4 Quick Solutions that Spawn Radical Email List Growth

I know building your email list can be a painfully slow process.

Even if you have a tantalizing incentive to give away, sometimes your prospects may still be hesitant to sign up.

Since readers are increasingly cautious about giving up their email addresses, you need to build trust and put in extra effort to turn casual readers into email subscribers. 

While the top of your site’s sidebar is the “traditional” spot for an email list opt-in form, you don’t want it to be your sole method for collecting email subscribers.

Today, I’m going to share improvements you can make to your site to grow your email list — and many take five minutes or less to implement!

How else can you get readers to subscribe?

Option #1: Blog post footers

If a site visitor takes the time to read one of your blog posts all the way to its end, he or she probably likes your content — so the footer of a blog post is the perfect place to ask that reader to sign up for your list.

You can add a permanent footer to each of your blog posts that prompts readers to join your list.

Check out this example from Copyhackers:

Option #2: Feature boxes

Feature boxes put your opt-in form front and center on your website, taking the place of a large graphic banner with your logo or other site branding.

A qualified designer can add one to your WordPress theme or you can use a theme with a built-in Feature Box, like StudioPress's Generate Pro theme.

Here’s an example from The Way of the Happy Woman:

Option #3: Pop-overs

Pop-over opt-in forms are small boxes that pop up in the corner of your site (often in the bottom right corner).

They are less obtrusive than large, traditional pop-up boxes, and your reader can either take action — by entering their email address or closing the box — or they can simply ignore the box and continue consuming your content.

One of the best tools right now for creating simple pop-overs on your site is SumoMe's List Builder tool. List Builder is completely free, and it’s fairly quick to set up.

Adding SumoMe to your Rainmaker Platform site is a breeze, whether you use the native integration feature (currently in Labs) or simply paste your script into your header using the Appearance editor.

Take a look at this entertaining pop-over form on Momastery:

#4: Pop-ups

Putting a pop-up box on your site is highly contentious — using pop-ups may increase your sign-up rate, but it could also damage your relationship with your audience. 

If you decide to use one for your site, the incentive you offer needs to be highly relevant to your readers.

A delay before the box appears is also a smart practice. This way, readers have a chance to momentarily browse your site before you present them with your pop-up box. 

Chris Guillebeau uses this informative, benefits-driven pop-up form:

Persuade your readers with the right copy

Once you’ve figured out where you want to put the opt-in or registration calls to action on your site, you need the right copy to "sell" what you're giving away. 

Your copy needs to be appealing, persuasive, and clear, so people know exactly what they’re getting in exchange for their email address and how they will benefit from it:

1. Communicate your offer. If you have a free email autoresponder course, say that. If it’s a downloadable report, make that clear. Keep in mind that the title of your free incentive can do a lot of work for you — if you have an attention-getting, mouth-watering title, you probably don’t need to add a lot of additional copy.
2. Describe your sign-up incentive’s specific benefits. How will your free incentive help your visitors? Will it save them time, make them more money, or improve their relationships? This is a great place to use bullet points, if you have the space for them.
3. State exactly what readers need to do next. Make the next step crystal clear — this is not a place for ambiguity or cutesy language. You could write something as simple as, “Enter your preferred email address below, and click the red button.”

Test to find the right combination

Don’t just go with your gut or take your best guess — test several opt-in and registration structures and several copy combinations until you find the ones that work best for your community members.

Small changes in your copy can influence your conversion rate, so test:

• The title of your incentive
• The headline on your opt-in form
• The copy in your bullet points
• The text on your “submit” button

Yes, it takes extra time to test. But once you do, you’ll feel confident that you’re using the highest-converting version of your offer.

Growing your email list should be a top priority, and paying special attention to your opt-in forms is a strong step in the right direction to reaching your subscriber goals.

Finding the perfect opt-in for your website takes patience and persistence, but smart content marketers have both.

Keep trying, continue testing, and stay focused!

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13 Tantalizing Incentives that Will Build Your Email List

Need a quick way to entice someone to join your email list or register for your website? Give away something for free.

By giving away something site visitors can download or access instantly, you can break through your readers’ hesitations about handing over their email addresses. And you earn their trust by giving them something useful immediately .

Some call it a “bribe,” some call it an “incentive,” and some call it a “freebie.” Whatever you call it, this technique can bring in big results as a list-building strategy.

