Traffic monetization should be pursued by all possible means. If your website gets good traffic and you’re ready to position yourself as a reputable expert, your next move is to build a list of email subscribers. But this is only a good idea as long as you have something valuable to offer your readers. That’s why today you are going to learn in detail how to spark the interest of your users and make them your subscribers.
But before you jump into these 15 proven techniques of making friends with your subscribers, let’s see if it really worth it.
Does email marketing pay off?
The profitability of email marketing investments has always been and continues to be very high. Each dollar spent brings the investor $44. That’s a 4400% ROI. Below, you can see the comparison of the main stats of email and social media marketing provided by Optimonster.
The main condition for a high-quality subscriber base
When we say “a list” of user emails, we mean the emails of your users to which you regularly send emails that offer to purchase products or services. This list includes the addresses of both existing and potential buyers, by whom we mean those who have shown interest in the product and subscribed to the newsletter.
The main thing to remember when it comes to email subscription list building is that it must contain users’ emails that have willingly agreed to receive your promo emails. And here’s another point that’s linked to the first — these users must be interested in your product.
Spamming users with product offers they don’t want is pointless. You need not just many subscribers, but rather users that are your target audience (TA) — those who will be loyal not only to the content you send but to promo campaigns and advertising links.
Why you shouldn't buy a list of emails
- You never know who and how collected these addresses. They might be fake or cracked, which will seriously damage your reputation.
- You can’t send email ads without first getting the client to accept them since that would qualify as spam. And you’ll get a ban from the provider.
- Users don’t want to receive your emails unless they’ve subscribed to them. If not – your emails will get sent straight to the spam bin.
- You can’t segment sex, age, or interests in a bought userbase. Therefore, you won’t be able to send out relevant emails.
How to build email subscribers lists faster: 17 proven ways
How to start building an email list? Your subscribers’ base will multiply if your users clearly understand their value from receiving your email ads. How can it help solve their problems and make their lives better? Your call to action: “Subscribe to our mailing list!”, ─ will not entail any action on the part of users unless they see some sort of benefit in it for themselves.
Your offer must correspond to 2 questions the user has:
- What’s in it for me?
- Why is it more lucrative for me to deal with my issue with your help specifically?
Let’s go over 17 effective ways to quickly build a mailing list of people genuinely interested in your product
1. Add value to your subscription offer
Intrigue the user. Offer a gift in exchange for their email. This can be a free book, lesson, checklist, guide, fitness plan, or anything of that sort. Whatever you offer the subscriber, it has to be of value to them. Users need to realize that they will get some benefits in the future in terms of solving their problems. The person must have a clear understanding of the things they are getting in return.
2. Pose a deadline, nudge the user towards action
As soon as you tell a person they can’t have something; they’ll immediately become obsessed with obtaining that something.
When wording your subscription offer, announce deadlines, nudge the user towards performing the action you need — make the potential client subscribe here and now. This is one of the fundamental principles of consumer psychology, which works flawlessly.
For example, you have a partner who is ready to offer a discount on his product, plans to hold promotions and sales. Use that! Mention that subscribers can get free items, deals, promo codes in rigid terms. Offer rigid or flexible terms. For example, “available for only the first 50 customers,” or “The offer expires on May 15.” Or say that you can get a tutorial, video lesson, checklist or whatever by subscribing “before ___date.”
3. Make your subscription form simple and easy to understand
Provide the very possibility of subscribing to your newsletter. Make your subscription form simple and easy to understand. Minimize the number of actions the client needs to perform.
If your goal is to create an email list fast, remove everything except the email itself. You can also ask the user’s name, but this will immediately reduce the number of responses. And it’s even less advisable to ask for the person’s phone number.
Moreover, the client needs to be sure they are just subscribing to an email list, not making an order.
Write your call to action. Best if the CTA is worded like an offer: “Want to find out more? Subscribe to our newsletter.”
4. Provide the user with the ability to dose content
Give your subscriber a choice. Tell them that they can cancel their subscription any time they want. Ask them what their preferred content delivery schedule is. Do they want to receive letters once a week? Or maybe more of less often than that?
You can create different mailing plans and tell the user how frequently they’ll be getting emails with each one. After all, your goal is not just to assemble a subscriber base. You need interested users that will actually read your emails and purchase your products. All these seemingly extra steps will help you reduce the number of people unsubscribing (since they can now choose the option that suits them best).
5. Attract your first 10 subscribers properly
Start creating an email subscription list properly. Darrell Vesterfelt, the email newsletter guru at Copyblogger recommends picking our 10 people from your friends, colleagues, anyone who might be interested in your product and ask them a couple of questions. For example, if you’re teaching web development, ask people in a personal message:
- What disappoints you the most when you study the topic of website building?
- What websites, blogs, or forums do you currently go to to learn about this topic?
- I have a website where I teach web development. I would like you to become one of my readers. Are you interested in this information?
You’ll end up with your first subscribers. You’ll learn what web development-related content your audience is looking for. These are ready-made topics for your future posts. You will also find out where your audience hangs out, what web resources they visit.
