You need to build trust and provide value. Lyris' strategic account manager offers five tips for doing so.

Despite all your best efforts, your opt-in email marketing list may be shrinking.

You can be diligent. You can get whitelisted at every ISP under the sun. You can beg subscribers to update their email addresses.

But if you can't bring in enough new subscribers, your list will shrink due to the natural attrition of bad email addresses and those who unsubscribe.

The subscription process sets expectations not only for what kinds of email messages recipients will receive, but also what their relationship will be with you as a company. A well-considered subscription process fosters trust-- trust that you won't bore or bombard would-be subscribers with your emails. 

Your email list grows when people trust you, subscribing is easy and the emails have perceived value. The following five tips will help make it easier for your customers to subscribe to your emails, while making sure you start that email relationship on the right note.

1: Make it easy to find.
When you invite visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or email campaigns, are you laying out the welcome mat? Or is it nearly impossible to find the door? If your email campaigns are an integrated part of your marketing strategy, they should be featured prominently on your website.

It's not a treasure hunt; it's your newsletter subscription link.

Sometimes, when you have a lot of content for your site, the newsletter signup might get moved around or pushed out of the navigation bar altogether. Converting visitors into subscribers should be a consistent goal of your website.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be too easy to subscribe. Don't add customers to your list automatically just because they've provided you their email address. Be sure to ask them first. Otherwise, your emails will be just more validation of the widely-held belief that if you perform any transaction on the internet, you'll be spammed forever.

2: Make email the prize.
If you're selling cereal, it doesn't matter if a kid buys a box and dumps out the cereal just to get the toy inside. But when you're sending email, subscribers who figuratively are dumping out the cereal can cost you money.

The value of subscribing to your email should be the emails themselves. Subscribers should be signing up to receive your email, not so they can download a game, get a report, or for a chance to win an iPod. Although these tactics may garner more subscribers, you're also cueing them that the emails themselves aren't worthwhile, so you have to bribe people to subscribe. Not surprisingly, many will subscribe for the prize, not for the emails themselves.

These unengaged subscribers can cost you. If the emails themselves are unwanted, they'll ignore them or filter them automatically to the spam filter-- but you'll still pay to deliver them. Or, worse, they may report your mail as spam, jeopardizing delivery to other subscribers who may really want to receive it.

3: Get the basics.
To send someone your newsletter, all you really need is their email address. 

Consider carefully the purpose of any other information you request, as every additional field may reduce the number of people who will sign up. You can always get more information later, as a recipient converts or otherwise interacts with your company.  

You can be reasonably sure information is correct if users have entered it while purchasing or performing some other high-stakes transaction, but not so otherwise. 

If you require the name, can you be sure the name is accurate? You may want the name so you can personalize your newsletters, but nobody ever got a warm fuzzy reading a message addressed "Dear asdf."

Ask for more information if subscribers can see how the information will improve their experience. For example, asking for a zip code makes sense if you're a national political organization that promises to send information relevant to a recipient's community. 

But if you're an online retailer, it may not be readily apparent to recipients how that piece of information will improve their newsletter experience. In that case, you can expect many inhabitants of the mysterious 99999 zip code.

4: Set the right expectations.
If your subscribers are ever surprised by your email, it should be because it's so timely, or because the deals are so fantastic-- not because they so quickly fill up their inboxes.

If you're going to send mail daily, make sure you say so clearly up front. It could be your content warrants frequent postings, say if you are giving daily news alerts or stock advice. But the frequency of other kinds of email publications may be subject to interpretation. If you are promising "special offers," can recipients expect to get them weekly? Daily? Several times a day? The more frequently you send, the more quickly recipients are likely to burn out if the perceived value is low-- and the better prepared subscribers should be.

On the other hand, if you publish quarterly, make that clear, too, so subscribers won't be scratching their heads when your message appears months after they subscribed.

It's also helpful to provide samples of your messages, and tell subscribers who the message will be from so they can identify your email readily in the inbox.

5: Really make them feel welcome.
Subscriber interest in your site is highest when they've just completed the subscription process. Return the love with a welcome message that does more than give them list housekeeping information.

Thank them for subscribing with a link to the last newsletter, a discount coupon or an exclusive subscribers-only whitepaper. Not only will subscribers feel good about trusting you, your gift will keep on giving by getting them back to your website.  

The effect of a good subscription process lasts beyond the actual signup. When you set the right expectations, recipients are more likely to recognize, open and act on your emails.  

Wendy Roth is strategic account manager, Lyris Technologies. Read full bio.