One reason why email marketing generates high ROI is that it gets your content directly in the inbox of your target audience. The newsletter is the primary type of content for an email marketing campaign.
There’s a high probability of your newsletter getting read because its recipient voluntarily signed up for a subscription. Thus, to ensure the success of your email marketing campaign, you must get more people to subscribe to your newsletter.
While other online entrepreneurs are staring blankly at their computer screens wondering how to bump up their number of subscribers, we’re here to give you 9 proven ways to get your newsletters to more inboxes.
9 Winning Ways To Get More Newsletter Subscribers
To be clear, we don’t want you to build just a list. We want you to build a list of subscribers who are genuinely interested in your products and have the highest probability of becoming paying customers.
Your efforts might have resulted in a massive number of subscribers – but if they don’t convert into sales, what then is the value of that list?
Our 9 tips below will help you build a list of newsletter subscribers who look forward to your content and are ready to buy your products or services.
1. Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse
People are checking their emails multiple times a day. The inbox can be crammed with so many emails that they spend time filtering it of useless information.
If you’re going to convince someone to give up his email, you have to make it worth his time and come up with an offer he can’t refuse.
Here are a few examples of offers that will turn you into “The Godfather of Subscriptions”:
- Offer generous discounts
- Giveaway free stuff
- Give free consultation sessions
- Provide limited-time-only access to premium services or content
- Inform site visitors of special subscriber-only benefits
- Create special one-time offers for first-time subscribers
- Unlock gated content
Remember, you can’t make money without spending money.
Sometimes you’ll have to give up assets such as e-books, modules, consultation time, or compromise profit margins in the case of product discounts and freebies to get something valuable from your audience.
2. Keep the Signup Process As Simple As Possible
If you want to ask for a site visitor’s email address, then just ask for his email address.
Simple as that.
Don’t make your guest jump through hoops after he’s expressed interest in giving you his email address. Don’t ask for his full name, last name, middle initial, phone number, residence, and especially birth date.
Just require the site visitor to enter his email address in your newsletter subscription box.
Also, the signup box must be highly visible. Here are our recommended locations for a signup box on a webpage:
- At the conclusion of a post
- Top of the sidebar
- Footer
- Top header
If you’re employing buttons as part of the design, choose brighter colors or variations of hues. To be sure, run a beta test on the location of the signup button and its color.
3. Ask Your Subscribers for Help
There’s no harm in asking for help – even from your subscribers. Include a request in your newsletter for the subscriber to forward your content to other people in their contacts list.
Keep it short and sweet; don’t demand anything. Remember, you’re asking for their help.
You might also want to consider incentivizing your subscriber with giveaways, special discounts, and referral points for every successful signup.
For example:
“Thank you for being a part of my community! If you enjoyed my content so far, please feel free to spread the word to your friends and family. All you have to do is to share this email with them.
“As my way of saying ‘thanks’, I’ll give you 50% off your next purchase. Just type in the code below.”
The worst-case scenario is that they won’t do anything. The best-case scenario is that they’ll help you get more signups to grow your business.
4. Personalize Your Subscriptions
As we mentioned earlier, people check their emails multiple times a day. Just because they do, it doesn’t mean that they enjoy doing it. Sometimes email notifications can be bothersome.
When offering newsletter subscriptions, give the subscriber a measure of control by presenting personalized options:
- Standard Subscription – 4 newsletters per week
- Light Subscription – 1 newsletter per week
- Extra-Light Subscription – 1 newsletter per month
Trust us when we say that the subscriber will appreciate you for giving him these options. It shows that you understand how he values his time and that you wouldn’t want him to be inconvenienced by more emails.
Another benefit of these personalized subscription packages is that the risk of recipients unsubscribing to your newsletter will be much lower.
5. Write Amazing Content – Consistently
It won’t matter if our tips help you generate a thousand more subscribers if your content isn’t consistently good.
People will unsubscribe if they find your content not useful, uninformative, uninteresting, and poorly written. It will be seen as a nuisance instead of having value.
This is why it’s important to segment your email list. Don’t write and send the same newsletters to everyone because your subscribers don’t have the same interests or concerns.
