Email marketing strategies for getting new subscribers

Some people still have the misconception that email marketing or sending a regular newsletter via email, is nothing more than a form of SPAM and totally useless for brands and their customers, so they fail to take advantage of an email marketing software.

In fact this is far from true, there are numerous studies demonstrating the great potential of this channel to communicate with fans and faithful readers, as the first thing that most people do upon arriving in the office is to check their inbox.

If you use the right tone for your audience, good tools to design and target your subscribers by interests, you can get positive results from your email marketing software, such as:

It is important to use an email marketing software to extend a helping hand to those readers who so enthusiastically shared their Personal data with you, to know what they think and what they are expecting from you.

Under this basic idea, you should base all strategies created for generating your mailing list. There are many ways to attract subscribers, but if you really want to give credibility to your brand, you need to attract new subscribers with promises you can keep.

If you want to sell your products, always try to do it well to enhance your brand, it is the only way to offer quality to your readers, so that one day they may decide to pay for your services or buy your products, or you are investing time and resources for nothing?

Do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time. No matter if you are not an expert on SEO techniques, work hard so that your actions can be translated into conversions and you can contact those customers who actually have an interest in what you are offering (whether free or paid services).

In this article I will reveal some of the strategies I use to get more subscribers to my blog (Diseño Creativo):

Explore your best article

Any of the actions that we will discuss in this article are perfectly applicable both to include them in your website or blog, and it is good option if you have an article which is generating many visits every day. If users who are reading your article are interested in learning more about a certain area, and you can offer more information, why not offer the option for these visitors to become your subscribers?

Offer special conditions

No matter which option you will choose to attract new subscribers, do your best to give them something that makes them feel special for registering to your mailing list:

Calls to action

Calls to action, are critical to attract subscribers for generating a good database, as its function is to convince the user to do what you wanted, for example, if you need him to fill out a registration form (although you can create calls to action with very different objectives).

Whatever method you choose to implement on your site (or even on social network profiles), always try to include attractive buttons and colorful forms, with a clear and personal language, helping the user to feel comfortable and happy with your services.

Some examples: I want it! I would like to register! I want my free ebook!

Pop ups, banners and signature boxes

Obviously you need to use a free email marketing software, to facilitate the process. As this is the CMS that I use for my blog, I’ll give examples of WordPress plugins and widgets. Also, any WordPress template will include its own opt-in form, which you can include in different areas both in the homepage and on the inside pages (Normally, it is preferable to use the upper left area):

• In sidebars (with sidebar widgets)
• When the user enters the site (pop-up)
• At the end of each article (this option will generate high quality subscribers and can be implemented with widgets as Default Post Content)
• On the upper side of the site with full width (with plugins like Many Contacts or Hello Bar)

Offer ebooks for download

Another option, which works great in my case, is to combine good banners with the features of the Contact form 7 plugin to offer materials to download in exchange for a suscription. For this there are many options, for example, some other bloggers use the plugin SumoMe for WordPress.

Thus, in addition to capturing subscribers really interested in your content, your subscribers will trust you, as you are giving them the promised content for free, thus demonstrating the quality of your brand.

I try to work even harder to improve this blogging strategy, by using the content already created. After making small adjustments in the design, offer this content in exchange for a partnership with other bloggers, As I write articles as a guest on other influential blogs in the industry, I try to create a partnership.

With partnership, I mean that these users will have the option to register for the two databases (it is important to request the user consent). I’ll give you an example here.

Landing Pages

If you manage well your contributions, you can ask your partners to host your documents for download on other servers in exchange for a partnership, you can do it by creating a landing page, as was the case of my collaboration with alojate.com

Use Twitter Cards

This is something I discovered recently, and the truth is that it is a fantastic feature! Did you know that Twitter Ads allows you to create free campaigns to capture subscribers? You can integrate this feature with our email marketing software and achieve even better results.

All you need to do is access your Twitter account and, once you are logged, change the URL value “/campaigns_dashboard” to “/ Cards”. Now, just create your campaign, with the option “Creating a Lead Generation Card”.

To complete all required fields, you will need these data (other fields are optional, depending on which method you choose to manage incoming emails):

Promotions and contests on social networks

And finally, how can we forget the social networks? I could dedicate an entire article to detail all that social networks can provide as a means of promotion for getting new subscribers

You can apply any of the strategies that I mentioned on social networks, either with a banner, twitter card, to offer a gift, for instance, all you need is creativity to take advantage of your social communities! And if you work with our email marketing software, you can create your campaigns  for free.

And you ? What tactics you recommend to attract quality subscribers?

Teresa Alba

Teresa has a degree in Business Administration. Specialized in International Business, Social Media and enthusiastic of teaching, she has experience in Foreign Trade and Online marketing. She is currently publisher and chief of the marketing department on  MadridNYC.