40+ Points To Grow Your Email List
(Checklist)
Leverage Your Existing Assets
Feature a prominent call-to-action on your homepage
Is a CTA prominently displayed on top of the page? Does the page make it clear that joining your email list is the most important thing they can do on your site?
Add a link to your email signatures
All you have to do is go into your email client and set up your “email signature”.
Add a newsletter signup checkbox for your checkout process
If you run an eCommerce store, chances are, you make a lot of sales to people who are not yet on your email list. Add a checkbox to your checkout process that signs people up for your newsletter.
Embed a subtle “share with a friend” feature
Simply include a short call-to-action in the footer of your emails. Link to a simple form to allow them to invite their friend to join your newsletter.
Dare to boldly ask for recommendations and shares
Never hesitate to send the occasional broadcast where you suggest to your reader that if they found the content valuable at all – they should send friends and colleagues to your sign up page.
Add More Incentive Types, Get More Sign Ups
Offer a coupon in exchange for an email address
Create a quiz that ties results to an email address
That concept can be used for any sort of a valuable tool or resource where a person will gladly exchange their email address for full access to the resource.
Create a free online tool or resource
Think of a valuable tool that your potential customers would find useful.
Utilize the “content upgrade” method
You provide some great content that answers major pain points for your potential customer. However, when they get to the end of the content, you tell them that to get the best results, they’ll also need your content upgrade.
The “content upgrade” can be a free tool, PDF, spreadsheet or anything that helps fully put into practice what the article revealed. The trick is that they need to provide their email address to get the content upgrade.
Convert some of your content into “gated content”
This is just a fancy way of saying that the content isn’t public and is only available to people with the appropriate access.
Improve Conversions
Create different lead magnets for different segments
Not everyone will join your list for the same reason or be lured in by the same lead magnet.
Promote different lead magnets on different parts of your website
If you have a decent content marketing strategy, you should be hitting multiple topics relevant to your potential customers. You want to set up your popups to differ based on the sub-topic that the reader is viewing.
Feature testimonials and success stories
This is most relevant to landing pages where you have space to explain all the benefits. In this scenario, you almost have to include at least some testimonials and success stories.
Split-test your landing pages
If you don’t do any split-testing at all, odds are you’re missing out on a ton of easy boosts to conversions, and hence profit.
Work on your copy
Try to get that 80/20 rule met in terms of your copy.
Consider improving the landing page design
We’ve never had it this easy to make beautiful landing pages. Nowadays you can just get some landing page software, and tweak the built-in templates. For example, we’ve written guides on utilizing Clickfunnels, Elementor and Unbounce to do just that.
Qualify yourself and tell stories
A good landing page will feature at least one section that’s about you, and why you’re qualified to email people about the topic.
Review the fields in your forms
Forms or landing pages can under-perform because of the fields in your sign up form. You might be asking for too many details, or inappropriate types of information.
Off-Line Methods
Volunteer for speaking gigs
The best way to promote your list is if you get to speak to an audience and share your passion about the subject. Promoting your newsletter list at the end of the speech is easy and natural.
Add a sign-up link to your business card
Participate in offline events and pitch your lead magnet
Think about the things you do to pitch your lead magnet on your landing pages, then just do that same process in person.
Utilize a board outside your physical location
Just remember to use an easy-to-remember or easy-to-type-in URL.
Improve Your Paid Traffic
Give Facebook Lead Ads a Try
Facebook is really keen on encouraging people to get email addresses using their lead ads system. In fact, they go out of their way to make sure it’s the easiest, cheapest and most profitable way to convert their users into email subscribers and leads.
Optimize your campaigns and ads
This is another one of those marketing areas that follows the 80/20 rule. You will want to learn some of the basics of optimizing ads and campaigns and at least do that.
Attract More People
Start blogging, even if “you’re not good at it”
You can outsource the production of content. Any content that you produce is better at growing your list than no content.
Start producing video content
You can start by just posting narrated slideshows and webinar recordings, that will give you a lot more benefits than not utilizing it at all.
Create an authoritative guide on a major topic
There is no better way to demonstrate your expertise on a subject than producing a really cool “ultimate guide” type of pillar content on a given subject.
Organize a giveaway
They have to be relevant to what you do, and ideally should be part of your product line.
Add an automatic sign-up feature on your comments section
Most CMS solutions out there ask the person to provide an email address when they comment on your blog.
Partner Venture Ideas
Guest blog for other websites
This is an amazing way to get super-qualified leads for your business. It’s one of the best examples of a win-win situation.
Utilize cross-promotions
Every business wants to grow their list, so why not join forces with others and leverage each other’s growth?
- Let’s say you decide to partner up with BrandX
- You can run joint webinars/events/streams. That way fans of BrandX get acquainted with you and join your list and vice versa
- You can create a special offer. For example, everyone that purchases a BrandX product gets 2 months free of your service. And of course, when they redeem those 2 months they automatically give you their email address, and so it can grow quite quickly without any work on your part.
Fully Utilize Social Media & Online Communities
Embed a CTA on your Facebook Cover Photo
Use your Facebook cover photo as if it were a flyer or banner that promotes your newsletter.
Utilize the announcement/sticky post option where possible
Try to make a passionate post about how you love sharing your best stuff in your newsletter, link to a good landing page, and pin that post so it stays on top of your profile for anyone who visits it.
Utilize any sidebar sections in social media
Depending on the platform, most will have sidebar sections that show to the left or right of your profile. See where you can utilize these to pitch your email list.
Don’t forget the about section
You don’t want to make the about section into the “about my newsletter” section for sure. You can, however, promote it in a natural way that makes sense.
Utilize a comments list growth tool
If you get a lot of comments on your Facebook page, you may try something like ManyChat’s comments growth tool. Whenever people leave a comment it responds to their comment, thanking them for the contribution, and then it suggests that they subscribe to your Facebook page.
Try livestreams on Facebook and YouTube
YouTube and Facebook are promoting any and all live streams. If you’ve ever done webinars, consider you can do something similar in livestream.
Participate in Facebook Discussions
Try to be genuinely helpful, and where appropriate link to a page on your website that expands on the answer. Do not link to actual dedicated landing pages, as that would be too salesy and can get you banned from groups.
Answer Quora Questions
Search forums for related questions
The only thing to add here is that you may want to be more careful on forums as they’re more “sensitive” against people pitching stuff.
Utilize the YouTube Description
YouTube lets you promote stuff in your description. This is the perfect location to pitch one of your landing pages, lead magnets, etc.
Utilize YouTube Comments
If your channel isn’t big enough and you don’t have the right to place links in your video descriptions yet, consider utilizing the comments feature in a similar manner. You can simply pitch your email-generating website content inside of a comment, and then simply pin that comment on top.
Use the CTA button on your Facebook Page
It’s interesting how many businesses fail to utilize this one, even though Facebook encourages you to use it.
The Biggest Multiplier
Get a better email service provider
These ideas boost the returns on some of the things that you already do to grow your list. But do you know what is the one single biggest multiplier in growing your list?
It’s whether emails even reach your subscriber’s inbox. You would think this is a given if you pay for an email sending service, but you would be wrong. In fact, most email sending services do not care whether your emails actually reach your subscribers.
Emercury is different. We’re famous for our “obsession” with delivering your emails. In fact, we go out of our way to help all of our customers get the best deliverability possible. All you have to do is ask.