8 Essentials to Grow Your Mailing List

Grow Your Mailing List

Grow Your Mailing List

If you know the power of the mailing list (and we hope you do), you’re probably always trying to get more people on yours. Of course, you want targeted subscribers, not just numbers. These are people who are interested in your books, products and services.

Here are a 8 must-do ways to grow your targeted subscriber list:

1. Have a Great Offer: It’s not enough to say, “We have a newsletter…join!” You have to give them a compelling reason to subscribe. You can give them a free gift like a report, checklist, worksheet, software or other tool. Or if you’re mailing list has some other attractive perk, include that in your offer.

Think of anything that holds instant value to your subscribers. It doesn’t have to be long and complicated because your subscribers want quick solutions. Help them achieve their goals quickly and they’ll opt in readily.

2. Change Your Offer Accordingly: Sometimes the same freebie or perk doesn’t work in all instances. Change it up to fit the appropriate situation. Just like with any advertising you do, always make your offer as targeted to the audience as possible.

For example, if you have a blog post about creating compelling fiction characters, include an opt-in offer with a character worksheet. But if you’ve got another post or you’re creating a Facebook Ad about writing prompts, offer them more prompts for opting in.

3. Have Multiple Lists: Not only should the freebie or perk be targeted, so should the email you send to the list. Target your list to the specific audience. This doesn’t mean you need 30 lists, but where it makes sense, do it. For example, if you’re in the women’s health market, you may have lists for healthy eating, exercise, etc.

4. Opt-In Form on Every Page: It’s email marketing 101, but a good reminder to have your opt-in offer on the top fold of each content page. If it’s a sales page, you may not want the distraction, but for your blog, articles and other content, get that opt-in form on there.

5. Dedicated Opt-in / Squeeze Page: In addition to having an opt-in form, create a full page dedicated to nothing but “selling” your freebie/perk and opting into your newsletter. This is going to be a key piece of real estate for building your list. See the resource link at the bottom of this post for help in creating your page.

Here are some examples of our opt-in pages:

* Top Success Tips from 8 Professional Writers: An offer to get the top tips (report and video format) of 8 professional writers.

* 34 Ways to Profit from Your Writing: An offer to get our free report that includes information on writing for profit.

* How to Use Free Reports to Grow Your Business: This opt-in page is a bit more involved as the whole page is a large tutorial, but there are opportunities to download the tutorial by opting in.

6. Link to Your Opt-In / Squeeze Page: This is essential, but where a lt of people just get passive. Once you have your page set up, make sure you link to it readily. Use it in your advertising, resource boxes, social media and more. If you expect to send a lot of traffic from one linking source, create a special landing page that welcomes those visitors and target the offer as much as possible to those specific visitors.

Do a little bit of this EVERY single day and your list will continue to grow. Put it on your to do list and be vigilant about it.

7. Refer-a-Friend and Share: Ask your subscribers to pass on your emails and to share them on social media. If they like your content, encourage them to make sure others know about it too.

8. Make Friends: This one is HUGE. One of the fastest ways to grow your list is to make friends of would-be competitors. It’s not a dog-eat-dog world out there amongst content publishers…most of them readily share, so get to know them and these relationships will be some of your biggest assets.

When you’ve got an email list, you’ve got:

  • A high converting asset. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email produces an ROI of $40.56 for each dollar invested.
  • It’s an asset that you OWN. If you’re relying on Facebook or Twitter, just remember those followers are not your own and can be taken from you in an instant.
  • A highly engaged audience you can contact over and over again. Website visitors come and go. Social media attention spans are fleeting. Email gets you in the inbox of your readers and when they open your email, they’re focused on your message.

Stay tuned…we’ll be back soon with more tips to help you break down some of these steps.