Email is an enormous force in the realm of digital marketing. It provides a direct route to your clients through which you may share news, advertise products, and dangle promotions. However, email marketing has a significant flaw: it only works if you know how to obtain email subscribers first.
You can, of course, buy lists if you want to waste your money. However, there is a lot better way to gain email subscribers who are relevant to your target audience and are interested in your items. In reality, this article will discuss 14 alternative approaches.
Other advantages include:
Emails are a lead nurturing tool for every stage of the funnel.
Newsletters and other forms of emails can deliver segmented material to customers at every level of your sales funnel. Your emails can urge each segment to the next stage of their journey as your relationship with them grows.
Want to expand your client acquisition efforts beyond email? Learn how to regularly create leads using a more holistic and strategic strategy.
You have control over the message.
Your email channel is a hallowed sanctuary for an omnichannel business. It's one of the few times when you have your visitor's complete attention. Your social media platforms, on the other hand, or other ecommerce marketplaces, each have their own tale to tell. As a result, a flood of diverse companies and content battle for the customer's attention. You have complete control over your branding and message when it comes to emails.
You can offer content to your clients at the most appropriate time using email, and you are not dependant on a third-party brand. You have the attention of your audience and complete control over the information they receive.
Emails can be exploitative.
People dislike aggressive sales presentations. Someone who follows you on social media or visits your blog is looking for content that is of interest to them. This can include deals and special offers, but if that's all you communicate, the customer will rapidly become fatigued and bored.
Emails, on the other hand, can be more sales-oriented and opportunistic. People sign up for newsletters with the expectation of being notified about special offers and deals. Some of them have even subscribed as a result of this! Emails are an acceptable place to sell your heart out when compared to the restraint you must apply on your other digital channels.
Get noticed!
Even your most ardent supporters will not see every social post you make - not even close. Typically, just a small percentage of your admirers will view any one post. Your posts also have a brief lifespan. A tweet on Twitter, for example, has an average lifespan of only 18 minutes.
This is not true of email. Email visibility is strong, with every email arriving in the customer's inbox and new emails arriving at the top. Almost everyone (99%) reads email on a daily basis, and 58 percent check it before perusing social media.
Emails increase engagement.
On social media, engagement per post is poor. Brands on Facebook should expect an average engagement rate of.09 percent, while those on Twitter may expect a rate of 0.048 percent.
This is not true of email. On average, expect 15 percent to 25 percent open rates and 20 percent to 30 percent click-to-open rates. When you include engagement in addition to exposure, the true worth of your list building and email subscribers skyrockets.
Get more email subscribers by driving the proper traffic.
Even savvy marketers for the world's largest brands, who have more website traffic than their competitors, worry, "How can I obtain more email subscribers?" If users aren't converting, you may be receiving the incorrect traffic.
Are you focusing on keywords without considering the users or their search intent? You might need to build – or update – your buyer personas.
Create Buyer Personas
Almost all brands have one thing in common: they cater to different buyer personas. Consider the foodie who wants to test Blue Apron in order to include more gourmet meals in their routine versus the working professional who is too busy for grocery shopping and menu planning. Blue Apron most likely has at least a half-dozen consumer profiles for a single product offering. (See additional examples of marketing personas here.)
The segmentation doesn't stop there for brands that sell a wide range of products. There are also more practical considerations: a department store such as Macy's would not want to market menswear to a woman who prefers to browse for jewels.
By appropriately segmenting your audience, you can target clients with the messages they are most likely to enjoy. This not only increases conversions, but it also makes your emails feel more relevant and individualised to the recipient. Furthermore, segmentation simply produces better commercial performance. In fact, marketers who deploy segmented tactics claim to improve income by up to 760 percent.
Almost every major email marketing tool includes built-in audience segmentation. It is your responsibility to create segmented campaigns. Begin by making a list of the many categories you intend to target, classifying your customers by any or all of the following:
- Persona
- Preferences for products
- State and city
- Problem areas
- Previous shopping habits
Actions taken (just joined up, viewed a specific web or lead generating landing page, abandoned cart, began but did not complete a signup form, purchased a specific product, etc.)
Automatically trigger the appropriate segmentation and emails based on those characteristics.
Use capturing tools to increase the number of email subscribers.
Many brands merely add one CTA on each page. Feel free to experiment. Use numerous CTAs on the same page, or even the same CTA at important points, to stress your request. Experiment with different forms and offers to determine what works best. A/B test different versions of the page against each other to determine which works best.
