People generally don't have any idea on how to grow their email lists? They generally tend to put a form in a sidebar or homepage and wait for wonders to happen. They do not put any additional efforts to increase their subscribers. This leads to a very slow increase in their subscriber base.
If you need to grow fast you need to interact with your users regularly and give multiple reasons for your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter.
In this article, I will share multiple proven ways and effective ideas which you can use to grow your email list, and improve your conversions.
Introduction
The most important thing to start with email marketing is using the right email marketing service.
It is very important to choose the right email marketing company in order to reduce the costs and do proper automation through micro-targeting. Also if you choose the right email provider you will be equipped with the right tools to increase your list.
There are many players like active campaign & get response which do fairly well in deliverability and automation.
1. Sign-up forms for lead generation
In this example, you can see a signup form in the sidebar, what most people do as I have pointed out in the starting of the article. But the truth is this does not suffice if you want to grow your email list fast you need to get leads from multiple sources.
Just for starting out, I recommend that you make the toolbar a sticky one, which increases the chances of getting leads.
2. On-site retargeting pop-ups
On site retargeting pop ups commonly called as exit pop ups is also a very good way to get more subscribers. All the advanced WordPress plugins or services like Poptin etc. use exit-Intent tech that tracks the user's mouse movement and shows a sign up at the time as soon it realizes that there is an exit-intent or the visitor is about to close the tab and leave the site.
This is a very powerful technique to try to grab users attention at the time when they are leaving.
When you use this technique with other pop-ups like the lightbox pop-ups, sidebar lead generation forms and welcome pop-ups it gives the maximum output.
3. Exclusive content
You can offer your readers access to exclusive content by subscribing to your newsletter.
You can also make your exclusive content as ephemeral content, to create a sense of emergency as well.
It is a technique often used by marketers to get more subscribers. It's a win-win situation as the subscribers too then some knowledgeable content, hacks etc.
Let’s take up some examples:
While researching I found this quite useful blog on content upgrade ideas you can check it out.
There is a psychology principle known as Zeigarnik Effect, which clearly describes that people are more likely to complete a task if they initiated themselves rather than doing it by force. Now let me explain how it works in exclusive content upgrades.
When a person clicks a button which says “Click to download” then your visitor is more likely to subscribe to your list.
One more thing to mention here. Implementing direct mail advertising into your email marketing strategy is another great way to grow your email list. With direct mail, you can easily connect with customers via online marketing platforms. You can test your audience and schedule campaigns with lists that become an asset for a business.
4. Use contact us page
Why leave any opportunity you can get to grow your list?
This strategy is an add-on to your contact page you can put a small checkbox which can add the visitors to your email list that wants to reach out to you. To make things interesting you can make the box pre-populated.
If you are using WordPress, you can use numerous form plugins to embed a contact form. All the plugins generally get well connected to all the popular email services out there. All this information collected via form is automatically replicated in your email service’s dashboard which you can use to send free email auto responders.
5. Create gated content
As the name suggests a gated content is an inaccessible piece of content until the visitor or user provides his email address. You can also show the starting of your content and can use it to invoke the desire to read the full content and then ask for their email ID to let them read the full content.
If you work on WordPress there are numerous plugins that let you do this with JAVAscript that does not worstly affect your SEO.
You can refer to this article if you are looking at locking content in WordPress.
6. Create offers & giveaways
The easiest way to increase your list is to give offers or give away contests in return for subscribing to your list. Don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be an expensive gift or offer.
People can participate in your contests just by subscribing to your list, following you on social media or sharing the contest on their social media website.
7. Discount coupons
This is a common way to grow your list by providing your subscribers, discount coupons or coupon codes.
By combining this strategy in your abandoned cart email, you will kill two birds with one bullet. Let me explain - You can send a discount coupon to the abandoned cart users and give them an additional off if they provide you with their email ID. Suppose you can give a discount of 15% overall you can split it as 10% to abandoned cart shoppers and additional 5% discount when they provide you with their email address.
I have personally used this strategy and it does wonders. I recommend it to all the readers of this content.
