5 Simple Email Opt-In Strategies

EMAIL is the secret weapon of many successful businesses and internet entrepreneurs.  While social media marketing has received a great deal of (deserved) attention for elevating brand identity; it isn’t as powerful as the email when it comes to driving people to take action. 

Capturing email addresses and creating an audience of email readers will take you and your business to the next level.  Let’s take a look at why email is so important and the best recipe for building a better audience for your email marketing efforts.

First, Why Email is SO Important

Here’s why: people still guard their email inboxes.  They will not give their addresses to just anyone.  Because of this, they are much more likely to read and engage with the emails that they do get.  In addition, your email is not competing with games, funny memes, or a friend’s new baby.  It’s just your message laid out there for a ready and willing group of subscribers who are actually interested in what you have to say.

By the numbers…

Email has shown to blow other online marketing methods out of the water when it comes to ROI. Litmus reported $40 ROI for every $1 spent on email marketing, while keyword ads only return $17 per dollar, and banner ads a small $2 per dollar. Let’s also talk conversion rates. Email has been reported to offer a 4.16% conversion rate, whereas search results offer 2.64%, and social media converts at less than 1%.  So now that you have an understanding of the reasons to invest in email marketing, here is how to grow your email list.

The Best Strategy

The following ways are tried-and-tested ways to get the coveted email addresses of your potential customers. As we said, people keep their emails more guarded, so you will need to offer incentives and position your request strategically.

1. Prioritize Your Opt-In Form

First, your opt-in form should be a priority when it comes to the design of your site. These little forms allow you access to the golden list which converts higher than any other channel and offers the highest ROI for goodness sakes, make it the first thing visitors see! Here is an example from the 7 for all Mankind website, a company that sells high-end jeans.

Three seconds after arriving at their site, pop! Up comes the email opt-in with a 10% off incentive and a promise of exclusive offers, updates, competitions, and in-store events. Not only that, they help to segment their customers by gathering gender information. Take notes marketers, they’ve got it right. But, how about the customers that aren’t sold right off the bat and don’t opt in?

2. Ask for Subscriptions on the Bottom of Every Page

In order to get the most subscribers from your website or blog, you need to make an offer to subscribe at the bottom of each page. Now, each of these offers should not be like the rest. You want to customize call-to-actions according to the content on the page. For example, if you have a page explaining actionable steps a customer can take to achieve a goal, you might add an opt-in like the one below at the bottom of the page.

Make opting in easy and make the offers relevant to the situation your visitor is in.

3. Site Registration

Of course, one of the easiest way to collect email addresses is when a visitor registers for your website. Juniper reported 77% of marketers report site registration to be effective for building a large, quality email list. Similar to how Facebook requires a registration to sign up, or eBay when you are trying to make a purchase, your site should register users with their email addresses too. In the site registration form, or e-commerce forms for that matter, you want to provide an opt-in option for visitors to receive continuous emails. Be sure to incentivize your opt-in so visitors are more likely to agree.  Here’s an example of this tactic on H&M’s website.

Note how they incentivize their offer by saying “exclusive offers”. Who wouldn’t want exclusive offers, right!? They also collect information to segment their audience, as the 7 for all Mankind opt-in did above, including fields for gender, location, and even an interest in kids wear.

4. Use Social Media

Next up is social media. Social media is a great tool to reach far and wide and attract new customers. It is also a place to build your email list. Opt-in forms can be placed on your social media sites to call followers to action. Here is an example of what that looks like on Facebook from Salesforce’s Facebook page.

When you click on that “Sign up” button, you are taken to this page to complete the email opt-in. Adding email opt-in buttons on your social media profiles can help you move your audience from social media down the buying funnel to a place where they will click through and convert.

Social media is also great for running contests. You can offer a prize and require signing up with email in order to qualify to win. Here’s a great blog about 10 social media contests that generated a total of 10,000 emails for the respective companies.

5. Create a Free Course or Other Downloadable Content

Last but not least, a free course is a great way to engage your audience and earn their email address. What can you teach? Well, what industry are you in? What is your expertise? What do your customers want from you? You can share some of your coveted expertise on a topic people commonly ask about in your industry. Courses can be in written, audio, or video form. Here is an example from a page on Neil Patel’s Quicksprout website.

On this blog, which targets an audience who is having trouble converting SEO traffic, he has the side banner offering his free course (valued at $300) on increasing traffic. It is free in exchange for a simple email address. Note how the blog and course have the same target audience and the course reinforces the blog. This is a great way to get more email subscribers.

