It’s one thing to have an idea for a good email marketing campaign, but it’s another to have people to actually receive the emails.
Here are the six ways to build up your subscriber list so that your email marketing reaches the right audience.
Place An Email Marketing Optin Form On Your Home Page
If you have a brick and mortar store you can do this as well. Just put up a sign indicating you have an email newsletter that gets sent out and then ask anyone willing to hand in their address so they can opt into receiving the messages.
Naturally this works even better on your own website.
You’ll be surprised how many people will see a notice on your site asking them to give their email address and then actually do it! If your product is good, they’ll want to be updated about sales, promotions and new things via your email marketing.
Use A Plugin To Increase Optin Rates
There are two very good WP Plugins available right now that can help you increase your subscriber list, we use both of these one on this blog which is Maxblogpress Subscriber Magnet and another called Popup Domination 2.0 on our other affiliate marketing site…
With both of these products we have seen an increase in our subscriber list from the first day of activating them on our WordPress blogs.
Ask For An Email Address When Making A Sale
This is becoming a standard practice of many online businesses. Again, this can be done within a brick and mortar business as well. Whether it’s during the making of a sale or while signing on a new client, you can ask for their email address and whether or not they’d like to receive your updates.
On the checkout page of a web store though, this practice is even easier. Chances are the customer has already entered their address as part of making the purchase, and so asking them to check a box if they want to receive emails from you is a simple thing. As in the above example, many customers genuinely want to receive those emails and will give permission.
Attach Your Email Marketing Message To Another Newsletter
If you aren’t able to build up an email list of your own just yet then you can easily and legally feed off of someone else’s. Just take some time to research what newsletters are reaching your target market. You can easily do that by actually getting on their subscriber list and seeing if the information is a match for your business.
Then get in touch with the people running that newsletter and purchase space in their newsletter for your own message. This alone can result in increased business, but it can also be a good technique for getting those recipients sign up for your own newsletter as well.
Offer An Incentive For People To Give You Their Name & Email Address
People don’t always want to hand out their email address for nothing. A good way to get it is to offer a contest or similar incentive. That way they will have to give you their email address and permission to send them emails, otherwise they won’t be able to win.
Pay For A Legal List Of Subscribers..
This would have to be our least preferred option, but it is still an option that you need to be aware of, be cautious however.
Remembering legal is the key word there with email marketing list. Many of these lists exist and they aren’t hard to find. They are created by having people give in their address and consent to receive emails that are otherwise unsolicited. This isn’t always the most effective way of going about sending out your message though since people are prone to forgetting they gave their address out at one point.
If you are serious about your online business or even as an affiliate marketer then it is in your best interests to ensure you are providing the best service possible to your subscriber list. It is simple to do and with the assistance of services such as Aweber or Getresponse which are cheap at half the price when you consider the effort it takes to actually get subscribers on your list.
Still, if you’re upfront about why you are sending the email marketing message to them and where you got their address from, you may still see some pretty positive results. If you don’t know how to do email marketing then have a look at Ewen Chia’s Optin Profits.
A lot of very valuable information here Ron. Have printed it out for reference as adding opt-in forms to my niche sites is on this month’s agenda. Was lucky enough to pick up a one year AWeber subscription for half price via AppSumo recently so that was a bonus. Now it’s a matter of figuring out how best to use it.
Hi Jon
When you first start getting subscribers make sure you offer them value, meaning information not product recommendations. You need to build trust and continuously keep sending them information they can use then when you have some really good offer then let them know about it. Don’t try and hard sell if you have done it right the email recommending the product should sell its self.
You can even write a post on your site with screen shots of how that product has helped your business always good to see results to make people feel at ease. I always stick to the philosophy of only recommending products or services that I actually use and feel would benefit my readers.