15 Techniques on How to Get More Email Sign Ups to Your Mailing List
Email marketing can be an excellent way of drawing in interest and engagement. Many companies invest in email marketing as a cost-effective outreach strategy to build rapport with clients. However, before you can start building that relationship, you first need to catch the attention of your potential consumer.
There are several methods for increasing the visibility and adoption rate of your sign-ups. One critical aspect to remember is that consumers that join email lists are looking for value from their subscription, so you need to communicate the value you intend to offer accurately to encourage them to sign up.
Expert Tips on How to Grow Your Mailing List Fast and Efficiently
When it comes to email marketing and growing a mailing list, everyone has their own case studies, findings and methods that work best. However, in order for us all to expand our own expertise and results, it’s best to learn from other industry experts as well.
With this in mind, we asked some of the leading thought leaders in the industry to share their best tips on how a business can get more sign-ups for its email list.
1. Optimize Sign-Ups
Every online user has a short attention span. You want to encourage them to sign up for your offer and to ensure that they opt-in and keep reading. Don’t require them to enter their full name, and reduce the time needed for them to confirm their sign up. Just use the “not a robot” check mark rather than asking them to identify trees and traffic lights in designated images. Less effort is more.
– Patrick Barnhill, Specialist ID, Inc.
2. Make It Easy to Subscribe
Making subscribing easy should be obvious, but you’d be surprised how often this simple tip is neglected. By featuring a simple call to action like “Subscribe here” or “Sign up for our mailing list” prominently on your website, newsletters and other marketing materials, you can dramatically improve your sign-up rate.
3. Position It Differently
I’ve had a lot of success positioning our email lists as “VIP lists,” whether it’s for a marketing agency or a supplement company. It creates a sense of exclusivity that is incredibly inviting, and the engagement rates will also be much higher. Of course, you’ll also have to treat it more like a VIP list than a newsletter. Engage with people, start conversations and provide value.
4. Give Site Visitors the Option to Email Themself Your Posts
When people visit your site, they will often see how they can share or save your post URL for future reference. This is often done through social media, but if you can add a call to action for “Send blog post as a PDF to email” option on your site, this is a great way to build up your mailing list. This is also considered a ‘content locker’ method as well, but can work both ways. In short, provide as many options as possible for users to consume your content, while also submitting their email to get on some type of list.
5. Create Value Weekly
If you are promoting and offering something that is really valuable on a weekly basis, then people are going to want to sign up and read your articles and get your emails. That could be giving away discounted items, or book reviews or unique case studies that can inspire new ideas. Either way, try to keep it fresh and create value.
– Nicole Munoz, Nicole Munoz Consulting, Inc.
6. Offer to Solve Pain Points
Consumers are likely to sign up for an email list if they relate to the business. Research your target audience and learn their pain points. Once you have those people on your website, show them that you understand what they are going through and can offer them information that may help resolve their issue.
– Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
7. Create the Feeling of Exclusivity
If the subscribers on your email list are getting something that other website visitors aren’t, it creates a feeling of exclusivity and can encourage people to sign up for your email list. For instance, instead of saying, “Sign up for my email list to get weekly tips,” say something like, “Sign up for my email list to get exclusive weekly tips you won’t find anywhere else” to encourage more sign-ups. – Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
8. Run a Contest
Contests are fun and build buzz around your brand. If you create one that’s tailored to your target market, you can create rules that grow your email list for you. For example, to enter your contest, you can have users join your email list and count it as an entry. That way, you have a new subscriber and you can segment them to market more content to them in the future.
– Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
9. Use Lead Magnets
People are extremely reluctant to give their emails because they want to avoid spam. And why not! People often receive emails from websites they never even visited! You can make users want to give you their email by using lead magnets. Lead magnets offer e-books and other content that users can access with their email. It’s an effective way to grow your email list and make customers happy.
10. Enable Early Access
Let people on your email list beta test new features and read content early. Make sure you let consumers that land on your website know that they will gain access to all of these features and emails once they sign up. This will encourage people who want to learn more about your business to actively participate.
11. Offer Webinars and Content Upgrades
We grew our email newsletter to 100,000 by hosting weekly educational webinars (some were joint venture webinars and some were solo) and offering free content upgrades on every blog post. We went from zero to 100,000 in two years by using these two marketing tactics.
– Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
12. Use Pop-Ups
If you only have a simple opt-in form for your email list at the bottom of the page, many website visitors won’t even notice it. So, use pop-up options to grab the attention of your website visitors and encourage them to sign up. For instance, a pop-up that displays when a user is about to exit the website will remind them to sign up for your email list before they go.
13. Create a Content Series
Breaking up your content makes it easier to consume. It’s also a way to make sure that visitors keep coming back for more. For educational content, you can break your course into smaller sub-topics. If you’re writing leadership and marketing content, discuss a different theme every week. Use calls to action so that users can opt in to get notified when you release your latest blog or article.
14. Create E-Books
E-books are one of the best ways to drive sign-ups to your email list, and can act as a marketing tool unto themselves. Almost any company can devise a topic that relates to their industry and offer it for free to anyone willing to part with their email address. Better still, the content can be printed and used at any offline events you have, creating some extra prestige for your business.
– Ismael Wrixen, FE International
15. Use Wheelio
I love this thing, I can’t believe I’m telling more people about it, but I’m here to help. Wheelio is an app on Shopify that gamifies the email collection experience with a wheel that customers can spin to win discounts, etc. It has a whooping 15% email conversion rate for us and also helps convert sales as customers will use the coupon codes. It has been a very effective email collection tool.
16. Offer an Incentive
Offering a discount, or freebie, in exchange for email addresses is a great way to encourage email sign-ups. Email is an extremely effective marketing tool and offering content over the long term via email will help create an engaged and profitable email list. Adding a pop-up on your website and a small incentive will drive up your email sign-ups and grow your list exponentially.
– Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure
Grow Your Mailing List through Content Creation and Marketing
With so many different options available for generating traffic and leads to your site and landing pages, the opportunities for email list growth is pretty much limitless.
However, it’s also important to make sure you are taking advantage of each option available. For example, if you are already using landing pages and paid marketing, you should also add content creation and SEO into the mix.
After all, the more content you have out there working for you, the more likely you are to see new visitors coming in daily.
Be sure to run through each of the expert tips above and see which might start working best for your mailing list growth efforts.