Another note is that these offers don’t have to be limited to courses, you can offer an infographic (as shown below), a downloadable whitepaper or PDF, a report, etc. in exchange for the email address.

If you give visitors a reason to give you their email address, and something in exchange, they are less likely to hesitate.

There you have it, the best recipe for building your email marketing audience comes down to strategically placed opt in’s with incentivized messaging. As shown in these examples, you need to be funneling visitors toward your email list from many angles. The main takeaways to remember are:

• Opt-ins Should be Highly Visible
• Opt-ins Should be Frequent
• Opt-ins Should be Relevant
• Incentives! Incentives! Incentives!

Best of luck on building your golden list!

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5 Dang Good Reasons Why Writers Should Think of Themselves as Content Marketers

Perhaps you are a journalist by trade, dreaming of working in a big, bustling city like Seattle or a cozy college town such as Athens, Georgia.
Maybe you are a die-hard copywriter, having cut your teeth on direct response campaigns through snail mail, but you’re looking for a faster-paced challenge.
Or maybe you are like me: an English Literature graduate from the Midwest who wanted more out of life than days waiting tables and nights working on poems no one would read.
No matter which category you belong to (or maybe you defy all categories), you know you are a writer because you love to write. You love thinking about writing. You love to have people read your writing …
And, more importantly, you’d love to get paid to write.
The bad news is you won’t find “writers” on the list of the fastest growing careers. The good news is, I think that’s going to change pretty soon.
Why? Simple: the rapid and powerful rise of content marketing.
Because of the content marketing boom, we are now living in the age of the online writer.
Who exactly is the online writer? What does she look like?
She is a person who has an:

• Average understanding of SEO
• Average understanding of usability
• Above average understanding of social media
• Outstanding understanding of copywriting
• Above average understanding of storytelling
• Average research skills
• Average caffeine appreciation
• Above average combative work ethic

You can carve out a pretty satisfying career as a web writer if you have all of these skills. If you do, congratulations. However, I want to encourage you not to stop there.

The rewards of evolving into a content marketer

I want you to go further and turn yourself into a content marketer. A content marketer is a person who has an:

• Outstanding understanding of content strategy
• Above average understanding of SEO
• Above average understanding of social media
• Average understanding of subscription assets
• Average research skills
• Average understanding of conversion skills

As you can see, there is some overlap between the two lists.
If you already have all the qualities of a web writer, that means you are ahead of the curve. You just need to bone up in a few other disciplines, and you’ll be on your way toward becoming a full-fledged content marketer.
Some of you might have a little farther to travel: you don’t have all of these skill sets yet. But don’t fret. We all start somewhere.
The good news is that if you keep going, striving, learning, and practicing, you’ll build the natural authority that makes you an in-demand content marketer.
But no matter how far you have to travel, a little encouragement never hurts. Besides, for those who have a longer road to travel, encouragement makes the journey more enjoyable.
That’s why I want to share five reasons that will encourage you to think of yourself as a content marketer.

1. The demand for content creators is still growing

What’s driving this demand? According to a late 2015 update to a previously published Forrester report, research suggests consumers demand more content (if it’s good):

“Marketers who create valuable content and stories that attract audiences … build valuable relationships with customers and generate positive business outcomes.”

In this digital age, consumers are in control of the purchase process and want information before they make decisions. Any company that relies solely on traditional advertising tactics will likely struggle.
According to Content Marketing Institute’s research report, B2B Content Marketing – 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America, 76 percent of B2B companies said they’ll increase content creation (slide 14). And to accommodate this increase, 51 percent of companies said they’ll increase their budgets (slide 26).
As a result, businesses will need more writers with a flair for content marketing.

2. Ad blocking will increase content marketing budgets

Late last year, the number one most downloaded app was for ad blocking.
This fast adoption of ad blocking software has caused publishers to spin out of control. According to an often-quoted Adobe and PageFair study, ad blocking software was estimated to cost publishers $22 billion in revenue during 2015.
That’s a lot of money.
But a bloodbath for independent media is probably overstating the case. More than likely, publishers will shift gears and adopt a content marketing strategy over a traditional advertising one, with a particular focus on content distribution.
As a result, businesses will need more writers with a flair for content marketing.