But finding the right incentive for your audience — something that really makes people stand up and take notice — can be tricky.

Whether they’re opting in to an email list or registering to become a free member of your site, they’ve got to overcome their initial hesitation.

How to create an irresistible incentive

As with everything in content creation, you need to keep your ideal customer in mind when you're dreaming up your incentive.

What can you create that people will be incredibly excited to receive? You want them to look at your form and say, “Yes, I absolutely must have that!”

Start by generating a list of possibilities — ideas you can create quickly and test out.

To get you started with your own brainstorming, here’s a list of 13 ideas for enticing freebies to give away in exchange for an email address.

1. A cheat sheet

Everyone wants to do things the faster and easier way — sometimes cheat sheets are more popular than longer ebooks or reports.

Is there a shortcut or “cheat” you can give your audience?

2. An interview with you (video or audio)

If you’ve recorded an information-packed audio or video interview, you can use that as an incentive. 

Remember to make the sound high-quality, and it shouldn’t be one big sales pitch.

3. A productivity template

Templates or fill-in-the-blank worksheets can help your audience complete a difficult or confusing task, so that they make progress toward their goals.

4. A case study

Do you have a shareable story about a client or student who has tackled a problem?

Case studies can be inspirational giveaways for your audience and great learning tools, too.

5. Your manifesto

A manifesto is a written, public declaration of your principles and beliefs. You can write up your own manifesto, get a graphic designer to spruce it up a bit, and give it away on your site.

Check out The Writer's Manifesto from Jeff Goins. 

6. An email course that shares information on solving a problem

Lisa Tener gives away a 7-day e-course on how to write a book, and it’s full of helpful bite-sized advice.

7. A checklist describing the steps of a detailed process

People love checklists! A checklist incentive is even easier to use if you can make it editable and printable.

For more information on writing checklists, read Atul Gawande’s marvelous book,The Checklist Manifesto.

8. Access to a webinar or class

If you teach via webinars on a regular basis, giving away a recording of a past training session can work well.

You can also offer free registration to an upcoming live webinar.

9. Access to a monthly live Q&A with you

For many years, Pamela Slim offered free access to a live Q&A session with her — any questions were welcomed.

You can offer this to your new subscribers and send them information about the live session after they sign up for your list.

10. A mind map

Mind maps are visual representations of concepts, ideas, or processes, and they are intriguing incentives when they’re done well.

Try Xmind if you need a free, slick mindmapping tool.

11. A toolkit

If you’ve got a collection of useful resources in your content archive (like cheat sheets, checklists, videos, or ebooks) you can package them together into one super-useful toolkit for your audience.

12. A video series

Videos can be highly enticing incentives. If you feel comfortable on camera, shoot videos of yourself presenting a particular topic. Or if you want to stay off camera, you can do screencasts.

Either way, your sound quality should be top-notch — it can make or break your videos.

13. Templates, stickers, or wallpaper

If your specialty is design, you can bet your audience likes and appreciates your style.

You can give away a WordPress theme, a business card template, stickers, or other graphic gifts that show off your style.

The key to finding a great email incentive …

Keep testing different ideas until you find one people can’t wait to download.

Pick an idea, create it, and advertise it on your site with an opt-in or member registration form. Then, track the results and see how your audience responds.

If they love it, great! If not, move on to the next incentive idea.

Keep trying new freebies until you find one that’s so tantalizing, your prospects can’t resist it.

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How to Leverage the True Potential of Landing Pages

Conversion copywriters are people who write awesome landing pages with specific goals; either to convert readers into loyal followers or convert potential customers into paying ones.

For starters, no one is born as an awesome conversion copywriter. It takes a lot of training and trial and error to create powerful landing pages, regardless of what your goals are.

At the end of the day, it is all about conversion and how you leverage the true potential of landing pages. As a content marketer you don’t have an option but to figure it out. And if cost is a challenge for you, there are many free landing page services (such as this one from Spaces) that you can use for both blogging and eCommerce purposes.

But having a flexible landing page service isn’t enough. There are many factors which contribute to their success (or failure).

So, here are 8 very simple but powerful ways to create awesome landing page copy which will double your chance of a conversion.

Ready?

1. Craft killer headlines

Headlines are the first thing that your readers see. You know, the big bold 

words on the top of the page.

Most marketers (including myself) spend merely minutes writing a headline – and after that, you are done with it.

