The current online marketing trend is focused highly on social media, but research shows that good old-fashioned email is still far more effective than social platforms in attracting customers to your business online.
For online marketers, social can be much more attractive for the quick win as it’s simple to just pay for a slice of the audience via ads, whereas growing your email list requires trust to be earned – plus a few clever tactics.
Let’s look at how you can grow your email list with these 5 tips:
#1: Create Engaging Content
Create content for your audience that they will actually want to read and can take value from.
Email marketing isn’t about the hard sell, it’s about growing your list and establishing yourself as a trusted expert and continuing to provide value. Consider topics that your audience may find problematic or want to learn more about and focus your content around helping to solve these problems.
For example, I know our audience could always do more to grow their email list so I’ve created this very blog post to provide value and help create some actionable advice. I’ll be sending an email excerpt with a link to this post out to our email list then I’ll monitor the email open and click through rates to judge how useful this is to my audience.
Your content needs to focus on value and be worth sharing if you want people to stay subscribed and recommend your emails to their networks as a must-read.
Create a consistent content production schedule, monitor results and continuously provide value.
#2: Use a Simple Form and Link From Everywhere
Keeping your form simple increases subscribers, so keep it simple and only collect the email address on your form so the chances are higher that it will be filled in. The highest converting forms are simple, look great and have an enticing headline to draw in subscribers.
On your website, show your email sign up form on all pages to maximise your chance of capturing new leads.
- Email sign up form with incentive on Michael Hyatt’s website
On Twitter, link to your email form with with a well crafted and enticing tweet and post these regularly to your followers.
On Facebook, make it easy for your fans to easily subscribe to your list with a dedicated tab at the top right-hand side of your page for an email form, so your fans can simply click and sign up.
Always use a great looking image and offer an incentive for best results.
#3: Offer An Incentive
Incentives often help to persuade visitors who would otherwise leave your site without subscribing. A little push is all that some people need to take action and sign up.
If your email opt-in form has the standard text of “sign up to our mailing list” then try this simple change to see how it drives sign ups to your email marketing list.
A successful strategy often used by ecommerce sites is to entice visitors with shop discount offers for new subscribers, the the one below.
Promote your incentive on social media to draw further attention.
#4: Run A Contest or Giveaway
There’s no denying it: people love to win stuff. Not only can a contest help to drive new email signups, but by using the right strategy and tools to market and run your contest you can increase your social following and traffic to your website.
Keys to a successful contest:
- Use a fantastic, eye-catching and unique image
- Use a simple sign up and entry form
- Collect email addresses
- Make your contest easy to share and reward sharing with extra entries
- Share via multiple channels and social media sites
- Share contest multiple times
- Track success
The most successful contests are promoted via multiple channels and shared multiple times over the course of the contest period. Use all the social networks including Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course your website to access the maximum reach of your network and your entrants networks.
- Instagram Competitions have helped increase JumpLife’s social media, website traffic and email sign ups
#5: Use A Website Pop up
If you’ve read any popular blogs lately you will have no doubt seen a revival of the website popup.
Some might hate them, some might love them, but they are there for a reason – they work.
These highly converting pop ups come in all shapes, sizes and functionality options and here’s what we have found works the best to get the most from your website popup:
- Use exit-intent to only show the popup when the visitor is going to leave your site
- Offer something for free, such as a PDF download, email course or discount coupon to attract subscribers
- Use an eye-catching design
- Make sure it is very fast loading
- Use emotional text to capture attention
- Use A/B testing to see which version of your popup works best
If you run a WordPress-based website then we recommend these plugins:
- Optinmonster (premium)
- Sumome (free + paid add-ons)
- Leadin (slide in)
- Blooms by Elegant Themes (premium)
If you’re not using WordPress there are still options out there – consult with your web developer or online marketer about how to implement these technologies, do your research to come up with the wording and always be testing.
I hope these strategies help you to grow your business’s valuable email marketing asset.
Of course, none of this will work unless you take action – which strategy are you going to implement first?
