Money is in the list! I think you must have heard it 100 times in your life, this sentence, and yet it’s so true! Once you have captured an email, you can offer your products, make the affiliation, redirect readers to your articles. This is an excellent way to bring qualified traffic to your offers. You must not neglect the construction of your mailing list, and it is an essential step in your online business. We will see in this article, step by step, how to grow its mailing list.
Step 1: Choose an emailing software
The first thing to do when you want to capture emails is to choose emailing software. When you launch, you may be tempted to use, for example, free software like MailChimp (in truth, MailChimp is free up to 2000 contacts), but in hindsight, it’s not a good idea. One of the most important functions of an emailing software, when you are in the online business, is the autoresponder function. Your software will send automatic emails as soon as your contact acts (for example, subscription to the newsletter). But the big problem of MailChimp is that the autoresponder function is fundamental! To choose email software, there are several criteria to take into account:
- the price
- language
- functionalities/features
- the care of
After having tested several – Aweber, Mailchimp, Active Campaign, and Getresponse, I can say that in my opinion, the one that has the best value for money and easy handling is Getresponse. It’s one of the best autoresponders on the market. The active campaign offers more functionality but is more expensive. Active campaign is interesting if you have a huge list, but if you have 5 to 10,000 contacts, Getresponse does the job very well!
Step 2: Create a lead magnet
Now that you have chosen your emailing software, you will have to create a lead magnet (literally magnet to contact, it is a bonus that you offer to encourage the user to subscribe to your mailing list ). It is thanks to the lead magnet that you will be able to make grow your list email. It’s not easy to find a Lead Magnet topic, so you can look for ideas on forums by looking at the most commented topics, or speak directly with your audience to find out what their issues are. Lead magnets that work well are usually oriented this way:” (a number) mistakes to avoid (about your blog).” Your lead magnet must answer a need/problem for your audience.
The best way to know what works is to test! So you’ll have to check your lead magnet subjects.
Segment his lead magnets
Tip: To get better conversion rates, you’ll be able to segment your lead magnets. Depending on, for example, your article subject, you will be able to propose a lead magnet inadequacy.
Example: In my niche, you come across an article about SEO. I will then offer you a lead magnet to get your first 1000 visitors, for example, or the nine mistakes to avoid when you want to increase the traffic of his blog.
By segmenting your lead magnet, you are more likely to capture emails.
The rate of transformation
The notion of taking into account is the rate of change, i.e., the difference between the number of people who see your capture form and the number of people entering their email address. The higher the conversion rate, the more you know that your lead magnet is fascinating; the lower the changing rate, the more you can be sure that your lead magnet does not interest your audience. An average conversion rate is around 2 %. Attention, it depends on the sectors: in some niches, it can be less, as it can be more.
Step 3: Choose a plugin to create capture forms
Now that you have your software and lead magnet, you will be able to choose a WordPress plugin that will allow you to capture emails. Again, I had the time to test a lot: opt-in monster, pop up ninja, opt-in form before falling on Thrive leads. Before to make different types of forms (pop up, widget box, post footer), I had to go through 2 to 3 plugins, but now, with Thrive leads, I can do everything in one place. Also, Thrive leads offers a lot of exciting features such as A / B testing, which allows you to test 2 versions of a capture form to find the one that performs the best. You also have the function of drag and drop that will enable you to create a form without having technical skills, and already pre-designed templates where you only have to change the text. You can also connect Thrive leads with all autoresponders. I also like the feature that allows you to add a form to a word: when the user passes the word, it clicks, and the capture form is displayed. Not to mention that Thrive leads offer a wide variety of capture forms!
Step 4: Choose capture form formats
Once the three steps are over, choose, and create your capture forms. What you need to understand is that your Internet business needs to focus on capture. So you have to put several forms on your blog. Here are the different capture forms that I recommend to put in place.
Capture page
I advise you to post, in the menu of your blog, a link to this page that you will be able to call “a gift,” “your free book,” “your training offered,” To you to test to see what works the best.
