Ready to crush it with growing your email list? Want to learn how to grow a BIG email list?
That’s what we cover in today’s episode of TIM Talks….
Here we are episode 14!
We started out in episode 11 doing a short series on email marketing. Make sure you check out those episodes at the following links if you haven’t yet:
- #11 The 5 Things To Look For In An Email Marketing Service
- #12 The 4 Very Different Types of Email Marketing (Part 1)
- #13 The 4 Very Different Types of Email Marketing (Part 2)
Now it’s time to talk about how to get subscribers. How do you get people to actually sign up? You might send out amazing email broadcasts, but if no one gets them, does it matter?
How To Grow A BIG Email List
There are two areas to talk about when it comes to getting people to find value in what you’re doing and opting in to your email list.
There’s on-site and off-site.
On-Site
This is all about how your website is optimized for conversions. Do you capture your website’s visitors and give them a clear place to opt-in to your email list?
Do you have a compelling reason for people to sign up for your list?
You need a LeadMagnet.
A LeadMagnet is simply an ethical bribe. It’s like a dangling carrot in front of your potential subscribers.
This is something you give away for free in exchange for their email address. Authors have eBooks, GrowthHackers have FREE reports, Musicians have mp3 bundles, and bloggers have how-to-checklists.
It could be anything, but it needs to be valuable. And it needs to FREE and visible.
Don’t put it way down in the footer of your website.
Your site should have several places where people can opt-in.
Some sites have “FeatureBoxes” – a big wide image with a compelling headline and fat subscribe button right on the homepage, just above the fold. This is a great way to utilize your root home page at yourblogname.com for example.
You should utilize your sidebar as well…. See mine? 🙂
The sidebar seems to be the most popular place for people to put regular old sign-up forms.
But look over at mine….
Do you see a sign-up form?
Nope.
You see a LeadMagnet with a button underneath it. When you click on it, then you’ll see the sign-up form.
Why didn’t I have a sign up form right there on the sidebar? Doesn’t that go against conventional wisdom to create another step for someone?
This has been tested many times, and this “double-opt-in” process, as it has been called, has a much higher conversion rate than a boring old form.
But why?
Because people like to follow through and complete the things they start. Even little actions on the web.
The idea here is that you offer the FREE thing first, which most people will take, and then you ask the for the email address.
Learn more about this in my email course….
If you click on the image above, you experienced what is called a LeadBox by LeadPages.
It’s the ability to place strategic double-opt-ins all over the place (if you wanted to)
LeadBoxes are great for content upgradestoo.
A content upgrade is when you offer something like a PDF of these show notes here.
You get the idea….
At the end of the day, your website should be all about offering value to its visitors and converting them into subscribers and repeat visitors.
Doing this is the BEST way to get them to come back.
Off-Site
Off-site is exactly what it sounds like.
You can’t expect to grow a big list if you only promote it on your website.
It might sound counterintuitive, but you need to get off your website. You simply need to get out where other people are and promote your LeadMagnet.
There are some great platforms to make your LeadMagnet shareable on social media like Noisetrade if you’re giving away some free music or an eBook; or Rafflecopter if you’re doing a big giveaway (see an example here ;-).
You can embed these kind of widgets on other blogs, and even on Facebook.
We could spend a lot of time talking about how to increase the amount of traffic to your site using off-site strategies. Try a dedicated email drop (marketing through someone else’s email list) or paid traffic with Facebook advertising too. These can work very well.
But be careful here. You need to have some way of knowing how to measure a return on investment (ROI) when doing paid advertising. We’ll get more into the subject of “paid traffic” on another episode, but it is one way to really add fuel to a good buzz online.
Episode Takeaways
Below are 4 takeaways for you to think about. The first one costs you nothing, and fits into the on-site category. The second one can be for both on-site and off-site, but starts out at around $25 a month.
Lastly, I share with you some more resources and educational things on this whole subject of growth hacking your email list sign-ups.
Here they are….
SumoMe
SumoMe is an amazing suite of apps built by the good people of AppSumo.
It’s basically a free plug-in for your WordPress site that gives you several different apps that you can download right then and there from the single plug-in.
For our topic on list building, try the free version of ListBuilder. Pretty great stuff.
Here’s their site. If you’re in your WordPress admin panel go to ‘plugins’ on the left, and then click on ‘add new’ and the search for SumoMe. You can upload it directly from there.
LeadPages
LeadPages will continue to come up because they have so many great options for not only getting your landing pages and squeeze pages built easily, but they also offer things like LeadBoxes (I mentioned that above) and a new feature called LeadDigits.
LeadDigits allows you to collect subscribers over SMS text messaging. You basically get a number and have your fans send in a message to your number and they can opt-in to your email list right then and there.
This could work perfect at live shows and events.
Check out LeadPages here (this is an affiliate link).
Grow Your Email List Fast
This is my new course I’m finishing up VERY soon called “Grow Your Email List Fast”.
111 Links To Double Or Even Triple Your Subscribers
This is a great post over at Jon Morrow’s Boost Blog Traffic. A ton of great resources on list building are in this post. 111 to be exact…. Check it out here.