Many online publications may try to convince you that email marketing is dead, but as always, you can't believe everything you read online! In fact, to this day, email marketing remains one of the best ways to maximize your business's profit, as the return on investment (ROI) is one of the highest out of all marketing methods (about $36 in return for every $1 spent).
Research has shown that almost 100% of consumers check their email on a daily basis. This process occurs on multiple devices: laptops, tablets, work PCs, and of course, mobile phones. Therefore, if your email marketing campaign is well-made and you have a healthy email list, it can significantly benefit your business.
Of course, for an email marketing campaign to work, you need to have subscribers, which brings us to the topic of today's article—growing your email list. Below, we will look at eight practical tips to help you get more email subscribers and build your list.
Give People a Reason to Subscribe
The average person's email inbox is already overflowing, so there needs to be a good reason for them to say "yes" to receiving more. That's why it's vital that a subscription to your email list brings a benefit to the customer and improves their relationship with your brand.
One way to go about this is by giving people discounts for subscribing. Additionally, you can provide subscribers with free lessons or materials as a "thank you" for their subscription if you're a service-based brand.
Design Your Website to Convert
This doesn't mean you have to redesign your whole website. Instead, consider making some minor tweaks here and there to optimize your site for leads. If potential subscribers are already on the website, take advantage of that and give them ample opportunities to subscribe to your email list.
Remember, you only have a matter of moments to grab their attention, so an encouragement to subscribe to your email list is one of the first things visitors should see when they go to your page. Think pop-ups and "Enter Your Email to Get Started" buttons.
Create High-Value Content Consistently
Creating valuable content is one of the best ways to build your company's reputation, get regular website traffic, and get people on your digital mailing list. Regularly posting blogs, hosting webinars, and being active on social media are ways to establish your business as an industry leader and give people a reason to want to subscribe to your email list. Even better if people can only access certain exclusive content over email.
Create an Email Landing Page
Creating a dedicated landing page for opt-ins ensures there's always a place users can go to sign up, even if they've already X'd out of your pop-up.
Having a separate landing page can also help you promote your email list through other marketing channels. For example, say you're promoting your email content to followers on social media, you can provide them with the link for the landing page instead of having them go to your website's homepage.
Trigger Pop-Ups When Visitors Are About to Bounce
With pop-ups, timing is everything. Many businesses trigger a pop-up for visitors a few seconds after landing on their page, but have you considered adding more?
Of course, too many pop-ups are downright annoying to consumers, but having a pop-up appear whenever a visitor is showing intent to exit your site can act as a "last-ditch effort" and capture their attention before they leave.
Place Subscriber Boxes at the End of Your Content
As we already mentioned, you don't want opt-in requests to take over your site altogether. Uninterrupted content is more readable and allows users to get value from your blogs or social media posts. Placing your subscribe boxes at the end of content pages is a great workaround.
This way, user experience is preserved, but you still get to promote your email list to visitors (who are more likely to subscribe since they just got great value from your content!).
Encourage Subscribers to Invite Friends and Family
Have your subscribers do some groundwork for you and encourage them to forward your content to their friends and family. You can offer an additional discount if someone gets their friend or a family member to join, giving people a reason to share beyond spreading value to others.
The general idea here is to create a snowball effect—one subscriber forwards to their friends, these friends forward to their family members, etc.
Create a Vault of Subscriber-Exclusive Content
Nowadays, traditional opt-in offers don't seem to work. Consumers only see so much value in weekly newsletters or infrequent coupon offers. A great solution to this—and a way to revamp your email marketing—is by creating a vault of valuable content that only email subscribers can access.
This vault could contain special reports, e-books, exclusive pieces of training, webinar content, etc. The goal is to fill this "vault" with content that people actually want to consume: truly valuable tips and insights, discussions with experts, and more.
The Bottom Line...
Building an email list isn't easy. Unless you have something to offer subscribers, the cons of opting in to an email list often outweigh the pros for many consumers. To grow your list, make sure your opt-in encouragements are plentiful on your website and in your content and make sure the user receives value in return for signing up.
For more email marketing advice, contact the experts at Madak. Unlike many email subscribers out there, we promise to open and read what you send us!