After you’ve created your first email marketing list for your blog, you may be wondering how to actually grow your list and get your audience to sign up. Many people have engaging blogs with high-quality information, but their list stagnates. There are several strategies that top bloggers use to grow the number of email subscribers to their blog. Let’s look at the most actionable ways to get more email subscribers!
Opt-In
One of the best ways to increase your email subscribers is to offer them something of value in exchange for subscribing to your list. Offering a freebie like an eBook or PDF can encourage readers to subscribe to your list. The downside to this approach is that they may unsubscribe after receiving what they wanted.
Top Bar
Install a small bar at the top or bottom of your site to attract attention from your readers. I have had great success with a small top bar on one of my blogs for capturing readers’ email addresses! I used the plugin MC4WP: Mailchimp Top Bar to accomplish this.
End of Post
I personally love this way to get more email subscribers. I have a subscribe box at the end of every blog post on my site. It’s coded into my theme so that readers who’ve reached the bottom can subscribe easily!
Pop-Up
A classic way to capture email addresses is to use a pop-up subscribe box that appears after the visitor remains 10 or 20 seconds on your site! These generally appear in the center of your site and have an X which the user can click to close.
Boxzilla
I used this plugin for a while and had great results. Unfortunately, once I got my blog onto Mediavine, it didn’t make sense to keep it since an advertisement stuck to the sidebar. Boxzilla is a plugin that creates a slide-in email box on an empty part of your site. It’s less intrusive than a pop-up but still catches the reader’s attention because it moves.
Sticky Sidebar
If your theme allows you to have widgets “stick” to the sidebar, it’s a great idea to have your email subscribe form stick there too. When I first joined Mediavine, I asked if they had the capability to “stick” ads to the sidebar – they told me that yes they did and that’s one of their best-performing ad placements! So that gives you an idea of how attention-grabbing this part of your website is!
Exit Pop-Up
You can create an exit pop-up form that only appears when a user mouses away from your site. I have seen so many sites use this technique and I have to say it really does catch my eye! That being said, I’ve never seen it on a site that I actually wanted to subscribe to. But it’s an option at least and it must work for some.
Share Secret Information
A good way to entice people to subscribe to your email list is to reward them with secret information that they get exclusive access to. I use this technique on my Pinterest traffic article where I share even more secrets to Pinterest traffic if the reader subscribes to my list!
Footer
Another great place to capture emails is the footer of your website. You can typically use a widget to add a subscribe form if your theme does not have a footer subscribe form built-in.
Guest Post
I have often read guest posts by other bloggers on popular blogs. What the smart bloggers do is create landing pages on their websites where they collect the emails of readers who read their guest post. They link to this landing page throughout the guest post. This in turn grows their readership!
I hope these ways to get more email subscribers gave you some great ideas to grow your email list!