It’s easy to understand why a newsletter is so imperative to a site’s growth. By getting subscribers, you turn random readers into potential customers and, if nothing else, consistent readers. However, the most difficult part is getting people to sign up for your newsletter. Once they’ve signed up, you can begin the slow process of converting them into loyal readers. If they’re not signed up, though, they can just as easily leave the site and never return.
Knowing how to optimize your email collecting newsletter is very important to ensure that the maximum number of people sign up. While this guide is far from complete, it does provide a basis for you to experiment with and expand on. When dealing with anything on a website, experimentation is the best way to ensure that you’ve found the right method.
Give Something Away For Free
One of the things that has popped up a lot on blogs is people giving away free e-books with the hope of getting people to sign up for their newsletter. They write an e-book, hook it up to their newsletter software and then when someone signs up, they get the e-book delivered to them. This is a really great way to get people to sign up because it gives them an incentive. Just saying, “sign up” won’t persuade them to. But, giving them something for signing up might do the trick. People love stuff. That’s just a fact of life.
The problem many people have is that they don’t know what to write an e-book on. That’s the easy part. Compile blog posts and put them together into an e-book. For example, if you owned a site on self help, you could make a “Overcoming Obstacles in Your Work Life” e-book and compile all your blog posts that were on that topic. You’d organize them so that they went in a good order, edit them to get rid of grammar and add images so that it looked even better.
Once you’ve made the e-book, create an auto-respond email so that, once the reader confirms they want to be a part of the newsletter, they get it. Attached to the auto-respond email should be the e-book. This way, they can get a great thank you page from you and, more importantly, get the e-book that they wanted.
You didn’t have to do very much work because you had already written the e-book and now you’ve got someone following your newsletter. The argument here is that people will unsubscribe once they get the e-book. This is a possibility and will happen with some people, but many more will stay.
Offer Many Ways to Sign Up
Different people respond well to different things. One of the most powerful methods of gaining sign ups is the pop-under. This is a sign in form that appears after a certain amount of seconds to every new visitor that comes to the site. By having the e-book made available, a new visitor can see an easy way to get something free right away and then sign up.
However, the problem is, some people don’t react well to that. They click out of it immediately because they don’t want to be bothered by pop-ups. But, you still want them to become a newsletter subscriber. Therefore, add a second section for them to sign up. Typically, this is found near the top of the website below the header. Or, it can be on the sidebar near the top. Regardless, create a section where they can sign up for your newsletter and show them that the e-book can be obtained from there.
In the end, a newsletter is an incredible way to turn new visitors into consistent readers and then, hopefully, customers. However, you have to provide numerous different ways for readers to sign up for it. Otherwise, you’re going to miss out on potential customers. And remember, this is just the tip of how to optimize a newsletter. There are so many more things to consider, but as mentioned above, anything pertaining to internet marketing is all about experimentation, practice and hopefully, perfection.
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