Then, you simply choose another 10 people and analyze the obtained information. Using this method, you can easily collect up to 1,000 email addresses of interested users in just a week.
6. Allow your subscribers to share emails with friends
Give users the ability to forward your emails to their friends. Mention this opportunity at the start of your letter. This way, you will be able to expand your subscriber base even further.
7. Use QR codes to attract new subscribers
How to create an email subscription list using dynamic QR codes? Neil Patel, the renowned marketer, and copywriter advises using QR codes to attract new subscribers. Your further subscribers will be able to scan information from this code using their phones. And then, the phone will automatically open your website with the subscription form (don’t forget to create one).
The QR code can be placed to any object or product: business card, merchandise, smartphone case, etc. Next to it, you need to explain what kind of information it contains.
8. Attract new subscribers with your feedback page
How to make an email subscription list with the help of a feedback page? On the webpage where the user must confirm their subscription, you can offer them an additional gift for sharing your link on social media. Alternatively, you can even launch a referral program and offer various bonuses to people that will bring in new subscribers.
By the way, you can join a truly win-win Adsterra Referral Program with a lifetime 5% extra income!
9. Attract subscribers through social media
How to create an email subscribers list using social media? You can invite your readers to subscribe to your newsletter on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
Post a link to your registration page in your social media groups. It’s best to design a separate landing page for this category of subscribers.
10. Make your email subscription forms stand out visually
Use emoticons and codes to visually separate your emails from all the others the user gets. Add humorous quotations, memes, or amusing/inspiring slogans. All messages you use should resonate with your target audience, of course.
11. Design topic-related CTA (calls to action)
Personalized, topic-related calls to action are more than 2x more effective than common ones.
Before creating one, find out what targeting data statistics provide you with. You can personalize a call to action based on the user’s location and interests. An easy way is to subdivide all users into first-time visitors and regular audience.
After each article on your blog, explain to users what they need to do next. Use effective formulas to convince them. “Stay up to date,” “Don’t miss out SMM trends,” “Be the 1st SEO expert to learn about,” “become a stellar marketer”: these or similar phrases work if you do intend to provide users with high-quality content.
12. Design unusual CTAs
Make the user think your offer over, don’t label the refusal button as just “no.” Write a teasing sentence like “No thanks, I’ve learned everything about SEO.” Such wording makes the user postpone their refusal or even motivates them to subscribe. It is important to stay respectful; don’t shame people or mock up on them.
It is also a good idea to recommend website visitors to subscribe to the newsletter and invite them to become a member of a private community, get access to exclusive offers, closed sales, and unadvertised promotions.
13. Make your subscription form stand out...literally
A subscription form can be a pop-up box or a special feature box. A special block is a short, non-annoying presentation of your site explaining the benefits that a user who subscribes to the newsletter will receive.
You can locate this form at the top of the sidebar
If you have a lot of content on your site, it’s best to create a separate page where all your content will be systematized and structured. Include a subscription form after each thematic section.
In addition, you can create separate central topic pages featuring essential content for your topic. On each page, include a subscription form with a call to action.
14. Hold a simple poll on your website
How to build a subscribers list through a poll? The best way to find out if people want to receive a newsletter from your site is to ask them directly using a short survey. Ask two simple yes/no questions. Prepare a field for people who said yes to enter their email into. The survey can be made in the form of a pop-up. It is important to calculate the time after which the poll appears. The user must have been on the site for at least 10-30 seconds.
15. Include a call to action on your "About" page
Don’t forget to place a subscription form on your “About us” page. If your website caught the interest of users, they would definitely look at this page. And if the information about you is convincing enough, then the likelihood of them subscribing to your newsletter on this page is extremely high.
16. Maintain the balance between ads and subscription forms
Ads on your website and a pop-up box with email subscription form mustn’t overlap, cover up the content or other buttons, and visually occupy the prevailing space on your site. This annoys the user and makes them leave your site quickly. So try to adjust the time when your subscription form appears. If you are using tools like Getsitecontrol, you can easily test and tweak this setting.
17. Don't start your communication with promo emails
Unless it’s their main reason for subscription, users don’t expect to start getting loads of ads in their inbox. You also need to understand that the newsletter itself contains more than just sales offers. Ads and promos should accrue to no more than 20-25% of all your emails (the other 75-80% need to be filled with just valuable and interesting content). Otherwise, users will just quickly unsubscribe, reducing all your efforts to zero.
How Adsterra helps publishers make money with (or without) email subscribers
With the help of email subscription list building, you can point your readers to specific landing pages and blog articles where additional advertising will be placed. For example, if you have a blogpost with a tutorial or checklist, then you can embed Native Banners in the middle of it. These banners are not annoying, and their content completely coincides with the target audience’s interests reading the article.
Adsterra ad network offers all highly paid ad formats. You can easily monetize desktop and mobile traffic, social media traffic, and mobile apps. It won’t be difficult for you to choose the relevant ad format that matches your content. It can be Popunders, Push Ads, Native ads, Video Ads, and different Banners formats. Don’t hesitate to start making extra money with any of those!