3. More companies will invest in content distribution

As Contently stated in their 2016 State of Content Marketing report, 70 percent of content marketers spend less than $1,000 on content distribution.
That percentage is expected to change once companies realize that the most successful content marketers spend a higher portion of their budgets on content distribution (like sponsored content) than their less-successful peers.
As a result, businesses will need more writers with a flair for content marketing.

4. More SEO budgets will shift towards optimizing content for discovery and conversion

In the last five years, Google has aggressively focused on rewarding high-quality content. A by-product of this intense focus is that we no longer think of SEO as a standalone practice.
Instead, consider Sean Jackson’s phrase “OC/DC” (Optimizing Content for Discovery and Conversion). OC/DC encapsulates the idea of amplifying the overall reach and results of content creation.
Yes, great content may well result in traffic from Google, which is important. But a more holistic strategy pulls in traffic from a variety of sources — social media, related blogs, content distribution (see section 3), and so forth.
Optimizing content for discovery and conversion requires a writer to think like a content marketer — the person who, as I listed above, has experience with social media, subscription assets, republishing, and conversion copywriting.
As a result, businesses will need more writers with a flair for content marketing.

5. More social sites are becoming publishing platforms

First it was Medium, a social site that gives people an unlimited space to write (even if it’s not original content). Then LinkedIn opened its publishing platform to everyone.
Since then, Facebook released Instant Articles, which allows publishers to share content directly inside the Facebook app — last year to a limited group of brands. They’re slated to open it up to everyone soon, even your grandma.
And longer tweets may be coming soon to Twitter.
While social platforms may encourage content syndication, there is also an opportunity to tailor content for an audience on a specific platform. BuzzFeed is one such pioneer.
As a result, businesses will need more writers with a flair for content marketing.

Avoid digital sharecropping

I should point out, soon-to-be content marketer, that if you set up your content marketing strategy properly, it doesn’t violate our long-time advice not to overbuild on someone else’s land.
Rather than building mini-empires on other platforms, focus on creating definitive articles on your own site. Once that’s in place, use social platforms to drive traffic back to you.

You’ll optimize your related social media content for each specific platform where you publish, but all roads lead back to you and your original authoritative content.

Who’s hiring content marketers?

These five reasons suggest that the demand for content will continue to increase. But who’s actually hiring content marketers? Here are a few places:

• Publishers are opening up their own agencies to fulfill sponsored content demands. Those agencies need writers with a flair for content marketing.
• Brands are invading podcasts. Great podcasts need great scripts. Who’s going to write those scripts? Writers with a flair for content marketing.
• The small business sector continues to grow. And more and more of these entrepreneurs will realize the need for writers with a flair for content marketing.

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5 List Building Strategies We Used to Get 18,124 Subscribers

The pride of the Wishpond Blog is our subscribers - all 18,124 of them, as of this morning.

This article will break down the five strategies we've used to get them:

• Personalized subscription
• Content upgrade
• Exit intent offer
• Email-gated general resource
• General subscribe scroll popup

All of these strategies can be done by your business as well. None of them are super complicated or require coding.

I'll tell you exactly why each one works and why you should be implementing them on your own blog.

Let's get into it..

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List-Building Strategy #1: Personalized Subscription Ask

This is one I don't actually see very often on other blogs, which makes me super excited (I love doing things first). While it doesn't get a huge amount of engagement, it does create a bit off personality in each article and effectively uses the author bio for something more than just introduction.

Here’s what the personalized subscription ask looks like on the Wishpond blog:

Why It works:

• It personalizes each piece of content that someone reads on our blog. The author’s name and headshot are right at the top of the article.
• It creates a bit of loyalty. If a reader sees that I’ve written an article (instead of Cara, Kevin, Nick or Bree - our other content creators) and they like it, they’ll be more interested in reading my next article.
• It makes the mailout personal as well, with the words “Get James Scherer to personally send you his new posts.” This is more effective as well, because each of our content creators does mail out the articles they write.

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List-Building Strategy #2: Content Upgrade Prompt

A content upgrade is “a lead generating incentive created to be given away on an individual blog post in return for a visitor’s email address.” (Source)

We’ve only started using them in the past month or two in our longer-form content. They have to be made specifically for the post they’re embedded in, and often provide bonus value or content related to the subject.

They’re great for eliciting a subscription, as you can be sure that your reader is interested in the exact subject they’re reading, and a content upgrade is simply more of that exact subject.

