Here is email marketing 101: increasing your email subscriber list is the key to steady business success. Truth be told, this is an immensely difficult task, one that can take a lot of time. And we all know how much we want to achieve our goals overnight. While quick results may be short lives, investing time and effort in a robust email marketing strategy is a surefire way to benefit your online presence.
Marketing your company with an email newsletter is difficult, but it’s worth the effort. Reaching 10,000 subscribers can be seen as one major milestone in any industry. Achieving this number requires a combination of several methods to draw interested readers in!
Your email subscriber list is like a sad song that degrades over time if you don’t add fresh contacts to it. The reason is contacts’ email addresses change as they move from one company to another, opt-out of your communication or abandon an address they only used for forms on websites.
All these make it hard if not impossible to find the right person in order to send them new offers! Purchasing email lists might seem like a good idea at first glance. However, there are many pitfalls associated with this method like high cost per mile (CPM) and low deliverability rates due to an increased likelihood of being marked as spam.
So what’s the solution to building a smart email marketing campaign that produces quality leads and customers? Today, we are bringing you 15 successful strategies to grow your email subscriber list to 10,000 and beyond.
Build A Smart Strategy
The first step in any business growth plan is to have a strategy in place. This will help ensure that your efforts are focused and effective. There are a number of different ways to go about this, but we recommend using the AIDA model:
A – Attention: Get the attention of your target audience with an irresistible offer or lead magnet.
I – Interest: pique their interest with relevant and valuable content.
D – Desire: build desire for your product or service by highlighting the benefits and features.
A – Action: include a strong call to action that inspires them to take the next step.
This model can be applied to your email list growth strategy in a number of ways, but one of the most effective is through the use of lead magnets.
Create Laser-Specific Lead Magnets
When looking to grow your email subscriber list, it’s important to add value to the reader’s experience. Also, make sure you tailor your efforts to segments of your audience and monitor their preferences closely. Being generic is just not going to cut it.
Now that you know who your target audience is and what they want, it’s time to create a lead magnet that will appeal to them. A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer in exchange for someone’s contact information, such as their email address.
Email marketing materials can be anything from a free e-book or white paper, to a discount or coupon code. The important thing is that it’s something that your target audience will find valuable and be willing to exchange their contact information for.
Start A Blog
To get the most out of your newsletter, host your own WordPress blog and get all those fun plugins that allow you to gather data (such as WPForms and Formidable Forms). If you want to build a clean and authentic list then you have to constantly post fresh content.
DevriX creates immaculate WordPress sites and assists you through all the stages. With their help, your blog will be getting a high volume of subscribers in no time.
Write High-quality Content
Your content should concentrate on getting the attention of your target audience, piquing their interest, building desire for your product or service, and inspiring them to take action. Hence, make it well-written, relevant, and valuable.
When it comes to growing your email subscriber list, quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have a smaller list of engaged subscribers than a large list of leads that are not interested. So, how can you write high-quality content that will appeal to your target audience and encourage them to sign up for your email list?
Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Write compelling headlines that make people want to read your content.
- Use strong calls to action that inspire people to take the next step.
- Provide value by teaching them something new, entertaining them, or solving a problem they have.
- Write in a clear and concise manner. Summarize the content to shorten it, if needed.
- Be consistent with your brand voice and tone.
Offer Something
This is the world of trade and if you have nothing to give then you have nothing to take. You have to offer your audience something of value in exchange for subscribing. Present the benefit of subscribing in a convincing way so that the person wants to buy it. For instance, vouchers or ebooks work well and should be a good incentive.
Make It Easy to Subscribe
It might seem like a no brainer, but you would be surprised at how many people make it difficult for their audience to subscribe. The sign-up form should be easy to find and fill out. You don’t want to make your audience jump through hoops just to subscribe.
Also, make sure you allow people to subscribe to your email list without having to create an account. This will make it easier and less time-consuming for people to sign up, which will result in more subscribers.
Here are some good spots for a newsletter signup form:
After your blog posts
You can strategically place newsletter signup forms after your most popular articles.
As pop-ups
Make sure they are short and don’t appear immediately after the visitor has landed on a page.
As a floating signup form
Floating signup forms follow the visitor as they scroll down a page. However, if you choose this option, make sure the form is not intrusive and doesn’t cover the copy on the page.
Add a newsletter signup checkbox to comments
If you have a comments section in your blog, chances are you already require users to enter their emails to submit their opinion. This is primarily for spam prevention but adding a signup checkbox can increase your email subscriber list with individuals who were already invested enough in your content.
Promote Extensively
Experts suggest that if a user is prompted to enter an email several times, they eventually end up subscribing. You cannot just put up a form on some corner and expect people to fill it out. Bring it forward and really sell it to the user. Only then will you have a chance of a successful subscription. But beware; you do not want it to be annoying.
