As a newbie blogger, there are countless things that you have to learn. Some obviously seem to be more important than others, like how to write great articles or how to use social media to build a community around your brand. It is completely normal to ignore things that do not seem important, like building your email list. After all, you are just starting out so there is no need to think about email subscribers, right? Wrong!

You should start building your email list as early as possible. The effort that you put in now will pay off in the future. It is never too early to build your email list.

What Is An Email List?

Simply put, the email list is a list of email addresses and names of people who agreed to receive promotions and updates from you. The email list is built with the use of email marketing software like ConvertKit, which is known for its simplicity and user-friendliness.

Why Is It Important To Build An Email List?

Email subscribers agree to interact with you and receive the content that you send. They also verified their identity so it means they are interested in whatever you said you will send them. It is so much easier to convert such a subscriber to a paying customer. In fact, email marketing can easily have a conversion rate that is ten times higher than a regular social media marketing campaign.

Besides the conversion rate, there are other advantages of building an email list to consider, like:

• Personal Interaction – The email lands straight inside the inbox of a user, making the message personal and direct.
• Constant Blog Traffic – As long as you maintain the high-quality people want from your blog posts, you can promote new ones in your newsletter. This brings in constant repeat traffic. In fact, email lists are great at promoting the new content that you create.
• You Are The Owner Of The List – When you use Google, Twitter or Facebook to get traffic, you are restricted. You do not really own anything present on these sites. With email lists it is different since you own the email list.
• People Check Emails Every Single Day – Most email users check their email addresses several times per day.
• Simple Setup – When you use a service like ConvertKit, you create templates and then simply reuse them every single time you want to send an email to your subscribers.

Every single smart business has an active email list that is used for marketing purposes. This includes small businesses and really big name brands. The possibility to save a lot of money while generating income should not be neglected. You need an email list, even if you are a newbie blogger.

5 Ways To Get New Email Subscribers

Obviously, you cannot just create templates in ConvertKit and expect people to join your email list. You need to give them a reason to do so. After you choose a reliable email marketing provider and everything is in place, you have to build your email list strategy. This practically means that you need to take some steps to get new subscribers.

How to you get new email subscribers? Some of the best options to consider right now are the following.

Add A Subscription Popup

You surely already saw many sites and blogs that use this. When a visitor accesses the blog, a small popup appears with a signup form. This can easily be set up in platforms like ConvertKit. Just make sure that you set it up so it only appears once per session so visitors that do not want to join are not annoyed.

Bonus tip: If you are interested in more useful blogging tools besides ConvertKit, check out the linked articles with my favorite resources.

Add Subscription Boxes In Appropriate Parts Of The Site

Email subscription boxes can be added to various parts of your blog. Visitors are already used to seeing them so they will not be bothered. The most common places to add subscription boxes are:

• In your sidebar – Preferably as high as possible.
• In your posts
• At the end of your posts
• In the footer

If you add a subscription box to your blog, make sure that you do not just copy paste the ConvertKit code. It is always more effective to add some sort of CTA since you want to let people know why they should join your list.

Offer An Ebook

One of the most effective ways to get new email subscribers is to offer new subscribers an ebook that talks about something important for them. You can write your own or use some that come with appropriate PLR rights. However, the PLR approach should only be considered when you are allowed to re-brand the content so it points back to you as the author.

If you do not have time to write a new ebook, you can always create one from your blog content. As you think about what to write on the blog, make a list and then turn it into an ebook. For instance, let’s say you blog about working out. Write blog posts in which you present different workout routines. Then, turn those posts into an ebook and offer it for free for new email subscribers.

You can always get creative with what you offer. However, what is important is to give something that your visitors actually want or need.

Promote The Email List On Social Media

Cross-promotion is always really effective when you grow a blog, a business and even an email list. Talk about your email list on your social media profiles and tell your followers why they should join. Not all people visit the blog but an email list actually gives them a reason to. Similarly, when you send subscribers an email, tell them about your social media profiles.

The trick with cross-promotion is to offer different content on the different promotional channels you use. What is given in the emails you send should be different than what is presented on social media. Basically, you want to give people reasons to follow you on social media and subscribe to your email list.

Add A Subscription Option To Your Email Signature

We already mentioned that most people use emails every single day. As a blogger, you rely on email for networking, partnerships and more. This is why you want to add a subscription option to your email signature. This helps convert people that do not directly interact with your blog or social media profiles. At the same time, it gives an extra incentive to subscribe because of the one-on-one nature of the interaction. For instance, if someone sends you an email to ask you a question about something you wrote and you answer, you might have a new subscriber.

Tips To Get Even More Email Subscribers

Besides the tips mentioned above, you want to take things one step further and use more advanced tactics to get new email subscribers. Some of the things that you can do as a newbie blogger are:

Look For Inspiration

Look at what the other bloggers are doing in order to get inspiration. If you see that a common theme appears in your industry, it practically means that what the bloggers do work. The idea is to see what they do and do something similar. However, it is vital that you do not copy them. This is completely unethical and you will eventually be caught. Recovering from reputation problems is one of the most difficult things possible as a new business.

