How to drive more subscribers to your email list

Pound-for-pound, your email list is – by far- the most valuable asset your company has.

With an organic, high-quality email list, you can deliver unbelievably focused email marketing campaigns that target your audience with great precision, at extremely low cost. It’s no shock that email marketing so consistently blows every other marketing form out of the water, in terms of ROI.

First, of course, you need to have that organic email list (and buying email lists is a terrible idea). Even if you already have a good amount of organic subscribers, you will always win big by growing your list by more subscribers- the more, the merrier.

Today, we will look at the best ways to grow your email list with organic, high-value subscribers, so that you can knock it out of the park with your next email campaigns.

Make it visible 

When visitors land on your website, they usually aren’t visiting with the direct intent of signing up to your list. To maximize your new subscribers, you need to be proactive in directing them to your signup prompt.

Put more simply- you should make your signup prompt large, visible, prominent, or otherwise attention-grabbing. Here are some ways to do this:

• Use a pop-up: This is one of the simplest, surest ways to get more signups from your web traffic. Have a simple pop-up welcome your visitors whenever they visit your web page and incentivize them to sign up. Just make sure to use non-spammy copy, and have a big strong ‘X’ at the top so visitors can close it without frustration.
• Prominent location: Keep your prompt on a sticky “above the fold” (visible without scrolling down the page at all). Or- better yet- you can keep the signup in an overlay that stays on the reader’s screen as they scroll down your web page. This is non-intrusive and keeps them continually exposed to your convenient signup form thereby increasing the odds that they eventually do sign up.
• Bright colours: Colors are great at grabbing attention, and make your signup prompt more interesting. This makes it more noticeable and increases the odds that they view your prompt without immediately “X’-ing out of it.
• Make it super simple: Keep the copy short and punchy, and ask for no more than 1 or 2 fields to be filled. You want to minimize the time and effort they need to spend.
• Mobile-friendly: Make sure your pop-up, overlay, and site is mobile-friendly, so mobile visitors can easily sign up on their phone.

Get the word out 

Besides simply optimizing your pre-existing web traffic, you can take a more proactive approach by promoting signup to your email list across various platforms.

• Use sales funnels: This is a spectacular option for those with no list, or, who simply want to be more aggressive and proactive with quickly building a list. You can generate web traffic, and funnel it towards a CTA for your email list. Sales funnels such as Clickfunnels, are a great way of doing this. 
• Paid ads: Facebook and Google ads are some very direct ways of pushing people to sign up for your email CTA. (This is, essentially, a watered-down version of the previous suggestion.)
• Promote your list op-tin across social media: LinkedIn, Youtube, and Facebook gives you a lot of space to write descriptions for your business- it’s easy to include a link to your email signup in there (in fact, Facebook allows 3rd-party apps to enable custom tabs on your business page- such as email signup!). However, for platforms with little space for text (Instagram, Twitter), it will be trickier. You can use a story on IG, or a pinned tweet on Twitter to keep your email signup at the top of the fold.

• Affiliate advertising: Offer an affiliate a certain amount of money each time they refer a subscriber to your list. Make sure you know your average CPL and lead value, and this is a zero-effort way to get extra subscribers for, effectively, free.
• Host a contest: This is a simple, fun way to connect your brand with its readers while growing your list.

Offer valuable incentives 

“What’s in it for me?” It’s a question we ask ourselves, every day, about everything. To get anyone to sign up to your list, you will want to answer this before they even get a chance to ask.

• Promise (and Deliver) Real Value: Offer things related to your brand and niche that will, in some way, help your readers. Tips and tricks, insider secrets, professional information, etc. Even something as simple as entertaining content can count. Ask yourself this- “what type of email would my target customer most want to get from me?”…Find that, and promise to deliver it in your emails.

• Giveaways: You can promote giveaways that require signup to your list in order to enter- you can promote these on your web pages, as well as on your social media, in sales funnels, and elsewhere. 

• Discounts: A very simple, common, and effective tactic. Promise first-time visitors X% off their first order if they sign up to your email list.

• Intrigue, Excitement: You can get quick signups from visitors by tempting them with curious or exciting offers that they need to sign up to see. Think among the lines of, “learn 4 major mistakes you might be making in ________: for email subscribers only! Sign up today!”, etc.

Experiment to see what works

At the end of the day, the only way to know what works is to experiment. Gather data on what works, compare and contrast with A/B testing, and alter your strategy accordingly.

• A/B Testing: Do split-testing for your signup form placement, signup form copy, font, colours – and anything else you can imagine. Gather the data for what works best to get more subscribers, and make sure you don’t increase your bounce rate with irritating or buggy displays.
• Good Software: When it comes to A/B testing for a web page, you can always use Google Optimize in conjunction with Google Analytics– it’s all free.

Closing

Growing an email list the right way- organically, without buying lists- might be slow, and at times, tedious- but, it will more than pay itself off.

Take your time to build a list of willing subscribers who connect with your brand- you will be glad you did.