How to grow your email list: 5 top email magnet tips

19 November, 2014

While many businesses are looking to attract Christmas trade, some may be neglecting a more important long-term consideration: how to keep hold of the custom they gather in the coming months and turn one-off Christmas purchasers into loyal return customers.

Starting a blog on your website is a great way of gaining online traffic. But blog traffic alone won’t necessarily directly convert to sales. Nor will it give you an accurate overview of how much engagement people have with your business and your website. You need to start building a relationship with your readers, and in order to do that, you need to have a way of contacting them.

If used correctly, email marketing can be a powerful tool for keeping regular contact with customers and building up long term engagement with your brand. But how do you collect email addresses even before someone has placed an order? This blog post explores some of the ways you can grow subscribers to your blog.

Turning blog visitors into blog followers; and blog followers into blog subscribers

Email lists are powerful marketing tools. In order to grow subscribers, it’s important to understand why email lists have so much more power than followers on a blog, and how to build an email list. If readers subscribe to your blog, this will enable you to personalise their data and undertake targeted marketing campaigns that are tailored to your readers’ preferences (and therefore more likely to convert).

Blog followers are great, don’t get me wrong. They provide traffic, they enjoy what they read and there’s potential that they’ll share your posts over social media. However, blog reader applications such as Feedly make it much easier for time-poor readers to skim articles, meaning your marketing messages may get lost.

Those signing up to your email list are giving you so much more than those connecting via your blog. They’re giving you permission to send them information directly to their inbox. Regularly using an online email marketing service to contact subscribers and give them tailored offers can boost your online sales – not just in the period leading to Christmas, but into the new year too.

Subscribers are not only engaging in direct contact with you, they’re allowing you to grow. Email list subscribers can be boosted in a number of ways. Below are some useful tips on how to grow subscribers for your email campaigns.

(1) Email newsletters

Writing email newsletters is a great way of sending content from your blog to your email list. You can keep it simple with a basic introduction and links to popular blogs from that month. Or you can add value and create a thematic email campaign by pulling together pieces from previous posts with strong messages, tips and advice. Group together similar blogs, pull out the pieces of information you’d like to convey and send them under one heading.

Tips on writing great email campaigns

(2) Email incentives

An email incentive, such as a free guide to your specialist services, expertise or produce is a great way of getting sign ups enabling your list to grow. Database entries will come flying in with a great incentive, even if it is repeating previous information from your website or blog. The convenience of having the information direct to subscribers without them having to search for it is a great pull to potential subscribers.

(3) Email magnet sales hook

Consider the sales hook of your email magnet. A good headline with a snappy title will make all of the difference. Ensure your sales message gives a benefit rather than describes a feature. What problem can you solve for your reader? How will signing up help them directly?

(4) Email magnet visual impact

Also consider the visual impact of your email magnet – is it easily visible? Do people want to click through and give their details?

(5)   Blog sign-up links

Make it easy for people to sign up to your email list by including one-click sign-up links in your blog posts to your subscription list.

(6)   Website banner

A website banner fixed at all times into the sidebar on your website will encourage people to sign up as they are browsing your website. Of you don’t want the banner to be fixed, you could look at which pages of your website are busiest and think about featuring your banner on those pages.

A subscription can be a good start to a great relationship. Email allows you to deliver your ideas to your contacts directly in a more personal way that your website.

But remember that your subscribers are letting you into their lives, through their inbox. So don’t abuse this privilege and spam them. Take time to create tailored email campaigns so subscribers only receive information that is useful to them. And don’t email too often. A quarterly general reminder campaign, a weekly “latest blog” email and the occasional special offer email should be well received.

If you’d like to find out more about email magnets, email incentives and ideas to boost your business please drop me a line. I also offer staff training (email marketing amongst other specialist areas), which can be tailored to your requirements.

For future tips and tricks on email marketing sign up to my weekly blog.

Do you use email magnets to attract business? Any tips for successfully building your subscribers? Please comment below, I’d love to hear your views and ideas.