Following on from our recent blog post titled Four Simple Ways to Generate Email Subscribers for Email Marketing, here we provide four more simple tips. Now that you have a clear, concise and clever sign-up form in place, you need to utilise it properly and maintain and manage the subscribers that it obtains.
Tip 1: Retain simplicity with a range of options
Whether on a desktop or mobile device, we are becoming accustomed to being a single click or a single tap away from achieving what we want when online. Take bookmarks for example, accessing one such marked webpage can be done in an instant. Bring your sign-up forms into this realm of instant simplicity so that it is not a chore for people to sign-up to your newsletters.
When it comes to entering information, simply ask for their e-mail address and do not ask for personal details such as names, ages and locations. While this can be useful for segmentation purposes, it can also come across as dubious and you do not want any off-putting elements to be included in your sign-up forms. You can also have a custom QR code created and visible on your sign-up form so that you are giving people the option to sign-up in this way.
Tip 2: Ask when they want to receive the newsletter?
Instead of working in the mindset that getting people to subscribe to your email lists is a hard sell, consider those that do sign up and look forward to your correspondence. How can you bolster this willingness further? The answer is by giving them an element of control – namely, allowing them to choose when they would like to receive your newsletters.
When they first sign up, you could have an automatic form sent back to them where they can tick a box or write down the best time to send them a newsletter. Perhaps they like to read on their lunch break on a Monday or last thing on a Thursday afternoon? Maybe they would appreciate correspondence once a month as opposed to once every two weeks? This is a simple way to set standards which they are happy with and that your newsletter software can accommodate.
Tip 3: Competitions and Whitepapers
As a prerequisite to entering a competition that you are running or to gain access to a whitepaper that they are interested in; request their email address to enter and receive these respectively.
Do not however take a cold and clinical approach to this and instead explain why you need and want their email address at this stage. “To enter this competition, simply enter your email address so that we can contact you with the competition instructions and special offers from Johnny’s Pizzeria.” “Please provide us with your email address so that we can send you the download link for this whitepaper and also to send you whitepaper recommendations based on your choice.”
Tip 4: Self assess and re-evaluate with relevant metrics and analytics
When you start to generate more email subscribers, do not get complacent – they can unsubscribe at any point. Examine your most successful newsletters and ask yourself why they worked so well when others did not. Perhaps one newsletter had a high click-through rate because it was uncluttered and streamlined?
As part of active email marketing management, habitually make use of the figures that your newsletter software collects for you. From this you can glean as to what links were clicked on for example and even what peak times your newsletter was opened at as well as bounce rates and unsubscriber figures.
As part of your online presence and marketing strategy, the experts at Ireland Website Design can assist you with this generation and retention of email subscribers. We specialise in responsive website designs that browsers respond well to and interact with and can make the generation of email subscribers a particular focus if you so wish.
