How to Build Email List Subscribers on Your Website (7 Top Tips)
Alongside writing SEO content, Email lists are an essential part of any business marketing strategy, no matter how big or small.
Building an email list should be on the top of any startup or small business priority list before and after launch.
If you can’t seem to be growing your email list or getting those all-important sign-ups, then there are a few ways in which you can improve your email list sign-ups and build email list subscribers directly on your website.
These include adding signup forms in posts, adding exit-intent popups and creating free lead magnets to give away on sign up.
I’ve put together a few tactics that can help grow email subscribers that won’t break the bank and a few lead generation tools, like Sendinblue, that can help you along the way.
1. PopUps & Exit Intent PopUps
PopUps, for some, might be a dirty word, but they have proven to be an effective way to grow email lists and sell products online.
I’m not talking about bombarding your visitors with tons of popups promoting different things or full of adverts. I’m talking about popups designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to capture the email addresses of your visitors.
There are a few ways to add an email popup to your website.
Most email marketing software like Sendinblue and Campaign Monitor allow you to create email sign-up popups that you can embed on your website.
Once created, you can then set when you want them to show up, whether when a visitor scrolls to a certain depth of your web page or after a period of time. Depending on your approach and visitor times, you can test out how long is best for your site.
For example, if your visitors tend to stay on a page for 40 seconds or more, then set it to show up at 20 – 30 seconds to make sure you don’t miss the opportunity.
Another way you can grab a visitor’s attention is when they go to leave your site. Using exit intent technology, you’ll be able to display an email popup with a convincing reason for them to sign up now before they leave. This exit popup plays on a visitors fear of missing out and can dramatically help build email list sign-ups.
Here’s an example of an exit intent popup from Nike.com letting you find out about new content and exclusive offers on sign up.
2. Add an Email Subscribe Area In Your Posts
If you’re not already, it can benefit your business to add a subscribe form throughout your blog posts and content.
Add one halfway down your post to capture the attention of those who don’t manage to read all the way to the bottom of your post or those who are simply scanning your content for what they are looking for.
Add an email form or message to the bottom of your post. It will help grab the attention of those who do reach the end of your content, giving your readers a clear direction on what to do next.
It’s an opportunity to gather even more customers for your email list that otherwise would have been squandered.
3. Add Subscribe Button to Your Websites Menu
Making it easy for your visitors to do anything is a key component of a successful business website. Whether that’s a clear call to action for buying products or directing them to your latest posts.
That goes for growing your newsletter list too. Your menu is often already full of the important links to your most important topics or areas of your website. However, adding a Subscribe button that opens up an email sign-up popup or takes you to an email landing page provides you with a visible chance on every page to add another subscriber to your email list.
Here’s an example from the Semrush Blog with a ‘subscribe’ button prominently placed in the top website navigation.
4. Create a Dedicated Email Sign Up Landing Page
Email PopUps and subscriber forms in your content are a great way to capture people’s attention on your website.
We’ve already mentioned a dedicated email sign-up page is excellent for sending people from a menu button, but why?
Creating a specific landing page for your email sign-ups gives you more real estate to get your message across.
You can provide a list of points letting them know:
- Exactly what they’ll get when they sign up
- When they can expect to get your newsletters, whether that’s every Monday, Every 2 weeks etc..
- Why they should sign up
You can also capture more information from your subscribers with an extended email sign-up form collecting data like names, email addresses, and interests.
A dedicated sign-up page also lets you direct traffic from other areas of your online marketing. Whether that’s from social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or from your YouTube channel helping maximize your new sign-up potential.
Here’s a few landing page builders to try:
5. Introduce Lead Magnets: Give away an ebook, cheat sheet, or valuable info for free
How do you get people that are hesitant about signing up to sign up?
You give something away that they want. This free incentive helps you get through the barrier of giving away their details in return for a valuable piece of content that they want right now.
Popular sign up incentives include:
- Free ebook
- Cheat sheet
- Special offers, discounts and promotions
- Access to an online webinars
- Access to video courses
- Access to a contest
These are just a few lead magnets that can help drive more happy email subscribers to your list organically.
Here’s an example of an email popup from RoastyCoffee.com with a lead magnet of some free coffee included.
6. Add Sticky Area for Sign Ups to Posts
Blogging is a popular business, and a blog can help drive more traffic to your business website than your product through carefully curated and researched keywords.
When you get that traffic, you’ll want to maximize what you do with it, whether pushing to sell your product or gain email addresses to increase your email list.
Along with the in-post subscribe forms, you can also try adding a sticky subscribe area to the side of your posts.
As your visitor scrolls, the form will always scroll with them on site. Add in a value proposition (lead magnet), and you have another area of your website that can provide you with sign-ups.
7. Lead Generation Tools Can Help
If you’re already signed up to an email marketing software like Mailchimp or Sendinblue, you’ll already have some way to create sign-up forms that tie in with your current email lists.
Many also offer landing page builders to get your sign-up page up and running without any coding skills.
But a few other lead generation tools focus their efforts on helping you convert your traffic into sales or sign-ups.
Convertkit offers a free and paid plan and lets you create landing pages and forms, and can deliver your lead magnets to your sign-ups.
OptinMonster focuses on giving you the tools you need to target the right visitors at the right time, letting you personalize your sign-up forms depending on geolocation, the pages on your website they are viewing, and more.
Here’s a few other Email List Tools to try out:
Top Tip: Don’t over do it
It might be tempting to add all of these email list sign-up solutions to your website but don’t.
Add a couple at a time. Make sure to tag your email areas to know which area is working and track where people are signing up from on your site.
Over time you’ll get a picture of what is working for your website and where you can improve or implement another method in its place to see if that works better.
A combination of an exit intent popup with subscriber forms works well. That dedicated email sign-up page is helpful when marketing your website off your site or for special campaigns.
Overall, test, test and test some more, see what works and what doesn’t, and overtime, you’ll have an organically grown email list that you can nurture and rely on to bring traffic to your website time and time again, even when Google’s algorithms drop your rankings in search.
