While it may have been around for a while, email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing strategies for delivering an impressive return on investment. Although some skeptics have continued to proclaim that email marketing would eventually become extinct, there has been no evidence to indicate that to be the case. If anything, email marketing has continued growing at a steady pace. In fact, estimates indicate that by 2020, more than 255 million people will be using email, making now the ideal time to make it a goal to grow your email list.
What Is an Email List?
If you are new to email marketing, you might even find yourself asking what an email marketing list is and why you need one. Simply put, an email list is a list of the email addresses of people who have signed up and agreed to allow you to email them. You can use this list to send out business announcements, new blog posts, and even sales information about your services or products.
Benefits of Growing Your Email List
Did you know that email marketing can provide an average return on investment of 4300%? If that isn’t reason enough to work on growing your email list, consider the following benefits:
- Email lists make it easier to reach customers with pertinent messages
- Email is more personal
- Email makes it easier to encourage visitors to return.
- Email allows you to build trust
- Email helps you to grow your bottom line
Now that you know what email marketing is and why it’s so important to grow your list, let’s talk about ways you can actually begin growing that list. Below are some tips to help you do just that.
Did you know that email marketing can provide an average return on investment of 4300%?
18 Ways to Grow Your Email List
1. Use a Professional Email Marketing Service
Before you do anything else, you need to ensure you make use of a professional email marketing service. The last thing you want is for your emails to die a slow death in a spam folder. Using a strong email marketing service will ensure this does not happen. Remember, this is not the place to skimp on service costs. This is one of the areas that a little investment will pay off.
2. Utilize Multiple Signup Forms
Among the best ways to grow your subscriber list is to make use of multiple signup forms. Ultimately, you want to provide as many opportunities as possible for potential subscribers to join your list. A great way to do this is by combining a sidebar signup form with a lightbox popup or even a sticky floating bar. Don’t go overboard with the options, but utilize more than one technique if it fits your site.
3. Use Content Upgrades to Encourage New Subscribers
Ready to entice new subscribers to sign up for your email list? A great way to do so is by enticing them with the chance to receive exclusive content when they subscribe to your email list.
For instance, you might offer new subscribers the chance to receive transcripts from your podcast.
Another option would be to offer a PDF download version of a long blog post.
The options for offering content upgrades are almost limitless. Get creative and think about content that would appeal to your readers enough to get them to sign up for your email list.
Not sure where to get started with a content upgrade? Why not use a WordPress content upgrades plugin? This type of product makes it easy and fast to begin offering a content upgrade to your visitors while simultaneously encouraging them to share their email address.
For example:
Get the bonus content: 10 Keys to Great Landing Pages
4. Add Gated Content to Encourage New Signups
Gated content is an excellent way to encourage new people to join your email list. Not sure what gated content is? This type of content can only be accessed when the user enters his or her email address. Plugins can even be used for hiding content until the email address is entered.
In the past, gated content could potentially have a negative impact on SEO rankings. Today; however, thanks to JavaScript technology, this is no longer a concern. If you are still concerned about your SEO rankings or you are simply not sure where to get started when it comes to search engine optimization, consider signing up for WordPress SEO Training. With free SEO training, you can find out everything you need to know about making the most of your content.
5. Run Contests
One of the best and easiest ways to quickly gain new subscribers is to run a contest or a giveaway. You do not even need to offer an expensive prize to make the most of this type of campaign. Users can participate in the contest by following you on social media, social sharing, or providing their email address. Ultimately, this behavior snowballs and helps you to reach a much larger number of email signups.
There are even WordPress plugins you can use to make the process of running giveaways and contests much easier and ensure your campaign is a success.
6. Grow Your Email List with Multiple Lead Magnet Pages
Lead magnets work as excellent incentives to encourage users to exchange their email addresses for something they deem valuable. This could be content upgrades, locked content, or even premium content. Keep in mind that in order for this technique to work, you need to provide something that users believe to be valuable.
Other great options include checklists, ebook, workbook, etc. We wrote a great post on lead generation that will answer a lot of questions.
