Entries Tagged 'building newsletter subscriber list' ↓
July 5th, 2013 — building newsletter subscriber list, Call to Action
Woohoo – look at all those visitors you’re getting to your blog.
But are you getting any benefit from them?
Are they sharing?
Are they coming back?
Are they signing up for your RSS feed or newsletter?
No?
Ah, that’s a problem.
If you’re getting shed loads of traffic, but not doing anything with it, what’s the point?
People are coming to your blog, but they’ll only subscribe to it (or your newsletter) if you ask them to.
It’s true.
So how do you do that?
Boosting your sign ups
Well the best place to start is by adding a passing comment along those lines in your blog posts. Add a footnote, or something in your author’s bio that lets them know you offer a newsletter, what it usually contains and how often it’s sent along with a call to action to get them to sign up.
Social media is also another great tool to boost your sign ups. Send a tweet out or Facebook update before your next issue is due out, urging people to sign up so they don’t miss out. If you’ve hit a milestone (such as your 100th newsletter), shout about it.
A great way to boost your blog subscribers is to announce that you will be publishing a series of blog posts on a particular subject. Of course, they won’t want to miss an instalment, so they’d better subscribe to your RSS feed today.
Of course, then there’s the good old-fashioned call to action. Make sure these are liberally dotted about, especially at the end of a really hot blog post. You know the ones – they’ve been attracting loads of traffic for days or weeks, so make the most of that exposure by placing a sign up call to action at the end.
By following these simple steps you’ll see your subscription numbers soar, boosting your exposure and reputation.
Author:
Sally Ormond is an international copywriter and founder of Briar Copywriting Ltd.
November 16th, 2009 — building newsletter subscriber list, email copywriting, freelance copywriting, marketing
Email marketing provides businesses with a quick and inexpensive way to reach hundreds of customers instantly. It has revolutionised marketing – but its impact has also been lessened by the spammers out there.
Spammers are email marketers who fill millions of inboxes with unsolicited messages. The problem is their abuse of the system has made in increasingly difficult for genuine businesses to use this method.
You used to only have to worry about having a strong message to make sure your email got read. Now you have to prove it’s not spam.
What is a spam email?
Spam is unwanted email that is delivered to thousands of recipient simultaneously. Obviously you could argue what constitutes ‘unwanted’ email until the cows come home but as a general rule if the email comes from someone you don’t know it is perceived as spam.
When you should use email…
- To tell your customers about new offers
- When sending advice, useful information to enhance your customer service
- Keeping leads warm by staying in touch
- Following up contacts in a sales campaign (e.g. to encourage sign-ups etc).
All of these have one thing in common – they are concerned with building relationships with your customers and keeping them up to date.
…and when you shouldn’t
- Prospecting – this can be seen as an annoying and impersonal method of initial contact
- Generating leads – again this is impersonal and your email will be deleted
- Using rented lists – you have no relationship with these contacts so you’ll be seen as a spammer
If you want to market through email your best bet would be to develop your own opt-in list – if you have the recipient’s agreement for you to send information to them they are more likely to buy from you at some point.
Build your own list
Building your own opt-in list is fairly straightforward but it can take time. Therefore you should start immediately rather than wait until you have a campaign in mind.
You can attract opt-ins through your website (give away a free report in exchange for their details), your reply devices and your order forms.
Your request doesn’t have to be complicated, simply:
- Ask for their email address
- Ask for permission to send emails to them
- Tell them exactly what kind of emails you will send them
- Assure them you won’t share their contact details with anyone else
Of course, one thing to remember is that you must create an opt-out. This should consist of a reminder of why they are receiving the emails (i.e. they requested updates) and an opt-out link which will take them through to a webpage which automatically removes them from your mailing list.
Before you know it, you’ll have an in-house marketing list.
Further reading:
Email Marketing – It’s All In The Subject Line
Work You Way Towards The Perfect Email Body
Sally Ormond – Freelance Copywriter
February 4th, 2009 — article writing, building newsletter subscriber list, freelance copywriting, UK copywriter
Dear Copywriter,
I’ve got a newsletter that just isn’t growing. I’m busy posting my site on free advertising sites and I’m even paying for advertising, but I’m not getting any new sign-ups. What can I do?
Yours sincerely.
Billy-No-Mates
****************************************************
Dear Billy-No-Mates,
First off, you’re not alone. I know you are working hard but sadly that doesn’t mean you will be guaranteed success. You need to consider long-term ways to grow your list.
My favourite way to grow a subscriber list is through giving away articles.
Website and blog owners are always looking for content to share with their web visitors. So, there are places called Article Directories (basically a library of free articles) where they can go to find articles that they can use – free. I’m sure you’ve heard of Ezine Articles? Well, that is just one – search Google under ‘free article sites’ for more.
All you have to do is write and submit your articles to these websites.
In case you were wondering just how that will help grow your subscriber list, I was just coming to that bit.
Once you have written your article you can then complete the Author Bio which goes at the end the article (see below for an example). This section is where you can sell yourself and talk about your business. But instead of your author bio linking directly to the main page of your site, link it to a page where you have a signup box for your newsletter.
Ta-da! Now everyone who clicks through that link will be taken to the page where you can offer them your wonderful newsletter (with a great incentive they can’t pass up.) and your newsletter list will grow.
So there you go – happy article writing.