8. Lead magnets
I am sure you must have heard of the term lead magnets, so are you familiar with what they are and how to use them to capture leads?
Let me be blunt with you, a lead magnet is a kind of bribe that you give your visitors for their email addresses.
All the above methods are a sub part of lead magnets. A lead magnet can be anything that solicits a visitor to reveal its contact information.
But make sure that all your efforts provide some kind of benefit or reward for your subscriber as well, otherwise, they will realize it and fall out of your list.
9. Use Facebook page to grow your list
I think most of you must have noticed CTA buttons on Facebook pages. Facebook launched this feature sometime back but you can use it efficiently to grow your email list. I am referring to the buttons that are present on the right-hand side just below your cover image. You can check out the image below for a better understanding.
You can easily add a call to action button to your Facebook page. When you create your Facebook page you should see a “Add a Button” option, as shown in the below image. When you click the button, it will open a pop up, you need to select “Get in touch tab” and then choose ‘Sign Up’.
Now you can add a link to your website. Any visitor that clicks on this button will be navigated to the desired URL on your website.
Make sure to save the changes that you have made.
10. Use Twitter to grow your list
Twitter Ads offers another social platform that you can use to boost your lead generation efforts.
Like Facebook, Twitter too lets you grow your list using Twitter lead generation campaigns. You can pursue your visitors to sign up to your list using Twitter.
You can use this platform in multiple ways like driving traffic to your website and using email signup forms as a conversion.
You can also create discounts and coupons on your website for your Twitter users and tweet the URL and use a form to collect their contact information and email them the coupon codes.
Taking advantage of Twitter to grow your list is such a smart move especially if you are keen on extracting Twitter email for marketing purposes. Since this social media platform is huge enough to cover diverse audience, it is considered as among the best sources to grow your lead generation list.
11. Use YouTube to grow your list
Not everyone knows that Youtube can be a great source of collecting contact information, leave alone practice it. Everyone is well aware of the popularity of Youtube and its humongous user base.
If you have a channel you can use it to increase your subscribers using Youtube cards.
Youtube cards are the interactive info that you can add to your videos. These can be used to add CTA’s and drive traffic to your lead generation page.
Here is a step-by-step guide by Google support on how to add action cards on your youtube videos.
12. After post CTA’s
As the name clearly states after post CTA’s refer to the subscriber forms after the content. This strategy gives the best sign up percentage as a person scrolls the content and reaches the end that clearly shows that the person sees value in your content and is most likely to subscribe to your newsletter.
You can also use this strategy with in-line subscriber forms as well. They differ from after post CTA’s in the sense that they are present in between the long content. This technique works very well as at this point the readers are engrossed with reading your content and you have their full attention.
13. Add CTA’s in headers
Anyone visiting your website will most probably look at your headers. It is the most prominent part of any website. More visibility means getting more subscribers.
You can add a CTA to your header like a free ebook download, toolkit, etc, and collect the contact information to share the link for the same.
14. Social proof to get more subscribers
This is a proven method to grow your subscriber list. Social Proof encourages the FOMO or fear of missing out among your readers. This technique is often used by marketers to gain more subscribers, get more conversions, etc.
Now social proof can be used in many ways:
If you have an ecommerce website you can always use services like trustpulse which shows the notification about the last product being sold to your existing customers. This increases the trust in your brand.
15. Using games to increase your list
Marketers often use this strategy to get more subscribers and grow their email list. I came through the Monsterinsight blog which uses spin a wheel game to get more subscribers.
Also I found this tutorial on how you can add a spin a wheel game to your landing pages to increase the conversions.
16. Use A/B test
In marketing, it is essential to know what is working and what is not, but most marketers are not fully aware that you can do A/B testing with your subscriber forms as well.
It is also mandatory to know which form gets you the best conversions. Use A/B tests to improve your subscriber base.
Conclusion - how to grow your email list: simple and effective ideas
Hope you liked our article!! Make your own email growth strategies by thinking how and where your users interact with your business, I am sure now you can come up with some innovative and quirky ideas.
Try any one of the strategies stated above and note the big change in your email list growth and eventually your conversions. You will be amazed by the sheer impact these small tweaks have on your business.
