losing money. Believe me, you won’t. You’ll be gaining valuable and loyal subscribers to your opt-in list. Over time, this can insure a steady income stream.
I think that will a little trial and hopefully not too much error you’ll discover this is a fantastic marketing tactic for a variety of digital information products, membership sites and other such money makers.
