If you operate any kind of business online, or if you are a writer, speaker, consultant, or coach… one of your most important assets is a list of email subscribers who are interested in hearing from you.
When you have a permission-based email list, you can literally produce “income on demand”. You can quite literally produce “traffic on demand” for your website. All you have to do is send on an email to your list.Of course, the level of responsiveness of your list will depend on your relationship with that list. Do they view you as a provider of valuable wisdom and information, or do they do you and or do they view you as an annoying spammer? I will leave it up to you to figure that part out (for now), but my conviction is you probably already know the answer. And if they view you as a spammer, you might want to rethink your current email strategy.
Assuming your subscribers view you as someone who brings value to their life, you are on the right track. The next challenge for you, Constant Marketer, is a simple one: get more subscribers. Here are 5 effective ways you can build a bigger email list:
- Ask people to subscribe. As simple as it sounds, many website owners simply don’t ask for the subscription. Ask, and you will receive subscribers.
- Offer an “irresistible bribe”. Once upon a time, simply asking was enough. These days people are not as quick to give up their email address. If you really want to build a list of responsive subscribers, make them an offer they can’t refuse. Our offer of free copywriting guides has been very popular, and has helped build a fairly large list of subscribers.
- Offer more than one bribe. Recently, I had a “head smacking moment”. I realized that offering only one “irresistible bribe” was limited thinking. What if I offered five? What if I offered 10? Your potential audience consists of many different segments, people with different interests and areas of focus. Create a bribe for each of those segments, interests, and areas of focus, and you will build a bigger list.
- Place your subscription forms strategically. Most people simply put the email subscription form wherever it was placed by their website designer. You should place your subscription offer in multiple locations on your site. At minimum, I would suggest testing a “feature box” (a subscription box at the top of your website’s front page), and also placing your form in the following locations: top right-hand sidebar, bottom of each individual post, on each page, and on a separate landing page for each of your bribe offers.
- Upgrade your graphic design. Do yourself a favor, and ditch the cheesy e-book covers that you made using cheap “Internet marketer software”. Either use a graphic designer to create the digital representations of your irresistible bribes, or at the very least invest in high-quality software tools to create your own images. Better graphic design equals more sign-ups.
Put these five tips into practice, and watch your subscriber numbers grow.
Question: what tips have you discovered that it helped you get more email subscribers?