Pop-up
The pop-up form you should not neglect, the one that will allow you to recruit the most emails. Indeed, it is the pop up that will get the best conversion rate. Do not think that it will annoy your readers: if you offer a good lead magnet, they will be pleased to see this pop-up. You can display it after 20 to 30 seconds. Again, we must test; this is the best way to know what is the best configuration. You can also check pop-ups in 2 steps: 1 st step with a question, and as an answer yes or no; then, if the answer yes, there redirects to step 2 with a classic capture pop-up. Contrary to what we think, because we say that there is one more step, this type of pop-up sometimes works better than the pop-up in one step.
Pop-up exit intent
This form is also potent. It will only show when the user will close the page. When you know that more than 70% of users who came to your site will never come back, this pop-up has the advantage of allowing you to capture some of these readers. It is important to contextualize this pop-up, saying for example “before leaving“
Ribbon
When we put in place forms, we tend to forget the mobile. But Google, for years, does not like at all the pop-ups that appear on mobile. We must find different forms, and a ribbon is precisely a form particularly suitable for mobile. You can also use the slide in which is displayed on the side in small, but I find the ribbon still more adapted to the mobile. You can decide to put it at the top of the page or down there, do some tests to see what works best for you.
Post footer
At the end of the article, you can place a capture form. Again, it is important to contextualize it. In my case, I say: “Did you like the article? Go further by downloading” This is not the best form but you have to put as much as possible to get as many email addresses as possible.
Widget box
On WordPress, you often have a sidebar area. From experience, this area is unclear: Internet users think of it as advertising, so you will not get the best results. After putting this form for a few days, I only have a catastrophic transformation rate of 0.16%. It’s up to you to test to see if it works on your side.
Feed this mailing list
Your blog is now ready to capture the first emails, and your autoresponder is also prepared to receive the first mails. It’s time to see how you will feed your mailing list! Of course, to get emails, you have to gain traffic.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic (Google in particular), it’s free, so do not miss it! Every day, millions of French Internet users carry out research. By answering these searches, they will land on your site and may be interested in your lead magnet. Well, the organic traffic is a subject in its own right, and it would take a whole article, or even a book, to train in natural referencing. It’s okay, and I have 2!
Quizzes
Contests are a great way to capture emails. Be careful, though, to offer an excellent product with the niche! If you propose an iPhone, for example, you will have many participants, but they will then unsubscribe very quickly at the end of the contest because they will not be very interested. On the other hand, if you propose a product with your niche, you have more chances to obtain qualified mails.
Example: In my case, I could offer business books. I’m sure to target people interested in creating an online business.
To have a maximum number of participants in your contest, you will share it everywhere, on the competition sites, social networks, Facebook groups, forums. In short, wherever your potential customers are!
The contest will be simple enough to have a maximum of participants, and it will be enough to subscribe to the newsletter to participate.
Facebook ads
On Facebook, you can create email capture campaigns. Attention, it must, of course, have a small budget, but it is a quick way to grow its mailing list. I advise you to do this only when you already have a product to sell. Otherwise, you will pay, but will not recover money behind. On the other hand, to push your competition, it is a perfect way. You will create an advertisement targeting your audience and only proposing your contest. The results can then be awe-inspiring.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to build your mailing list. How are you going to tell me? Simply because you will offer your product in affiliation with other bloggers, and rather than redirect the contacts to a sales page, they will be redirected directly to a capture page. Affiliates will “help you” get more emails. You do not pay until they generate sales, and they only win once they’ve created sales: it’s a winner. Of course, again, you have to have a product to sell behind.
Guest article [Submit your Guest Article Here]
Again, it’s a great way to get traffic and, therefore, emails, especially if your site is young. It is Traffic Mania that popularized this method. It assumes that when you start a blog, you may have the most beautiful website if no one sees it, it is useless! So his technique is to publish guest articles on blogging sites, to focus on it, rather than writing articles galore. Contact the 10-20 prominent bloggers of your topic and offer them content. Put forward the content you are proud of as a guarantee of the quality of your work, and if you have already written on an influential blog, put it forward, it will be like your business card.
Your turn!
Tell me what your techniques to increase the size of your mailing list are? Do you have any questions? React in the comments!