Gone are the days when launching a website or blog, writing some content, and putting ads on top of everything is enough. We have shifted from having to care about everyone all at once, to learning how to care for each of our visitors individually, tailoring to their specific needs. And this post from Buffer goes to show just how important of a revenue channel email marketing can be:
Basically, everything begins with content. People will find your site because of your amazing content. They will keep coming back for amazing content. Your amazing content will be the foundation of what you email to them, which will be the reason they stay subscribed (or not.) It all starts with amazing content.
The most difficult part of building an email list, is getting to have the first few hundred subscribers to sign-up. It’s tough when you’re investing time and energy into creating a list, but for the first few weeks you’re barely getting any sign-ups at all, this happens to everyone, any website owner, blogger or marketer goes through that phase, and did go through it, in order to get to the point where the list starts to show signs of healthy life.
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) out there, with the most widely available WordPress themes and plugins, and that gives you somewhat of an advantage of creating pages that will naturally attract more email subscribers. The goal of this post is to list the essential tips and tricks for optimizing your site to get email subscriptions as frequently as possible, to the point where every visitor on your site is aware of your email list.
1. Email marketing platform
It all begins with opening an account on a reliable and safe email marketing platform, that is where all your email subscribers are stored, and where all the magic happens in terms of sending newsletters, managing your list, and even analyzing it to the extent where you are learning more about your subscribers with every newsletter sent.
We recommend going with MailChimp as your starter plan, they offer a free plan that gives you access of storing 2,000 email addresses, to whom you can send out 10,000 emails a month in total. It’s more than enough to get you to the point where your email list is going to start paying for itself.
2. Email marketing plugin
An email marketing plugin is an extension to your WordPress site that allows you to collect emails in the form of popups, slide-ins, sticky bars, and sidebar widgets. In the recent year, one plugin of this nature has stood out the most, and it’s called SumoMe List Builder.
Countless users of SumoMe have written case studies of results that have increased the overall email signup rates by over 1,000% in just a few months. This interesting story in particular, covers how a user was able to generate over 2,200 signups in just over 100 days. The plugin is free from the WordPress plugin repository, and comes equipped with numerous other marketing tools that can spice up your conversion rates significantly.
3. Top and bottom of the page
If you’re using a subscriber popup plugin, perhaps this doesn’t apply as much, but if you aren’t fond of popups so much and want to collect emails in the traditional form of a HTML widget, then this tip might go a long way for you. Adding one signup box at the top of the page is not going to cut it, not if you want to get attention of the people who really enjoy your content, and actually take the time to read it to the end. These valuable readers possibly have missed your email subscription form.
In the example above, we can imagine that the two red boxes are our general content areas; the content itself, and the widget area. The two gray boxes are our email sign-up forms, one at the top of the widget area, and one below our main content. This way, when a user is finished with reading your piece of content, he may feel more compelled to use the sign-up form, given that they enjoyed the content you provide. It’s highly effective, and crucial.
4. Comment section opt-in
Your comment section is one of your most valued assets on your WordPress site, it’s where the discussion of the content you publish happens, and more often than not, it is a good place to inject a plugin that will allow you to collect subscribers from that part of the site as well.
The most easy way to achieve this, is by installing a plugin such as MailChimp Comment Optin. This plugin allows you to insert a checkbox at the end of your comment forms so your viewers can double opt-in to a MailChimp list of your choosing, but do keep in mind that comment services such as Disqus might not provide an opportunity like this.
5. Write with intention
It can sometimes get confusing, who are we writing for, why are we writing, how are others going to see what we have written, and so on. The best way to write, is to write with concise intention, and in case of email lists – the intention should be to get the user to sign-up for more! This could be achieved with posts such as:
- Content series, split into several parts. Large pieces of content that take time to write, but deliver great value. Encourage users to sign-up for future releases, but do keep them timed in a reasonable manner. Four part series over a period of one month can be of immense value to your email list. This strategy is great to build an email list while offering value to your readers.
- Promote your work. Are you writing an eBook? Cut out some snippets from your eBook and share them on your blog, encourage users to sign-up to your list to get free access to it. Easy as that! Sharing content on social media can be beneficial as well, but don’t neglect your site.
- Offering free stuff on your website can sometimes be quite ineffective, but that’s why it is important to select things to give away that people will really want, or need in their lives. All according to the niche that you work within.
Surely there are many other ways of utilizing this type of promotion through your content, video content also comes to mind when you think of it. If you want to build your list, and have the determination to do so, the matter of succeeding is only a few steps away.
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