Your blog is important because it’s where you will be posting your articles and your posts. This is where you can really get your opinions across and make your point and it’s what will bring people back to your site time and again.
At the same time though, this is also a good place for converting your one-off visitors into long-term fans. One of the best ways to do that is to collect emails, which you may recall as the number one marketing method in terms of ROI.
The aim here is simple: to get people to enjoy your content so much, that they decide they want more of it, that they don’t want to miss future posts and that they want to be included in the VIP stuff that you put out.
So you need to keep delivering consistently high quality blog posts so that people will want to sign up. But you also need to make sure that they have the tools and the options in order to do that…
To get started then, you’re going to need to get yourself an ‘autoresponder’. An autoresponder is a piece of software that will manage your contacts and make it easier for you to send out emails to a large list. Not only does this let you send emails to hundreds or thousands of people at once without needing to use BCC – it also does things like allowing people to unsubscribe and filtering for spam. You can also use an autoresponder to send automated content from your blog, to monitor how many emails are being opened, to schedule messages and much more.
So you’re going to need one and there are three main choices when it comes to choosing one: Aweber (aweber.com), MailChimp (mailchimp.com) and GetResponser (getresponse.com). There are other options, some of which are cheaper (or even free), but these three major players have the most support from plugins and external features so it’s worth signing up for one of these accounts.
Now you’ll be able to make your ‘opt-in’ form, which is the form your users can use to sign up. Make sure this is placed prominently on your site: add it to the bottom of your blog posts, put it in your sidebar as a widget and even use a plugin like SumoMe in order to have it show up in a pop-over window when people visit your page.
Another trick? Talk about your mailing list regularly in your blog posts and even on your social media. Tell people how you have exciting content on the way ‘if you’re a subscriber’ and tell people why they should bother to sign up. Don’t just leave your opt-in form quietly and expect people to sign up of their own accord – give them reasons to and make sure they can’t miss that form!
Creating an Incentive
One more great strategy is to add an incentive to your mailing list. This can be something like a ‘free report’ and the idea is that your audience will get access to the free content and the free information in exchange for handing over their details and letting you message them further in future. Using an incentive is a great way to convince people to sign up if they were previously on the fence about it and it can help you to make a lot more money.
But at the same time, you also need to make sure people aren’t only signing up for the incentive. Really the ‘best’ incentive is that they want to hear from you more and they’re excited to receive your correspondence. Make your incentive a nice added bonus and not the main attraction – it will result in a more targeted list!