Increase General Blog Traffic

Remember that even getting one email subscriber from time to time is a huge win as a newbie blogger. You need to focus on growth. With this in mind, use as many strategies as possible to increase the traffic you have on your blog. Learn about social media, SEO, how to guest post on high authority websites and so on. The more traffic you drive to your blog, the higher the possibility people sign up to the newsletter!

Test Different Wordings/Layouts

Do not just add subscription boxes and then wait for email subscribers to come in. Test different wordings for your subscription boxes in order to see what converts best. For instance, something as simple as changing the subscribe button’s color can influence email list conversion rates.

The reason why you want to keep testing new layouts and wordings is that different people like different things. Some are much more attracted by a color than others. Your goal is to get as many good, targeted email subscribers as possible.

Take A Minimalistic Approach

Never ask for too much information when people sign up. You are not actually allowed to collect more data than you need due to GDPR and most people simply do not want to share personal information. All you really need in your subscription boxes is email address and name. Conversion rates are much lower for every single new field that you add. This even includes something as simple as Last Name.

Mention What You Offer As A Sign Up Bonus Wherever Appropriate In Your Posts

As long as it is appropriate, there is nothing wrong with talking about your email list and the free bonuses you offer in the content you distribute on the internet. A really easy way to increase subscription rates is to monitor the blog posts that are enjoying a lot of popularity. These can be edited with a few extra sentences about the email list, the free bonuses when signing up and a subscription box can even be added.

Regularly Change What You Offer As A Subscription Bonus

You want to address different kinds of readers so be sure that you regularly change the free stuff that you offer. Also, an advanced strategy is to create different bonuses based on where the subscription boxes are promoted. Something that converts really well on social media might be different than what works on your blog posts.

Create different subscription offers in ConvertKit and give people what they want the most to drastically increase conversion rates.

Don’t Forget About Mobile Users

The number of people that use mobile devices to browse the internet is already higher than desktop PC users. Due to this, a really important thing is to check how your subscription boxes look like on mobile devices. A common problem is to have the box not show up in its entirety on smaller mobile phone screen. If you notice such a problem, move the subscription box to a location where it looks exactly as it should.

Use Double Opt-In

Double Opt-In means that a person that wants to subscribe to your email list will need to click an extra link that is sent via email. It is important to have this system set up since it allows you to avoid spam submissions from automated software that inappropriately identifies the subscription box as a way to get a backlink to a site.

As an extra related tip, be particularly careful with the message that you send to new subscribers as you ask them to confirm their desire to subscribe. General messages that are automatically set up when you activate this option can sound like spam. You need to customize the messages or the email might land in the Spam folder. You would practically lose subscribers without even knowing it.

Remove All Distractions Around Subscription Boxes

The reason why most email subscription boxes in sidebars do not convert well is that they are surrounded by a lot of content. It is also possible that there are many call to actions present right at the end of an article. In both cases you miss out because of clutter.

Make sure the area around the subscription offer is not a distraction and always focus on the important thing: getting a new subscriber.

Encourage Subscribers To Share The Newsletter

Most bloggers do not think about this since it seems a little updated. However, there is a much higher possibility that a person will take a desired action when you actually mention it. Having others share your newsletter is a great way to expose your content to their network. Just make sure that you do this only when you have a way for the new subscribers to join from the page of the campaign.

Be particularly careful when someone forwards the entire email received from you because this would include the Unsubscribe button. Someone might end up unsubscribing your subscriber without them wanting that. That’s why it is better to encourage the share of the actual page of the newsletter, not forwarding an email.

Engage New Subscribers With A Thank-You Page Surprise

In life, first impressions count. The confirmation page is the first real interaction you have with your subscriber. Most people ignore this page and they fail to make a very good first impression that increases the possibility of having a long-term subscriber. You may want to engage in one of two ways:

• Offer A Tempting Offer Or A Special Discount – As an example, you can offer a discount for something that you sell.
• Add A Free Bonus – This is besides what you initially offer as a sing-up bonus. Presenting something extra makes people remember you as it is really rare.

In the future, you can turn the Thank-You page into a lead magnet by setting up a referral system but this is something to consider only when you already have a large email list.

Give Users Content Control

Getting new email subscribers is great but you also want them to stick around. A great way to reduce unsubscribe rates is to set up different delivery options. For instance, you can let the new subscribers decide how often they will receive an email from you, like monthly or weekly. Although this means some of the subscribers will not receive everything that you send them, it is still better to have them signed up than not to have them at all.

Carefully Craft Subject Lines

The emails that you send need to stand out. You need to test subject lines in order to see what works best, based on your goals. The exact same thing should be done with your confirmation email. There is a large number of people that simply do not open the email as they think they are already subscribed.

In the confirmation mail subject line you have to quickly highlight what the email is about. At the same time, you have to avoid using general messages as they might be mistakenly identified as spam by some email filters.

Conclusions

Getting email subscribers as soon as you launch your blog should be a priority for you. It is just as important as making sure your content is of a really high quality. Always keep testing to see what works and what does not work. You can engage in conversations with your subscribers to see how to better service them. If you start building your email list early, it is so much easier to grow the blog than when you just rely on social media and/or SEO.