The challenge of writing consistently amazing content is that it requires a lot of time. A newsletter is a short piece of content that only averages around 300 words. But it still needs to be properly researched, written, and formatted for your subscribers.
Even if you’re a good writer, a better option would be to outsource content writing to a third party.
We do content writing for our clients and they’ve found that this decision allowed them to be more productive with their time. They can work on the day-to-day needs of their business while being assured of quality content every time.
You can check out our blogs here. We can also create ebooks, product reviews, guide books, web page copy, marketing copy, and of course, newsletters.
6. Utilize Your Social Media Platforms
Checking their social media is a must-do in the daily agenda of over 4 billion people. If you have less than a thousand followers on your business page, don’t worry because as long as you stay active, your content will land on the screens of over a thousand people.
You can find out how many people saw your content in the Audience Reach metric. If your Engagement metric is 10% of the total Audience Reach- you’re in a good spot!
This is why you should utilize social media as a platform to get more newsletter subscribers. You just have to do 3 things:
- Add a Call-to-Action (CTA) that specifically instructs the reader to sign up for your newsletter.
- Include a link to a web page that has the signup link or to a specially-designed signup page.
- Write great content all the time.
Here’s an example of a CTA for your newsletter subscription:
“We hope you enjoyed this article. To get more of our amazing content, click this link and subscribe to our newsletter.”
Think about it.
If you have an Audience Reach of 5,000 with 10% Engagement, then you have a pool of 500 people who might be interested in signing up for your newsletter. A success rate of 2% still gives you 10 new subscribers on your email list.
7. Add Newsletter Signup Pop-ups
You might have come across websites whereby as you’re about to leave, a CTA pops up on the screen. These pop-ups are designed to keep you on the page longer and designed to elicit a desired emotion that compels you to take action.
The pop-ups are sometimes called “Exit-Intent” pop-ups and they do work!
Add a newsletter signup that pops up on the visitor’s screen as he’s about to leave. He might not be clicking out of your site but just switching to another tab. For example, maybe he wants to check his email or continue working on a project.
The newsletter pop-up can be written with a humorous twist:
“Ouch! That’s page abandonment! Give us another chance. Here’s a free ebook if you sign up for our monthly newsletter.”
The design should be good as well. With a humorous copy, keep the design of the pop-up vibrant and cheerful. Use bright colors, animated characters, and dynamic font styles.
8. Highlight Your Testimonials
Testimonials are powerful tools that can influence consumers’ decisions. Reach out to your long-time subscribers and ask them if they’re willing to give a testimonial about your newsletters.
Again, don’t be afraid to ask. Running a successful business means maintaining good relationships with your customers.
The worst thing that can happen is they say ‘No”. You can mitigate the risk of rejection by throwing in a freebie or a discount in exchange for a testimonial. After all, you’re going to use the testimonials to generate a list that can potentially earn you more money. Consider the freebie or discount as a cost of producing sales.
You can post the testimonials on your homepage or you can create a post specifically about them and share it on your social media pages.
9. Come Up With A Compelling CTA
A recurring message in this article is to not be afraid to ask your customers of site visitors for assistance. Let’s take that message a step further.
Don’t be afraid to tell the site visitor or customer what to do next.
Someone comes across your content. What do you want him to do next? You have no idea if he enjoyed your content or not. Take the chance that he did and tell him – no – instruct him to sign up for your newsletter.
You might be pleasantly surprised that he’ll do as you commanded. Remember, readers want to be guided on your website. If he enjoyed the content, why would he decline? Signing up for a newsletter makes it easier for him to receive your content.
The key to coming up with a compelling CTA is to be straightforward and upfront about what you want the site visitor to do. For this reason, your CTA must be direct and forceful.
If your CTA is weak and opens the possibility of the site visitor making another choice, then he won’t sign up.
Conclusion
Believe it or not, these 9 tips are just a sampling of techniques and tactics that you can do to get more newsletter signups.
We have other tricks up our sleeve and if you’re interested in finding out what these are, give us a call or drop us an email. Let’s schedule a quick 30-minute call and talk about your business and how we can help you get more high-quality leads.
And if you enjoyed this article, feel free to share it with your friends and family. Better yet, sign up for our newsletter!