But here’s the thing. People don’t spend 20 minutes reading word by word on your landing page copy. They scan and skim through the headlines … most of the time.

According to this case study, most people only read about 20% of the text on an average page.

Now, take a moment to think about it.

Headlines, sub headlines and sub-sub headlines. You really need to craft the best headlines as those are the ones that readers will most probably read (and only read).

Important takeaway: Spend equal time (or more) creating headlines as you are writing the entire landing page copy.

2. Keep your writing simple (K.I.S.S. method)

Simplicity is the king. There is absolutely no reason for you to ‘run around the bush’ when you are trying to convey a message.

Instead, practice the ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ (KISS) method when you are writing your next landing page copy.

Quoted directly from HubSpot, “Your most powerful writing skill is simplicity. Simplicity sells.”

One of the leaders in split testing niche, Optimizely does a great job in creating a simple landing page option that is focused on conversion. See below.

This form of landing page is not only simple but highly effectively for what-ever-goal you are trying to achieve.

Here’s another example from Neil Patel’s Quick Sprout blog:

When you land on Quick Sprout’s homepage, you are only given one option which is “Do you want more traffic”. There aren’t other options that you can choose from and this will lead to a better conversion rate.

3. Write like a human and for humans

I am sure you want to crush your competitors and here’s how: You need to write like a human being because your readers are humans too.

Readers feel connected with these pages because it resonates with them.

More importantly, readers would want to connect with real people, not just the copy itself.

Here are several ways you can write like a human:

• Construct the landing page using language which is common to you and your target audience
• Make sentences short and precise
• Breaking rules of grammar (from time to time) is recommended if it makes the copy sound natural
• Use expressions to further infuse human touches in the copy (for example, words like “seriously” and “wait a second”)
• Avoid using jargon or industry terminology

4. Emphasize the benefits, not the product or service

One of the biggest landing page mistakes known to mankind is over-emphasizing the product (or service) itself.

For starters, majority of the readers do not care how good your product is. They only care of the benefits or outcomes that the product can provide.

When you promote your product directly to them, you are not going to give them what they want and expect.

So what happens when you promote the benefits instead? They get what they want and more importantly, that is a strong signal to them that he or she is in the right place for a solution.

Take a look at the images below from GoSpaces:

At the top of the copy, the landing page emphasizes the ability to sell jewelry online with ease (with the sentence, “Spaces makes selling jewelry easy”). Right below the landing page is the benefits gained from using their services which goes from different payment methods to automation.

5. Use customer testimonials

Customer testimonials are great purchase motivators for any businesses. The truth is, testimonials are compelling because they show the readers (or potential customers) what they can expect once they take up the service.

Neil from Quick Sprout does a great job in creating customer testimonials by displaying them on his sidebar.

Did you notice the bolded sentence, “500 million pageviews”?

That’s a powerful motivator for the readers to take action since most of Neil’s blog readers are constantly looking for ways to increase blog traffic and the sentence resonates perfectly with them.

PostPlanner, the popular Facebook engagement tool has a testimonial tab which highlights testimonials from influential marketers. This increases the trust level with potential customers.

6. Ask readers to take action

This last part is crucial. This is the gem, climax or whatever you call it.

You are only considered successful in creating a landing page when your readers take a specific action, which could range from clicking the sign up button to purchasing a product.

And what matters most here is using the right words. The choice of words used on the Call-To-Action button will determine the chance of you getting a conversion.

Some words would indirectly encourage the person to click on it while other words may just turn the reader off.

So, what type of words encourage readers to take action?

There is only one trick in this, which is your action words should always correspond with your offer.

Here are some examples:

• Download This eBook
• Reserve Your Seat
• Buy Now

Udemy serves as a portal for selling online courses and the most common Calls-To-Action (CTA) that they use are “Take This Course”.

The CTA that Udemy use is a great offer-related action which potential buyers will resonate with.

Sum up

Leveraging the true potential of a landing page is not that hard and many professional marketers are using landing pages to take their business to the next level.

Are you constantly trying to hack conversions of your landing pages? Leave a comment below on the tricks you use and let’s talk about it!

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10 Unique Ways To Build Your Email List

Many of you may already be growing your email lists through sign up forms on your website, or printed sign up sheets near your register. You may even ask folks if they want to be added to your email list when you meet them at a trade show or event. So far, so good. But, you might also want to try a few out-of-the-ordinary techniques to entice even more sign ups.

