Between spam filters, “unsubscribe” buttons and social media, it seems more difficult than ever to convince people to sign up for your mailing list, and even harder to keep them subscribed and paying attention. Email marketing has the potential to become one of your most effective marketing tools; it lets you reach your visitors directly, alerting them of news and entertaining them in a format longer than those allowed in social media. Learn to approach the email mailing list differently and you’ll start attracting and keeping more subscribers.
Offer an Incentive
An email marketing list can prove one of the most rewarding methods of marketing for a webmaster, but it needs to be rewarding for the website’s visitors, too. Before they even read a word or see a single image associated with your newsletter, visitors need a reason to add their email address to your mailing list. Promising never to share their email addresses with spammers is just the first step. The second is to offer an incentive. For example:
The first newsletter they receive comes with a coupon code or exclusive content
Rafflecopter giveaways for new subscribers to your email list
Exclusive coupons and content at frequent intervals for subscribers
Advertize the benefits of joining your mailing list on your social media accounts to spread the word.
Get Feedback
HubSpot reports that in 2012, 59 percent of new email marketing list subscribers no longer clicked on links or even open emails within three months of signing up. Tailor your newsletter to the people who subscribe to it. Hold a survey among current subscribers and with potential subscribers via social media, and ask what they’d like to see in a newsletter. You might provide suggestions they can vote for, such as:
Exclusive coupons, news and content
News and content a week or more before it’s posted on the website
More images, shorter text
Fewer images, more text
More industry-relevant news, not just news related to the website
Offer an incentive for visitors to complete your survey, such as an exclusive deal, to encourage a greater number to reply.
Make It an App
Make your email newsletter more accessible to a greater number of people by offering it in smartphone and tablet app form as well as the traditional email format. Remember that providing an app newsletter isn’t as simple as blasting your email newsletters to a list you gathered via the app sign-up. Optimize the content for smartphones and tablets to make sure that it appears legible, attractive and dynamic even in a different format, and send out two different versions — the app version and the email version — every time you have news to share.
Provide Engaging Content
Once you’ve attracted visitors to sign up for your newsletter, the battles become keeping those people who have signed up subscribed and engaged. You don’t want your email to become relegated to the spam folder. The easiest way to insure that people continue to read your content is to provide entertaining, useful content. To do so:
Include images and videos whenever possible, as an email blast of just text isn’t as interesting
Include content or previews of content that’s relevant, authoritative and entertaining; for example, if you blog about video game releases, include exclusive interviews with game developers and “you heard it here first” breaking news about game releases
Don’t clutter the newsletter and make it too long; if you have long blocks of content to include, provide a preview and a link to your website
Ask for readers to vote in polls related to your industry to get an idea of how many people read the newsletter each week
While email marketing can produce more traffic, it shouldn’t be your only method of attracting visitors. Improve your email marketing strategy but continue to focus on reaching visitors through social media, video, apps and other online platforms. Email marketing allows for longer, more engaging interactivity with followers than other mediums, but you need the other forms of marketing to get people interested in what you have to offer in the first place.
About the Author: Carolyn Freeman is a small business owner and avid blogger. Her business website gets thousands of visitors each day.
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