Assuming you have a great email newsletter, the following tips will help you promote it extensively on your email subscriber list quickly.
1. Leverage social media
Social media is a powerful tool that can be used to promote your email newsletter. Make sure to post on all of your social media channels, and encourage your followers to sign up. You can also run social media ads that target your ideal audience and promote your newsletter.
2. Collaborate with other businesses
Reach out to businesses in your industry and see if they would be interested in collaborating with you to boost your email subscriber list. This could involve them sharing your newsletter on their social media channels, or promoting it to their email list.
3. Write blog posts about your newsletter
Write blog posts that talk about your email newsletter and why people should sign up. Make sure to include a call to action at the end of each post that leads to your newsletter sign-up page.
4. Send out email blasts
Send out email blasts to your existing list of contacts, and encourage them to sign up for your newsletter. You can also purchase email lists from third-party providers and send out promotional emails to those people. Just make sure you are only sending emails to people who have opted-in to receive them.
5. Run ads
You can run ads on Google, Facebook, and other platforms to promote your email newsletter. Make sure to target your ideal audience with your ads, and include a call-to-action that leads to your newsletter sign-up page.
A/B Testing
You have to try split testing with your forms and landing pages to see what works best. Even a tiny positioning error or an unnecessary field could put off a valuable client, and you obviously do not want that.
This is all the easier now with so many online tools like Google Optimize, OptinMonster and MailChimp. Experts say that conversions can be improved significantly with A/B testing and here your conversion goal is getting email addresses.
Keep it Simple
Make sure that the user does not have to do much when entering information because if they get confused then they will probably not try again. Also, keep the fields as simple as possible with the necessary scripting. Sometimes the hints get appended with the email address and are rejected by the server. For this very reason, it is so much better to have experts on your side like DevriX who have years of WordPress development experience.
Email Segmentation
Email segmentation is the process of dividing your email list into smaller groups based on certain criteria. This could involve grouping people together based on their location, age, gender, interests, or other factors.
In fact, email segmentation allows you to send more targeted and relevant emails to each group. This, in turn, can lead to higher open and click-through rates, and more engaged subscribers.
It is important to note that you should not segment your list too much. If you segment your list too much, it will become difficult to manage and you will not be able to send out as many emails. Try to keep your segments to a maximum of 5-10.
By segmenting your email list, you can send more targeted and relevant emails that will resonate with each group. This can lead to higher open and click-through rates, and more engaged subscribers.
Diversify Medium
As a blogger, your main playground is the written word, but it never hurts to try out new media, especially if it allows you to stretch your audience base. Videos, podcasts, and images are all getting very popular and might strike a chord with someone who may not like to read all that much.
You need traffic to convert subscriptions and in order to increase that you have to work on your content strategy.
Let the User Decide
There is nothing that repels online audiences more than an in-your-face and pushy opt-in form. You should design your opt-in form in such a way that they have control over what they divulge.
The person should also have the option to not subscribe and move on. If you do give an option to end or close the pop-up form then the user might leave the website altogether which is the worst possible scenario.
Social Proof
Social proof is a proven way to motivate people to sign up for something and works great in getting maximum conversions. What proof you use is up to you and what you have to show. If you have someone famous on board, you can mention that. If you already have 1000+ subscribers, perhaps you can indicate that.
Track
You need to analyze what is going on and how users are interacting with your websites or emails. This will show you what is wrong and what is deterring people from entering their email addresses.
The analytical tools are really good and produce results that are comprehensive and accurate. DevriX can do all of this for you with their maintenance plans where you get maximum opt-ins through continuous improvement.
Create Quality Emails
When sending out opt-in forms in emails, be careful about spam filters as they are pretty smart now. You have to carefully craft emails that are genuine and originate from an authentic domain. For email opt-ins to be successful, you need the lowest bounce rate you can achieve. Check out this article to get some important tips about avoiding the dreaded spam filters.
Be Genuine
This should probably be the first tip to steadily boost your email subscriber list. Sometimes in all the hustle to increase numbers, we forget about transparency and commitment. The important thing to know here is people really appreciate genuineness and if you tell them who you are, they will be more likely to trust you.
This means that it is fine to experiment a bit when it comes to email lists. It depends on you and the kind of subscribers you want. Simple is good, but boring is not, so try to think on those terms when you design the forms or emails.
Making your own email list is the absolute best thing you can do for your blog because as opposed to purchased lists, these will be relevant, active and more likely to respond.
Bottom Line
The list of tips above is a great starting off point for building your email subscriber list. If you follow these tips and put in the hard work, you’ll be well on your way to having an extensive email list that represents engaged customers. Remember, it takes time and effort to grow a high-quality email subscriber base, but it’s definitely worth the investment! What are some other methods you’ve used to increase your email subscriber base? Let us know in the comments below!