You need a way to build a newsletter subscriber list, and you need it now. You’ve read the articles and seen the statistics, and you know an email newsletter could be a great marketing channel for your business.
It’s cost-effective, easy to implement, and gives you an extremely trackable ROI so you can be sure your efforts are paying off.
So you’ve planned out your email marketing strategy, designed your newsletters, and have engaging content ready to send. What you don’t have is a subscriber list so you have someone to send your emails to.
Fortunately, we’ve got some innovative email marketing ideas that will help you build your subscriber list in a hurry.
1. Offer Content Upgrades
Offering content upgrades is one of the most effective ways to build your subscriber list. These list building boosters are similar to the standard opt-in offer but targeted in a way that makes them vastly more effective. And best yet you can quickly create the content for these offers from the material you have already produced.
Content upgrades are so effective because they provide visitors with a resource for the topic they are interested in at that very moment. You can easily create content upgrades from your blogs, podcasts, slide shares, and videos virtually every one of the resources you produce on a regular basis can be turned into a content upgrade. Here’s how.
Take a look at your content and consider how it can be turned into an additional resource that will help visitors further. A “how to” blog post can easily be turned into a checklist, cheat sheet for quick reference, or an infographic. Videos lend themselves to transcripts, slideshares, and pdfs.
Not an expert at creating these content formats? Don’t worry there are tons of free content templates available that will help you use this online marketing idea to build subscribers.
Related Article: 5 Practical Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing Campaign
2. Optimize Your Emails for Mobile
Fifty-five percent of your subscribers will be opening your email on a mobile device, according to the latest 2016 email analytics from Litmus. HubSpot reports that 69 percent of mobile users delete emails that aren't optimized for mobile.
This means that if you haven’t optimized your emails for mobile, your potential subscribers may be deleting your emails before they even make it all the way through your opt-in process.
You don’t have to try to optimize your emails on your own. There are many free or inexpensive email templates available online that feature responsive design. Use them to create mobile-friendly emails that can be easily read, shared, and followed on any device.
3. Gate Access to Your Website or Resources
If your company offers popular services or products through its website or has a killer blog that gets a ton of traffic, you can require visitors to offer their email to reach your homepage or blog. Many sites are using this email marketing strategy with great success, but it only works if you have an interested, motivated audience.
If your website is still finding its audience, you will need to downsize this strategy. You don’t want to discourage visitors from viewing your website. Instead, offer gated resources that your visitors will value, such as ebooks, white papers, and slide shares, in exchange for their email address.
Related Article: The 7 Emails You Need to Be Sending Your Mailing List
4. Put Opt-Ins in Your Blog Headers
Capture new subscribers with an opt-in pop-up form on your blogs. When new visitors follow a link to check out one of your blogs, greet them with a pop-up window that features your blog header with an opt-in form for gated content directly below. To avoid annoying long-time fans, make your pop-up a smart form so repeat visitors don’t have to click out of it every time they access your site.
5. Add Signup CTAs to Your Website
Incorporate CTAs in key places throughout your website to gain new subscribers. The most popular pages in a typical business website are the Home Page, Blog, and About Us, so make sure your CTA is prominently displayed on these pages.
Forget about putting your CTAs in a sidebar. The latest research suggests that is one of the online marketing strategies that has outlived its usefulness. You can increase conversions by using an in-line CTA instead, placed within your content at the end of the web page.
6. Add a Pop-Up Exit Window to Your Website
Before your website visitors leave your site, give them one more chance to convert to subscribers. Add a pop-up window for gated content that triggers when visitors mouse off your web page.
This email marketing strategy can be a highly effective tool as long as you keep a strict eye on your pop-up design. Make your pop-up too difficult to click out of, and you could chase off interested visitors by obscuring the content that brought them to your site in the first place.
Design your window with a clear, easily accessed opt-out line, and test it with mobile devices to make sure it works correctly no matter how your website is accessed.
7. Make Your CTAs More Effective
One of the key factors in gaining email subscribers is crafting effective CTAs (call-to-actions) that inspire visitors to convert. A simple “submit” button or is not going to do the trick. Make your CTAs direct, polite, creative, and action-based. Action-based CTAs like “Get started!” or “Download now” will get a much better response than an insipid “click here”.
8. Share Referrals on Social Media
This email marketing strategy gives you a way to offer social proof for your newsletter even if you have don’t have a lot of subscribers yet. Look through the analytics for your emails, website, and social media, searching for subscribers who are particularly engaged with your content. A Tweet or Facebook post with a referral from one of these engaged subscribers can generate a lot of interest in your newsletter.
9. Gain Subscribers Through Facebook
It just takes a minute to add a “Sign up” CTA button to your Facebook page. Some of the most successful internet companies have found great success with these little buttons, which fit right on the header of your Facebook Business page. If necessary, spruce up your page header to make sure the CTA button stands out to attract the maximum notice.
Related Article: Inbox Issues: How to Fail at Email Marketing
10. Last but Not Least, Leverage Your Current Email List
Your existing email clients can do a lot of the needed work to help you build up your subscriber list. These subscribers already know and like your newsletters you just need to add sharing buttons to make it easy for them to share your emails with their friends and colleagues.
Encourage these new readers to become subscribers by including a dynamic CTA at the end of each of your emails. You can also offer a referral reward in the form of bonus content or a discount for subscribers who sign up a friend.
This list of email marketing ideas should give you a start on building your subscriber list. As you put them into practice, use the analytics from your various online marketing strategies to see which ones are succeeding and which need some tweaking to work with your audience. Adjust them as you go along and you should start seeing your email subscriber list growing by leaps and bounds. Good luck.