Every few months I’ll read articles saying email marketing is close to dying. It all starts with people saying “the warnings were always here” then they’ll go on saying email marketing is going to be replaced with some new way to boost sales.
But then, I’ll see a pop-up asking me to subscribe to their newsletter…
Let’s get one thing straight. You will always need to grow your email list. Email marketing isn’t going anywhere and it provides better results than social media marketing in most cases. Just think at it this way:
When people subscribe to your content, read your newsletter then click the link to your website, they have a greater intent to buy than what you get from social media platforms. The more people you get from email marketing to your website, the more possible clients or buyers you have.
Email marketing isn’t going to disappear over night so, buckle up and start growing your email list.
Are blogs the easiest way to grow your email list?
It depends.
While blogs don’t work for all online projects, they have a really nice conversion rate for email lists because they provide you the means to get people interested and provide them with the best content from your niche.
So, how do you grow your email list with the help of a business blog?
Offer them something in return.
Let’s say you provide Social Media services. To get people interested and grow your email list, you can’t just write content and hope that people subscribe after they get done reading your blog post, but the better way is to offer them something in return for signing up.
Write up a lead magnet, a 10-page eBook on best social media practices or any other important topic, and offer it free to those who subscribe to your email list. Create a detailed report on the ROI from specific social media tactics with charts and important data and provide it to people in exchange for their email address. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to get them interested.
To grow that email list, you’re going to want to put up a dedicated landing page that’ll offer the freebie or implement a lead magnet plugin, in exchange for their email address. That way, when folks visit the page, they have one of two options… Sign up or leave!
Use CTAs as hooks for your email marketing strategy.
If you don’t have the time or resources to write eBooks or reports, you can try to get people interested through the use of well-placed CTAs in your blog posts. My advice would be to create several Calls To Action images and insert them in your relevant blog posts.
Start looking at your blog categories and design at least one CTA for each active category. You can add the CTAs at the bottom of the post or use a timed pop-up to show them when the reader has finished reading the article.
Optimize your blog to grow your email list.
WordPress or any blogging CMS you may use will provide numerous ways you can customize the layout of your blog or website. You can add widgets, pop-ups, footers and other ways to customize your blog and get people to sign up.
What to do: Spend some time and analyze your business blog layout. Search for heat maps services and see what are the most active parts for your blog. Using this information add subscribe forms or pop-ups to your layout. You can even add a permanent sign-up form in the footer of your blog.
We use tools like:
On almost any site we set up, whether we’re driving paid traffic to it or not, we want to make sure that what we wants users to do – they actually do! Those 4 tools will give you insight into what readers are ACTUALLY doing rather than what you think they should be doing…
What NOT to do: Don’t go to the dark side and fill your blog posts and pages with sign-up forms and pop-ups. If people have to close 3 pop-ups before they can access your content, they will give up almost instantly.
Experiment and see what you can achieve by customizing your blog layout. Keep a close eye on your traffic and ask for feedback.
Don’t forget about internal links!
I read several niche blogs and I can’t help to wonder why aren’t they linking their own content more.
You want to keep the visitor as much as you can on your website. Adding internal links is a great way to reduce your website bounce rate and get more page views. Think of it like this: if a visitor spends more time on your website, the chances that he’ll join email list will increase. It’s not rocket science.
You can add links to other related blog posts in your articles or you can use related posts plugins.
Always try to interact with your readers.
If you want to grow your email list, just writing top-notch content won’t be enough. If you don’t interact with your readers, they won’t be interested in interacting with you.
There are several ways to interact with blog readers.
Through blog comments. Low impact tactic, since you need someone to start a conversation in the first place. I keep seeing how people just “like and share” rather than leave a comment. To improve this, you may want to add Facebook comments to your website or other comment platforms.
With the help of blog contests. This is so easy to do. If you want to step it up and get people interested in your product, create a contests for your readers. Offer big discount vouchers, relevant books or gadgets as prizes to get your blog readers interested.
Blog contests help you grow your email list in two big ways. You will get them to spend more time on your company blog thus increasing the sign-up chances (indirect) and by collecting their email when they participate in your contest (direct).
There are so many ways to grow your email list with the help of your company blog. I just listed a few but I know there are more. What do you guys think is the easiest way to grow your email list with the help of a business or company blog?