7. Use Deals and Discounts
An exclusive coupon or discount could be just what you need to encourage a user to sign up to receive your emails. Even if a user happened to be hesitant about placing an order, providing a discount might be just what it takes to assuage their concerns.
8. Grow Your List with Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an excellent opportunity to ask users to provide their email addresses. All users need to do is enter their email address and then subscribe by clicking a small checkbox and without needing to enter their email address again.
9. Include a Call to Action on Social Media
Your social media channels, including Facebook, are a great place to include a call to action. By simply adding one button, you can elicit a popup that gives readers multiple options, such as getting in touch with you or signing up for your newsletter. The more opportunities you provide for users to sign up, the greater the chance they will actually do so.
10. Leverage Lead Generation Cards on Twitter
Are you making the most of everything Twitter has to offer? If you are not using the service’s lead generation cards, you may not be doing everything you can to grow your email marketing list. You might not be aware of it, but you can actually run a lead generation campaign directly from the service.
With this strategy, users have the ability to sign up for your email marketing list without the need to ever even leave Twitter. By letting your audience stay on the social media platform they are using and still gain access to your content you are making it easy for them. The easier you make the signup process then the quicker you will see your numbers add up on your email list.
11. Use Action Cards with YouTube
Likewise, you can also make use of one of the largest social media platforms in the world to grow your subscriber list. YouTube action cards provide the opportunity to add a feature known as interactive information cards to every video you post. These cards can essentially be used as a call to action, thus encouraging users to sign up for your email list.
12. Make the Most of Post Opt-in Forms
Once a user has scrolled through an entire piece of content, you can make the most of a post opt-in form. The benefit of this technique is that you already know the user is interested in your content. As a result, there is a greater chance they will actually subscribe to your list.
13. Using In-line Opt-in Forms
Another option would be to use an in-line opt-in form. This type of opt-in form is contained within your blog post, rather than waiting to the end. The best place to position such an opt-in form is about mid-way through your post. This is approximately the point where most people have either become engaged with your content or are considering exiting the content, particularly if it’s a long post. Therefore, this is a great place to remind readers to sign-up to receive more exclusive content. A simple, yet effective way to grow your email list.
14. Add Slide-in Box Forms
It’s no secret that many users have a tendency to ignore signup forms of the static nature. Your goal is to attract the attention of your readers and encourage them to sign up. A slide-in box form does this quite well. Since this type of box scrolls, it remains out of a user’s way so they are able to view content.
15. Use a Call to Action within a Prominent Header
What’s the first thing your readers see? Your website header. This makes the header the best place to display a call to action. Many companies have a newsletter signup form in the header because of this prominent placement. Not sure how to handle that on your own? Consider using a page builder plugin.
This psychological effect is known as social proof and it’s a great tactic for giving users who may be a little concerned some peace of mind.
16. Encourage Signups with Social Proof
Did you know that many people feel more comfortable when they actually follow others? This psychological effect is known as social proof and it’s a great tactic for giving users who may be a little concerned some peace of mind. One way to make social proof work for you is to place a testimonial on your landing page. You could also include reviews or display the number of registered users you have.
Your landing page is the ideal place to position a WordPress landing pages plugin. This type of product gives you the ability to quickly garner the attention of your users.
17. Put Gamified Campaigns to Work for You
Another great way to increase user engagement is with gamification. Everyone likes to play games. With gamification, you can harness the desire of users to play games in order to boost your email signups. Use games such as a spinning wheel to capture the attention of your users.
18. Create a Poll
Keep your visitors engaged by asking for their input as well as their email address. Let’s face it, everyone likes to have their opinion and elicited and enjoys providing their feedback. Offering a poll gives you the ability to do that. You can easily add a poll to your content with a plugin addition.
Now that we’ve talked about ways to grow your list the work isn’t over. You still need to know the best practices for using your ever-expanding email marketing list and employ those strategies to make your email list work for you and your business.
In a recent webinar AJ Morris and Nathan Ingram took a deep dive into the ways to grow an email list. You can view the replay of the webinar. Or better yet, start training yourself or your team by joining iThemes Training.
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Keep reading the article at WordPress News and Updates from iThemes – iThemes. The article was originally written by Kristen Wright on 2020-03-03 11:21:00.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.