Here’s what a content upgrade looks like on the Wishpond blog:

And here’s a screenshot of our analytic platform, showing an article with a content upgrade converting 5.9% of readers into blog subscribers (more than 1000% better than our average):

And yes, that’s pretty typical of what we’ve been seeing.

Why It works:

• Content upgrades perform substantially better than a squeeze page for email-gated content (even 500% better) but are also more work to put together.
• They’re hyper-contextual, as they’re within the blog post, not at the bottom or top.
• They’re hyper-relevant, as their related directly to the subject of the blog post they’re in
• They’re hyper-valuable, as each content upgrade is exclusive to the post, and adds value to it)
• They’re click popups, so conversion is an optimized, single-step process (allowing you to subscribe and get your email-gated content without ever leaving the article)

For more on the power of content upgrades, check out my article “How we Used Content Upgrades to Increase Email Opt-ins 16x.”

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List-Building Strategy #3: Exit Intent Offer

Exit intent offers are one of the most common blog subscription tactics, and we’ve actually replaced it in favor of the other four strategies in this article.

However, because it was such a huge part of our list growth between 2013 and this past summer, I owe it a piece of this article.

Here’s what the exit intent offer popup looked like on the Wishpond blog:

Why It works:

• The exit-intent offer is your last chance to capture a prospective subscriber’s details, as it appears only when their cursor scrolls over the top pixel of your article’s page.
• The best part about the exit intent offer is that it can be used for multiple campaigns (not just blog subscription). We traded out the subscribe Ask for a webinar prompt many times over the past year or so.
• The exit popup has the highest view rate out of all of our list-building strategies (as it’s viewed by everybody who bounces from our blog). Because of this we can test designs confidently and quickly.

We’ve moved away from the exit popup not because it doesn’t work (it does) but because, since Wishpond became free a couple months ago, we use an exit popup to promote the platform instead.

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List-Building Strategy #4: Email-gated Resource Landing Page

Ebook banners are probably (along with the scrolling form) the most common strategy for generating subscribers from blog content, and for a long time they (along with the exit intent offer) were our primary source.

If it weren't for content upgrades, they'd still be #1 on my list of strategies, as I like how genuine they are. They offer real value to readers and do so in a non-aggressive way. Like this article? Get the full guide to this subject in exchange for an email address. Simple.

Here’s what an email-gated resource banner looks like on the Wishpond blog:

And the corresponding landing page:

Why It works:

• Not every offer can be a content upgrade, and email-gated ebooks (or resources like them) are a great second option.
• They’re relatively simple to create and, as evergreen content, last far longer than a content upgrade.
• Simply embed a linked image (or CTA banner) into the bottom of your blog article that sends people to an optimized landing pages with an email-gate between them and being able to access your ebook.
• Ebooks can be created from your existing blog content (so long as that content is themed). The most cost-effective strategy is to intentionally write 4-7 blog articles on the same subject and then re-format the content into a PDF.

For more on how to create an ebook (without hiring an expensive graphic designer) check out my “Ebook Design Kit for Marketers Who Can’t Design for S**T” as well as parts 2 and 3 in that series on building a landing page and promoting your ebook.

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List-Building Strategy #5: General subscribe scroll form

Almost every business blog you see has one of these, and they wouldn't be so ubiquitous if they weren't effective. They're understated and non-intrusive.

Here’s what a subscriber scroll form looks like on the Wishpond blog:

Why It works:

• A scroll popup is a great way to ensure your lead subscribes if they want to while reading your content, and only after they’ve read at least 50% of the article (so there’s value there).
• That said, because there’s no distinct offer involved (apart from the inherent value of the article they’re reading) we’ve made our scroll popup appear only once a week.
• We’ve also made this popup appear in the right margin of the screen, so it doesn’t impede our blog visitor’s ability to read.
• In fact, only the exit popup actually stops readers from getting the value of our content, and that only when they intend to leave anyway.
• The scroll popup also contrasts pretty loudly with the color scheme of our blog, to really grab the eye of our readers. The green box and red call to action are sure to be seen when they actually show up on the reader’s screen. If you’re lowering your popup frequency, be sure your popup is visible.

Conclusion

Hopefully these list-building strategies have given you a better understanding of how we use our blog content to generate emails and start relationships with our readers (and how you can do the same).

Remember to test your popup frequency carefully, and if you’re wondering about how to set any of this up just shoot me a comment!

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