Unique ways to collect email addresses:

Sign up page – Including your sign up form on multiple pages of your website is a must, but having a nicely designed landing page specifically for sign ups is also a nice touch! Don’t know how to create one? Melanie Duncan, owner of Entrepreneuress Academy highly recommends usingLeadpages to create opt-in or landing pages to gain sign ups, as it doesn’t require design or coding experience. VerticalResponse also has web hosted sign up forms available. On your landing page, make sure you include a number of reasons as to why someone should sign up for your email list and include some archived emails to give them an understanding of what to expect.

Receipts -  Have you noticed that some stores offer you the option to have your receipt emailed to you? It’s one less thing for customers to keep track of, and as a business owner, you also have the opportunity to capture an email sign up by including a link to your sign up form on the receipt. Big box retailers like Macy’s offer this service, but some local restaurants have also started offering it as well. Here are a few services that provide this technology: Transaction Tree and yReceipts. As an easy solution, you can simply include a link (if it’s too long, use a URL shortener like Bit.ly) to your sign up form on all of your printed receipts.

Videos – Videos are a great way to show off your products, service or company, give advice, and attract new visitors in various ways. At the end of every video you create, include a slide at the beginning and/or end that contains a URL to your sign up form. On every YouTube video you upload, include a note, box, speech bubble, etc. that includes a link – This can done under “Annotations.” By default, YouTube gives you the option to link to another video, playlist, YouTube channel, or Google+ profile. If you’d like to link to your sign up form or website outside of YouTube, follow these steps. In your video, ask people to subscribe to your channel and include a link to your sign up form on your YouTube page. Also, create a specific video about why your mailing list should be the list someone signs up for.

Email signature – Think about how many emails you send on a daily basis, and how many different people you interact with in those emails. Including a link to your sign up form in your personal email signature is an easy way to get the word out there to each and every one of those people, and on a consistent basis.

Pinterest – With 70 million+ users, Pinterest can help you attract new subscribers faster than you can bake a batch of brownies from a recipe found on the popular social network. Due to the visual nature of Pinterest, it’s a great place to attract potential subscribers with an enticing Pin, which then leads to your sign up form. We crafted an entire post all about how you can grow your email list using Pinterest. 

Social media profile – Your social media pages may include links to your sign up form, but do you also have it in your profile? All social accounts have a profile or “about” section, so make sure you include a sign up link to your email list along with what value people will get for joining it. And for an added boost, include a link in your personal social accounts and spread the word about your business. Just make it clear the sign up is for your business, so you don’t cause any confusion.

Transactional emails – If you send transactional emails like order information, receipts or shipping updates, include a link to your email sign up. 

Use a smart phone/tablet at events – While a sign up form is great, what happens when you’re out in the real world? This is where smart phones or tablets come in! If you attend networking events, trade shows or conferences, use a smart phone or tablet to collect email addresses, with permission of course. This way, you can easily walk around and mingle with people, yet still collect email sign ups. Instead of collecting a business card, get an email sign up right then and there.

Unique ways to promote your email sign up form:

Alert social followers to special email deals – Before you hit send on your email, share something about the email and entice social followers (as seen in the Punk Domestics example below). Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are good places to start with this kind of teaser. Let people know what they’re missing out on by not receiving your email. A couple of days before Punk Domestics send out their email, they post a link for people to sign up.

Share after the email is sent – After you’ve sent your email, let your social followers know and write a “Did you miss our email?” post. Similar to the previous suggestion, share something that only subscribers can get by signing up for the email list.

Additional tips:

Make it easy to sign up! – Using a sign up form is the best way to grow your email list, but make sure it’s easy to find and use. Don’t ask for too much information, or you’ll actually discourage sign ups. Instead, ask for an email address and maybe a first name. You can always ask for more info later if you need it. Make your sign up form easy to find by placing it prominently on each page of your website.

Send great content  – One of the easiest ways to quickly grow your email list is by creating and sending helpful content. People who already read your email are more likely to share with others if your content is on the mark. Make sure it’s relevant to your readers by segmenting your email lists to accommodate different interests your customers may have.

Survey readers – Survey your current email subscribers about what they like best about your emails, or what made them sign up in the first place. Use that data to create more effective email content and up front value propositions to join your list. 

Get more ways to grow your email list in our How to Build Your Email List guide.

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