Email is still one of the most popular ways to reach out to customers even if your product hasn’t been launched yet. It has been predicted that by 2020 there will be over 3 billion email users worldwide. The potential is right in front of you, but how do you leverage it for your benefit?
If you build your brand presence using email subscriptions and onsite tactics, you’re more likely to see sales when your product officially rolls out. I’ll show you how you can get more email subscribers to grow email list on a WordPress website.
Who Is a Subscriber?
A subscriber is someone who signs up on your website to get news on future releases or updates published on your blog.
Typically, visitors are given a chance to opt-in when they land on the landing pages of your website. The chances to get subscribers increases significantly when these visitors can see your expertise, and realize that you are offering value in exchange for their email address.
For example, if you’re a content creator, you may have a website where you offer a free to-do checklist for other content creators. The checklist and your experience is the value proposition. If the visitors think that what you are offering has value, they’ll happy to join your email subscription list!
Why Do You Need to Get Subscribers?
Simply put, email subscribers are important because they can be your potential customers. However, once people have added to your email subscription list, it is your job to keep them engaged via regular emails.
This is your chance to hook them with your offerings. If you’ve published an ebook, it is a great opportunity to send it into the hands of subscribers. You can also take a more straightforward approach and offer a discount to subscribers who sign up prior to the product’s launch.
Next, I am going to look at the ways to build subscriber list early in your business whether you’re creating a new product or brand. I will then share some general tips on how to get email subscribers.
How to Increase Your Email Subscription List?
Your choice of marketing tactics and effectiveness of campaigns is dependent upon whether you are launching a new product/brand or working on an existing product line. Every business is a little different. However, the following breakdown will help you establish general boundaries and techniques for increasing your email subscribers and get more conversions.
1 – Launching a New Product
Before your product launches, you should create a landing page for potential customers. This landing page needs to be informational and should be convincing enough to induce the visitors to subscribe to your mailing list because of what you’re offering on the landing page. For instance, you have a WooCommerce store and you want to be able to maximize your customer satisfaction then WooCommerce subscriptions could be the best option.
2 – Coming Soon Page
You can simply create a “coming soon” page with a WordPress plugin such as SeedProd. The idea here is that while you’re hitting the social media and digital marketing trial, you’ll need a page for interested people to visit before your official launch. This will help in your hype-creating activities and also raise product awareness.
Here is a great example of a landing page built with SeedProd. It’s simple, informative, and arouses curiosity.
The landing page should present content as per the standards of your niche and type of business. Now, if you want to build a strong subscriber campaign, this should be your number one priority.
3 – Contact Us Page
Next, I will discuss the art of the contact us page and the importance of forms on your “coming soon” page.
There is obviously a fine line between too many questions on your sign up form and not enough data to help visitors make future decisions. Luckily, there is a way to find that sweet spot with some great plugins.
A form builder allows you to create custom forms for your website prior to launch. A great form builder helps you build one of the most important pages of your website: a contact page.
Your “contact us” page is an essential requirement prior to launch because it allows you to discover how people are responding to your product. HubSpot reported the data they obtained from businesses that regularly use forms, and the data speaks for itself.
According to HubSpot, 74 percent of marketers regularly use forms to get subscribers and gain insights into their audience. Furthermore, almost 50 percent (49.7 percent) of businesses say that forms are the highest converting lead generation tool. Interestingly, they also learned that five form fields give you the best chance to attract new leads.
Note that this goes well beyond just customer questions and requests. Your “contact us” page is going to be where potential business partners go if they want to work on cross-promotional material, guest posts, public relations questions, and more.
Here is an example of a great “contact us” page made with the WordPress form builder, WPForms. You can see that this example offers multiple selections and text boxes so that the person contacting you gets their email sent to the right place.
4 – Exit Popups
Exit popups have proven their value in the marketing world due to the serious impact on the visitors. One study showed that one company who invested in exit popups saw an increase in their revenue by 30 percent, and they converted over 60 percent of the customers who were thinking to leave.
So what exactly is an exit popup?Â
An exit popup is an ad that the visitors see when the system detects that they are about to leave the website. The system is quite smart and determines whether when the visitor is about to leave, and then present the popup.
Following is a great example of an exit popup.
If you look at the popup above, you’ll see that it presents a clear message with a little bit of humor. Their goal is to make you a better marketer. When you are about to leave the website, this exit popup might encourage you to sign up for the mailing list.
How to Get Email Subscribers?
OptinMonster offers the ability to boost your email subscribers and convert them into customers through targeted ad campaigns. For example, you could run a campaign that offers customers and “early bird 25 percent off” with an exit popup delivering the message.
You can compare the performance of this popup with another ad placement such as a sticky header. As an additional benefit, you also get the email addresses that would help you set up and nurture relationships.
5 – Hello Bar
Hello Bar can be a great addition to attract your visitors. It is a bar at the very top of a webpage displaying a text that people are likely to click on. With the right message displayed, it can dramatically increase your visitor’s on-site time. Additionally, the hello bar can dynamically serve different messages to different people based on geographic location or any other parameter. Thus, helps to get subscribers based on different parameters.
6 – Inline CTAs
Inline CTAs (Call to Actions) is another effective way that businesses owners use to gain more subscribers. if you already have an established brand, this tactic can perform very well on your blog.
Essentially, an in-line CTA is used on long-form blog posts. When the readers get halfway down or so, they see a prompt to subscribe to the email list to see the rest of the article. If you’ve managed to catch their attention with your amazing copy, they won’t be able to help but become a subscriber.
7 – Side Banner
A side banner can be an effective marketing tactic if you already have an existing product line and want more subscribers. You can use a side banner to entice your audience to purchase your product with an exclusive discount or special offer (specifically an ebook, checklist, or online course). A side banner may not work for everyone though. You need to experiment with the side banner content and placement to discover what works with your audience.
A/B Testing Matters
Pulling in more subscribers means knowing what your customers want. For this, A/B testing or split testing is an invaluable tool. A/B testing is a situation when you run two or more marketing campaigns at the same time and measure the data on your campaigns as it comes in. This helps you understand which campaign was more successful so you can run more of what works and continues to increase revenue.
You can build two different campaigns and see which one performs better with your existing audience. If you find out that something — perhaps offering your ebook instead of a discount — pulls in more subscribers, it might be time to act on the results of your A/B testing.
The key is to learn what types of offers, promotions, and content attracts your audience to become subscribers. Once you start finding out what your customers like, you can push that kind of offer and get more people to sign up for your mailing list before you even release your product.
Wrapping up!
There’s no doubt that email marketing is one of the most important things you need to look at before you launch a new business. There are ways to master this process, but it takes time to build and maintain email lists.
One of the most stressful parts of marketing is waiting for the data to come in. It can be a challenge to move ahead if you’re not sure if your sales plan is working. As your business blossoms and you uncover more data, you’ll be far more likely to rake in plenty of email subscribers and see success in your new company.
Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and online marketing expert. He is the co-founder of WPBeginner, OptinMonster, and WPForms .
