How to Get Visitors to Subscribe to Your Email List

Last time, we looked at the importance of building an email list for promoting your business online. Today, let’s look at some ways you can encourage your website or blog visitors to join your mailing list.

It’s easy to assume that, just because you provide an opt in form on your site, visitors will be eager to join your mailing list. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. After all, many people receive hundreds of emails every day, and they know that opting in to your list will add even more emails for them to wade through.

So it’s critical that you give visitors an incentive to join. They need to know that they’re going to receive something of value in exchange for giving you their contact information.

Here are some ideas for improving your opt in rate, and building your subscriber list more quickly:

• If you will be emailing a newsletter, let prospective subscribers know what kinds of information the newsletters will contain. If you’re running a site that sells wine making supplies, for example, you could tell visitors that your newsletter will give them tips for better tasting wine, “insider” access to special varietals, discounts on wine making and bottling equipment, and advice from veteran wine makers.
• Offering a free ebook or report is a great way to get people to subscribe to your list. Using the wine making example, you could offer a report such as “30 Days to Better Tasting Wine”, “7 Essential Tips for Choosing a Wine Kit”, or the like. Just make sure that the report or ebook offers valuable, actionable information, or people will likely unsubscribe the first time you send out an email.
• An email mini-course is also an effective offering. With many of the email marketing services, it is easy to write a batch of emails, and then schedule each one to be sent a certain number of days after the visitor subscribes to your list. It’s a lot like writing a report, except you send it to the subscriber in daily installments, instead of placing the information in a PDF file. The advantage of using this technique is that you stay in front of your subscribers – they look forward to receiving each installment of your mini-course.
• If you use a membership service such as Amember, you can offer access to restricted pages on your site. These pages can contain “premium” content that is not available to regular visitors. This content can provide advanced tips, insider information, or other content that visitors perceive as having a high value.
• Offer access to a video series. Typically, the videos will be instructional, showing subscribers how to accomplish a certain task. Internet users love videos, because they offer more in-depth, “hands on” information than articles or blog posts. 

Next time, we’ll look at ways to communicate to your email list members to build trust, gain loyalty, and increase sales.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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