As we have mentioned before, ensuring that you are marketing correctly makes all the difference between a successful business and one that fails within a few months.
While there are many different strategies to ensure that you are drawing in your audience, the best way to ensure that you have your users attention is through their email.
Why You Need An Email List
Email lists are the lifeblood of your marketing strategy, offering you a way to stay in direct communication with your followers, increase sales conversion, and develop loyal followers to your brand or business.
Any good marketer will have multiple lists that are broken down into different categories, but you will only get those contacts if you have visitors opting-in to your email list.
Don’t Buy Your List
While some new marketers decide to purchase such lists, we suggest that you stay away from that strategy, as it is not a reliable method of gathering information. Many people have purchased lists only to find that over 60% of the information was outdated.
It’s also often full of incomplete data, makes you look like a spammer, and can get you into legal trouble.
We suggest that you work on ensuring that your visitors opt-in, which means you need a strong marketing strategy.
9 Ways to Increase Your Opt-Ins
Here are some of our best tips to ensure that you are getting a high flow of opt ins.
1. Always Offer Quality Content
This should be understood, but it is always good to be reminded that you need to ensure that your content is high quality.
If you are sending them duplicate content, poor quality content, post sporadically or are boring, people won’t sign up or will unsubscribe very quickly.
It is integral to your success that you have quality content that draws your users in, and makes them want to come back for more. Everyone’s looking for opt-ins, so what makes your content better?
2. Offer Incentives
A great way to get email subscriptions is to offer your readers something that they want in return. People respond positively with offers of e-books or free guides, although it can be better if you provide them with a service such as video tutorials or free courses.
Some will even offer a five percent discount on merchandise or products they sell or limited time offers. Whatever you offer, make sure it is interesting and relevant.
3. Use Pop Ups and Overlays
While pop ups may drive many of us crazy, they are effective at grabbing a reader’s attention and will prevent people from leaving your site before giving you their information.
Use a catchy form with a red button (this converts the best) and ensure that it is well timed with a five-second delay for the best results.
Exit pop ups and scroll pop ups are popular method that brings in results but limit your pop ups or you will aggravate your customers and come off as spam.
4. Provide Sign Up Opportunities
Offer multiple changes to sign up, but once again, make sure that you are not laying it on too heavy. You have to find a good balance so that your marketing doesn’t overwhelm your visitors. Readers may only look at a widget, image, or pop up for a few seconds.
According to millionaire marketer Anik Singal, readers have to be presented with your info several times before they make the decision to commit. Give them those opportunities on your site.
5. Give Specific Bonuses or Prizes
Offering bonuses at the end of specific posts is a tried and true method that helps to encourage people to opt in to your email lists. Prizes from surveys or challenges also will help people to stay interested and engaged in your platform.
Make sure the bonuses and prizes are unique, relevant to the page or site, and don’t forget to change them from time to time. Why does your reader want your bonus and not someone else’s with a similar site?
6. Use Active Text
The best words you can use to get traffic to respond to your call to action are active text. Words like “watch this video,” “download this e-book,” “register and download,” Etc. Tell your readers exactly what you want them to do.
7. Opt-ins Through Social Media
Social media is incredibly important to your success, with fans and followers monitoring your social presence and Google using it to determine your ranking. Make sure to use it to gain site traffic and email subscriptions by adding sign up links on all of your platforms so that new users have an easy way to become a member.
Send meaningful automated direct messages to new followers (there are free tools for this), and offer prizes, bonuses, and incentives through your social media accounts as well.
8. Add A Hello Bar
Hello Bars are free and available in most themes. They offer a prominent call to action at the top of your page for everyone to see. They are nicely designed but not spammy, grab your reader’s attention, and are displayed across all your pages and posts to reach the widest audience.
9. Sticky Widget
This plugin inserts itself in the white space on right side of website, on all pages and posts so that your reader will always be able to see it. You can design it to scroll down with the visitor to get more attention and subscriptions.
For More Support
If you want a more guided approach to getting more opt-ins or you’re finding these strategies are not working fast enough for you, check out Inbox Blueprint 2.0 by Anik Singal.
Not only will you learn about building your email list but you’ll also get free e-book giveaways and a year’s worth of emails to send to your list.
If you are looking to combine email marketing with affiliate marketing then I recommend you check out Mark Ling's Affilorama free lessons. If you are looking for an exact step by step process you can follow to make money online then check out Affiloblueprint 3.0.