The three major tasks of email marketing are building your opt-in email-subscriber list, building trust, and inciting action. This article will focus on the first—and, for many, most-challenging—task: getting people to sign up for your email list.
The basic method of gaining a subscriber is simply asking someone to sign up for your mailing list. If a customer or client is already an engaged consumer and trusts you, then there is a good chance that customer will say yes right away.
In most cases, though, you need to offer the consumer some benefit. At the very least, you'll describe what will be in your newsletters that the consumer would want: information, special offers, discounts, etc.
The sweeter the deal, the better your chances that your visitor will become a subscriber. Many email-list managers offer a free autoresponder e-course, free e-book or video download, or special one-time discount. Those are basic techniques for email list-building.
Here are nine more-advanced list-building techniques that increase subscriber numbers and sometimes improve conversion rates as well.
1. Develop a Detailed Sign-up Page
We usually encourage people to include a sign-up form on every page of their site, above the fold, so that it is prominent and easy to spot.
But it can also be beneficial to develop an entire separate sales page for the purpose of selling your mailing list. It works like any other sales page, but you will find that conversions will be much higher because you are simply asking for some basic information rather than a purchase.
Some email marketers swear by the power of a "squeeze page"—a highly focused marketing device that allows a reader only two choices: sign up, or leave the page. It is presented as separate from the rest of your site, with a laser-targeted focus on the one action you want the reader to take: signing up for the list.
Some site owners might find the tactic a little strong for their market or for their tastes and will prefer the more informational and less pushy email-list description page.
2. Authority Blogging
Authority blogging can require an immense amount of resources and demands a major commitment of time and energy, so it is not recommended for most one- or two-person companies. Moreover, for those in most industries, time would be better spent on other pursuits.
But if you believe your market is hungry for the information that you can provide, and if you have the time and expertise to build up an authoritative information source for your niche, the power of your email-marketing campaigns will increase exponentially as a result of authority blogging.
Not only will you find more people signing up for your lists (by using the other tactics described in this article), but you will also experience better conversion rates because of the trust you have already built with your audience.
A great way to leverage current blog traffic to build up your list is to add a tagline to the bottom of each post, extolling the benefits of your email list as they pertain to the present post. So, for this article, for example, I might include the tagline: "For even more advanced email-marketing tactics, subscribe to our newsletter."
3. Search-Engine Marketing
A less costly but more complex option is to use search-engine optimization (SEO) to draw traffic to your site. SEO includes two basic elements:
On-site optimization consists of what you put on your site. You want to create pages that focus on a particular inquiry that searchers in your industry might have.
For example, you might consider that people want to know "how to get opt-in email subscribers." You would then create a page on your site that contains the query and a thorough answer.
If you're not sure what kinds of things people looking for in the search engines, you can use Google's free tools to find out.
Off-site optimization consists of what you put elsewhere on the Web to promote your site.
For example, now that you've answered the question thoroughly on your site and know a lot about it, you can offer that advice through other avenues, such as forums, guest posts on other blogs, or sites that offer articles for site owners to publish.
Be sure to include a link to your post so that the reader can get to all the information you've posted on your site and the search engines know where to find it as well.
4. Pay-per-Click (PPC), or Web Advertising
Particularly if you have already written an effective squeeze page for your mailing list, PPC advertisements can be a great way to build your subscriber base. You simply buy ads on Google AdWords or another PPC network and aim them at your squeeze page.
I stressed effective because the expense of such advertising can add up, and you will want to have tested your squeeze page for effectiveness before you start paying for traffic to it. PPC also requires a very hands-on approach to managing your ads because you will find that certain keywords convert better than others for your particular mailing list.
A less difficult approach is to advertise on related websites in your industry. Seek out websites that offer complementary, rather than competing, products and information, and contact those companies about advertising on their sites.
As with PPC, you will simply direct traffic to your email-list sign-up page. Many email marketers will use such an advertisement to test the effectiveness of their sign-up pages prior to launching a PPC campaign.
5. Write Guest Posts
If you're not willing to put in the time and effort to build up your own authority weblog (or even if you are), you can harness the power of other people's authority blogs by guest-posting.
Guest-posting is a win-win: It allows the blog owner to share your specialized knowledge with the audience, and it allows you to make contact with that audience, build some brand recognition, and possibly even directly win email-list subscribers.
When you write a guest post, it is customary for the blog owner to allow you a self-promotional bio. To promote your mailing list, you'll want to use a technique similar to the one discussed under tactic No. 2, Authority blogging.
Write a good, focused bio that ties in to your guest post and generates interest in your topic; include, for example, a call to action: "You don't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to email marketing. Instead, you can subscribe to this author's free mailing list."
6. Contribute to Forums
If you're operating in an industry with any level of social support, there are Internet forums dedicated to the topic. Those forums are a great place to develop your reputation as an expert by sharing your knowledge. As you do so, you will build up additional trust and brand visibility among a highly engaged audience.
You have to be smart about marketing yourself in forums, however. Spamming a forum with product announcements or excessive signature links will damage your business.
You have to approach those communities from a public-relations perspective: Make friends, influence people. It is not a onetime advertising method; rather it's its own marketing campaign that requires time and patience. It won't require nearly as much of your time as blogging will, though.
Simply drop in twice a week or more to answer questions and generally be helpful. After you've done that for a week or two, it will be OK to add a nice one-line pitch for your email list along with a link to your sign-up page.
Continue for two months or so, and you'll be able to naturally direct people to your mailing list for additional information. If done carefully and respectfully, contributing to forums is a powerful technique for building up your mailing list, as you may soon find others directing forum members to your mailing list as well.
7. Distribute a Press Release
People forget about press releases for their online-marketing efforts because it seems like such an old-school approach. But press releases offer tremendous benefits.
Write up a press release just to announce your email program. Describe all the great things that it will offer to readers, and come up with a few reasons why it fills a void in the community or industry you're targeting.
Press releases are great places for testimonials, so try to solicit some good testimonials to include in the release. Be sure to include a link to your sign-up page.
Then submit your press release for distribution. You can either pay a few hundred for wide distribution through paid services or, if you're on a budget, submit it to a variety of free press-release distribution services.
That helps not only by getting the word out to local and national press organizations but also by improving your off-site SEO. Each press release that gets published on the Web will contain the links to your sign-up page or any other relevant pages on your site.
8. Viral Email Marketing
One of the best ways to gain new subscribers is through your current subscribers. Word-of-mouth has always been the most effective form of advertising because people trust their friends. So when a newsletter comes highly recommended from a trusted friend, people are likely to sign up.
That's why viral email-marketing strategies, though difficult to master, are extremely powerful. You have to produce content that people will want to share with their friends, which takes a special type of marketing genius to pull off and varies widely depending on the industry.
Once you've come up with a winning idea for a viral email message, be sure the mechanics are in place for it to work: Make a clear call to action for your readers to forward it along, and make it obvious how the recipients can subscribe to the newsletter themselves.
9. Cross-Promotions With Other Mailing-List Owners
Email marketing remains on the rise because it's so cheap and effective that it just makes sense given the economic climate. That means more companies are using email marketing than ever before, and it's likely that there are other people using it within your industry. It would be foolish not to collaborate with those people.
Seek out other email marketers targeting similar market segments, and reach out to them to set up cross-promotions. Each side can provide great content for the other's mailing list to benefit from, or even out-and-out endorsements. Just remember, only endorse products that you genuinely believe in, as it would be a shame to damage the trust you've built up with your readers.