Do you require inspiration? Here are 14 tried-and-true email capture strategies for increasing email subscribers:
1. Include a subscribe CTA throughout your site.
Customers visit (and explore) a range of pages on your website. Instead than relying on the main page or a few important pages to do the heavy lifting, provide your clients with the option of subscribing regardless of where they are in their journey.
2. Include an opt-in at the bottom of each page.
The top of your website is ideal for email sign-up forms. However, don't underestimate the importance of targeting your clients with the right offers at the right moments. Sometimes a buyer won't realise they want to subscribe until they've read your superb blog article, scanned the UGC content on the website, or browsed a product collection. Including an opt-in at the bottom of the page or in a sticky sidebar is an excellent method to:
- Remind your buyer that subscription is an option to begin with, and
- Direct them to immediate action.
3. Make as few inquiries as possible.
Make the subscription process as simple as possible if you want to increase newsletter signups. Never request more information than is absolutely necessary. In many circumstances, you should only need your customer's name and email address, or if B2B, the company name and the person's title.
The more knowledge you want, the more value you must supply in exchange.
You can also provide email subscription as an option whenever a consumer opens an account, checks out, or enters other information. Because you're currently collecting such information, adding them as a subscriber is a breeze. Make it very obvious what your customer is signing up for so they don't feel duped into subscribing.
4 Convert your blog into a conversion engine.
Your mileage may vary, but if we had to pick one method for increasing your membership rate, we'd recommend content planning and blogging. A blog is an excellent discovery tool, drawing both new and returning customers with relevant information. Your helpful, motivating, or entertaining reads can benefit your audience without requiring anything more than their email address. They'll gladly make this deal if they trust in the worth of your material.
By changing up the offerings, you can turbocharge your blog. Is one of your items appealing to them? Is it a whitepaper? Lookbook? Calculator online? Participating in an online event with you? Reading a collection of your blog content that you can download? Make certain that each blog article motivates people to take action!
5.Use gated content or content upgrades
Using gated content wisely is one of the finest strategies to attract email subscribers. Everyone enjoys freebies, but make sure you receive something in exchange. By gating free ebooks, guides, white papers, original research, and other high-quality lead magnets, you can turn them into potent lead generation magnets.
For example, we commissioned a Forrester Consulting research on the brand-building power of SEO. The research looks at how SEO affects brand reputation as well as customer lifetime value.
You can get the study here!
Then, to draw organic traffic from search engines, make a blog article on a related topic or leave your ebook partially unlocked. On the same page, offer to email the reader the entire pdf version.
Gating up content improvements has long been a habit for innumerable B2B and B2C enterprises for one simple reason: it works. Not only is the content an inconspicuous way to obtain the customer's email address, but it also allows you to better understand your newly acquired lead. The information they express an interest in will be closely related to their pain areas and interests, allowing you to segment them for better targeting.
Just keep form fields as simple as possible. You should also provide an option for individuals to subscribe to your email newsletter and let them know how to unsubscribe quickly.
6. Develop an online tool
The goal of content planning is to provide true value to your audience so that they will eventually regard your brand as a helpful industry authority. Written content is frequently used for this purpose, but it is not the only technique to attract attention and meet a need.
Interactive tools provide the same objective while offering a few additional advantages. They are easily shared. They actually assist the user right away. The user will establish a positive relationship with the brand as a result of utilising the product.
Tools do not need to be difficult; they simply need to fit a demand. HubSpot's Website Grader is a great example of how to use a free web tool to obtain more email subscribers and develop your subscriber list. Website Grader is so popular that it has garnered over 940,000 backlinks from 12,000+ domains naturally. However, in order to receive the tool's output, you must input your email address (as well as your website address).
The tool is now organically ranked in Google for over 6,000 search phrases. Simply told, it's an email and traffic generator!
7. Organize webinars
Webinars are another wonderful technique to attract and engage your target audience. They humanise your brand and demonstrate the knowledgeable, helpful experience your clients may anticipate when hiring or purchasing from you.
They are also a natural and painless method of collecting email addresses. Everyone now expects to be asked for their email address in order to obtain access to the webinar and follow-up recording. If your prospect is interested in your webinar, they will gladly give you their email address.
8. Provide a free initial consultation
Free quotes, customised evaluations, and initial consultations serve a dual purpose by getting a prospect into your sales funnel and directing them to the next level. Make the sales team your lead's next point of contact once you've obtained their email address.
Your sales force should function as coaches or advisors, carefully listening to each customer's specific demands and assisting them in developing a tailored solution. Use the consultation to move the customer farther down your conversion funnel and demonstrate the type of service they can anticipate from your company.
