When it comes to email marketing, often making simple changes or additions to your current strategy can work wonders. The act of email marketing itself can be explained very simply: you want to add quality subscribers to your email list(s) and then target them with specific offers to boost sales and foster customer loyalty. If you have hit a plateau with obtaining subscribers, try these four simple tips below to generate email subscribers for email marketing.
Tip 1: Highlight sign-up forms as opposed to social media icons
Nowadays, social media dominates the internet and due to this saturation it can be difficult to target consumers specifically. Social media involves a person’s personal life (i.e. uploading photos, status updates) and peppers this with advertisements surrounding their social media activity. Yet with email marketing such as newsletters, you can target the person directly into their inbox. In this instance, having more emails in your email list is preferred over X amount of likes on your company FaceBook page.
With this, it becomes important to realise that you should highlight and make sign-up forms much more prominent on your website and web pages as opposed to a myriad of social media icons on each of your pages. Your website is a precious plot of online real estate that you need to optimise. If people want to follow you on Twitter, they can search for your company on Twitter itself. Yet if they want to subscribe to your company newsletters, they cannot go to MailChimp or AWeber and do this themselves – they rely on your use of sign-up forms to do so.
Tip 2: Consider using a pop-up box or a lightbox
Pop-ups have an understandably bad reputation having been used since the early days of the internet as Trojan horses for unwanted spam and harmful viruses. However, as the proficiency of online browsers, consumers and also of anti-virus software has improved over the years; pop-up boxes do not always provoke the instant disdain that they were once associated with.
Pop-ups have evolved in that you can now use a lightbox instead – a less harsh visual overlay that appears over the webpage that you are viewing. While still viewed as an annoyance by some, one cannot deny that they are visually arresting and force the viewer to see them in this way. If you choose to use a pop-up/lightbox as a sign-up form, make sure to keep the message clear and straight to the point. Make this box be a welcome surprise instead of an unwanted distraction.
Tip 3. Answer their question of “What’s in it for me?”
Be clear and transparent with your sign-up form. Try to avoid large bodies of explanatory text and terms and conditions and instead keep to the point. “By adding your e-mail to our mailing list at Johnny’s Pizzeria, we can let you know about any special offers that we are running, new menu items and also offer you exclusive discount codes and promotions.”
Depending on your type of business, you may need more than one line of text to do this – so perhaps include a tab with more information so if people want to know more, it is one click away. If you must mention terms and conditions, provide a link to bring the viewer to the terms and conditions instead of having them transcribed in microscopic text.
Tip 4: Offer incentives for new subscribers
Whatever way you choose to direct people to your sign-up forms, they can simply close the window or tab if they do not want to sign-up. To counteract this, offer them an incentive as a new subscriber. Perhaps when they do sign-up, you can send them a discount code for your online store or even a free gift with their next order.
If people do not recognise something to gain for parting with their e-mail address, why should they do it? A tangible incentive, however small, can often provide the final push needed to gain an email subscriber. Make sure to follow up with this introductory incentive and continue on from here on a positive client journey delivering the content and promotions as promised to your new email subscribers.
A full-throttle approach of a visible, clear, transparent and incentivised sign-up form is an essential tool to generate email subscribers for email marketing. Now that you have this setup, click here for Four MORE Simple Ways to Generate Email Subscribers for Email Marketing. At Ireland Website Design you can talk to us about how best to implement these into your website as our experts can design custom sign-up forms and visual overlays for you and your business.
