How to get more email subscribers..
Subscribers to your newsletter are quality visitors. They actually read your posts, come back often and even want you to spam their mailbox whenever you got some interesting to share. Still, a lot of webmasters struggle to get people to subscribe to their newsletter. So how you actually do this? How do you “bind” people to your blog? I’ll try to help you get started on this..
Give your visitors a reason to sign-up
One of the most common mistakes I see is that there IS a sign-up form, but there’s nothing that tells the visitor WHY they should sign-up. Make sure that you give your visitors a good reason to sign-up to your mailinglist. People don’t give their emailadresses away as easy as they did 3 years ago. Let your visitor know why they benefit from signing up, and what they’re actually signing up for.
Use call-to-actions.
Also tell them to actually sign-up. Use great call-to actions, below your content for example. When they reached the end of your article they probably liked it, so that’s the time to tell them to subscribe! Remind your readers that they can subscribe to your newsletter, they won’t start looking for one theirselves as soon as they’re done reading..
BTW: Like this post so far? Subscribe to my newsletter now!
See how easy that is? Just use lines like this more regularly in your blog posts, just don’t overdo it!
Ask as little as possible.
Another point where a lot of visitors drift off in the process of signing-up is when they have to fill in a lot of fields. Keep your sign-up form as simple as possible, cut away the crap. If you really want to know more about your subscribers they can fill in the extra information later. For a newsletter just ask their e-mail adress, and if you want to make it a bit more personal their name. Nothing more, really.
Make it easy to subscribe for your commenters.
Another way I found to help a lot is to add a simple checkbox to your comment form, that automatically subscribes them to your newsletter when checked. I’ve developed a WordPress plug-in that helps you do this, check out the Newsletter Sign-Up plugin. People who leave their comment on a post are most likely people who are also willing to subscribe to your newsletter.They already took the effort to leave a comment, so something must have gotten their attention. All they have to do to start receiving your newsletter is check a simple checkbox..
Reward subscribers
All of the points mentioned above are actually must-haves on your website. You are missing out on subscribers if you fail at one of the things above. Want to boost your number of subscribers even more? Reward your subscribers! All people like free stuff, so that’s what you should offer them. Offer them your a free e-book, or hold a contest among your subscribers. If you put some effort in it, you can really benefit greatly from it.
Watching your number of subscribers grow is not something that will happen overnight. Be patient and prepare to put a lot of effort in your website! If you keep your content fresh and interesting and follow the guidelines in this article subscribers will come eventually..
3 Responses to “How to get more email subscribers..”
Golda — February 7, 2011 at 11:03 pm Hi Danny,
I’m trying to use your newsletter plugin with madmimi, and it’s not working for me. I get the checkbox under the comment, but it’s not actually adding anyone. Could you maybe add madmimi to the drop down?
Thanks!
Golda
Srdjan — March 12, 2011 at 6:38 pm Danny, where are those e-mails people send through newsletter signup?
Best regards,
Yes, this is a test ;-)