9. Improve your CTAs
Optimizing your CTAs is one of the most fundamental ways to obtain more email subscribers. With attractively crafted CTAs, you can increase the likelihood of success for all of your email capture techniques. Keep your button copy brief, action-oriented, and intriguing. Create a sense of urgency in the copy preceding the CTA by emphasising your offer and value proposition.
While strong writing is your first focus, great design is essential. Draw the eye in with a CTA that has a strong contrast and legibility, and use colours that make the CTA stick out on the page.
Experiment with different designs and forms while keeping user expectations in mind. You can use typical CTA buttons, but you can also experiment with text-based CTAs, graphics, and icons.
Optimize your CTAs based on the digital body language and behaviour of your website visitors for maximum outcomes. Are they making their way to the bottom of the page? Are you devoting enough time to the page? Visiting a specific page and then the next few pages in your funnel in a row? To capture more email signups, use technologies like OptinMonster, Thrive Leads, and ConvertPro to deliver alternative CTAs prompted by the site visitor's individual behaviour.
10, split-test your CTAs
A/B test each modification to maximise conversions as you experiment with CTA colours, styles, and messaging. It should never be necessary to guess which version your visitors prefer. The data will lead you to the correct answer.
CTAs are convenient candidates for A/B testing. As long as the rest of the page remains consistent, CTA changes are specific and isolated enough to produce results that aren't attributable to other factors. At the same time, they're not so specific that your test won't produce useful results.
You can test the following elements:
- Your CTA's wording/messaging
- The deal itself
- Color, size, shape, or style of buttons
- The position of the CTA on the page
- The use of a single CTA as opposed to multiple CTAs on the same page
- Offers of assistance
Allow enough time for your test to collect a sufficient sample size of data. If there is a clear winner, go with that option! If two versions are tied and you have a lot of data, that variable is unlikely to be a deal breaker for your audience.
11.Make use of social proof
Social proof is one of the most powerful influencers of human behaviour. If you show off positive feedback, then your CTAs will achieve a higher conversion rate and you’ll be capture more emails.
Have 1 million customers? Brag about it! Customers praise you nonstop? Add some testimonials to your website! Have 10 million followers on social networks? Tell the world! Offer free trials? Mention it in your LinkedIn profile! Have glowing 5-star reviews? Add that to your email signature!
12. Add subscription links in your social media accounts
When planning how to get more email subscribers, there are some easy tactics that are commonly missed.
Adding social media icons to your email newsletter is a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by the number of brands that forget to do the inverse. Include email subscription links on all your social channels to give your audience another way to engage with your brand. This could be a subscription button on your Facebook page, or if Twitter, a pinned post or even a link in your profile.
If they’re not ready to make a purchase, subscribing to your mailing list is still a great way for them to take action.
13. Personalize your message based on the traffic source
Each person visiting your website is unique. So stop treating them all the same. Different people deserve different messages and offers.
Personalization is an incredibly powerful way to get more email subscribers because it helps you connect with your audience.
Use a marketing automation tool that dynamically adjusts the page and the corresponding CTA according to the traffic source as well as other parameters you set. Did they come from a specific influencer marketing campaign or an ABM email campaign, then customise the message they read.
Tools like Marketo, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, and Lead Forensics all enable you to customise your site based on the source of the traffic. As a result, you can deliver a more personalised experience for the site visitor.
Even if you don’t know who they are, you can identify and serve personalised messages to first-time visitors vs. frequent visitors or shoppers, or those who take one action vs. another.
14. Use exit-intent technology
We’ve covered a lot of ways to capture emails while users are on your website. But, when you deliberate about how to attract more email subscribers, think about strategies to grab them as they’re ready to leave your site.
Exit intent popups are your final opportunity to entice visitors before they leave your site. These WordPress plugins detect when your visitor's cursor is going to exit the browser window frame, at which moment a full-screen or lightbox popup with the message or offer of your choice will display.
Exit intent popups, whether you like them or not, are effective. The brief interruption from the user's task redirects their attention back to your website and the offer in front of them. Make your offer compelling enough, and you might just get an email.
Email subscription invitations are ideal. They maintain the prospect in your conversion funnel and provide you with a vital way to communicate with them. But don't expect too much from the user. As with any other opt-in forms, pair your ask with a straightforward offer or value prop. Try delivering a value-add relevant to the post topic if your visitor was reading a blog post, for example. If they were considering a specific sort of product, give a value-add relevant to that product category.
Email marketing may be a potent digital marketing technique, with an average ROI of 3,800%. However, to get the most out of it, you'll need a sizable email list!