Do you remember the last time you visited a website solely to sign up for its mailing list? We don’t remember either. Friends’ websites don’t count, let’s be honest, because they gave us strict instructions on where and how to do it.
So, the fact is that people don’t search the Internet to subscribe to a variety of mailing lists, and it’s up to you as owners of websites promoting your brands to devise strategies to get them to subscribe to your mailing list.
Every comprehensive blogging guide makes it clear that quality content is the best strategy for enticing people to subscribe to your mailing list, but that doesn’t mean it should be the only strategy. In fact, it shouldn’t be because statistics show that as many as 70% of visitors never return to the website they visited.
If you own a blog and business based on online presence, the time and money you invest in running and maintaining that website shouldn’t be wasted. We stress that running and maintaining a website includes purchasing quality web hosting. For instance, blogs are usually placed on a WordPress platform which in most cases uses the MySQL database. Web hosting plans emerging on this database are numerous. These plans can be very affordable but those who offer extras that secure the utmost security, uptime, and unlimited bandwidth are, logically, more expensive.
In this article, we’ll write about ways to help you get the most out of your visitors. And why is it important to do this? Because, unlike social media followers, all email subscribers are your potential customers and clients.
Note: If you properly apply the following tips, you’ll definitely feel a drastic difference in the number of subscribers in the very short term. However, this implies that you have developed traffic to your blog. If you don’t have visitors, you can’t have email subscribers either.
1. Sidebar
Many digital marketing professionals aren’t too big fans of the sidebar as they produce the worst results in achieving any goal. But on the other hand, those who wish to subscribe to the mailing list will first look for a subscription form. It’s also important to place your form on top, not the bottom of the sidebar.
Please note that the “subscription form“ doesn’t exclusively mean the form with the caption: “Subscribe to my mailing list“. It annoys everyone. Instead, you can place a lead magnet – the exclusive content you offer to website visitors in exchange for an email address.
2. Page Header
A page header is a great place for this form because it’s hard to miss it while observing the webpage. Each visitor upon arrival to a website reflexively glances at the page header in order to be immediately informed of its whereabouts.
3. Within the Posts Themselves
This is another good place to convert visitors to email subscribers but with the relevant lead magnet being a better choice than the standard sign-up form.
Find out, for example, which articles and posts have the most sessions and create within them additional content to offer in exchange for an email address. This can be a checklist, additional tips, or a PDF attachment itself. On average, these forms give a much higher conversion rate than those on the sidebar because there’s no so-called sidebar-blindness factor.
4. At the End of Each Attachment or Page
If a visitor to the website has read your entire post and is satisfied, it’s completely natural that under getting a positive impression he/she will be more likely to wish to see similar content in the future. The end of each article is a great opportunity for many conversions because it’s a time when you have the full attention and interest of readers.
5. Slide-In Form
You can place slide-in forms in any corner of the screen, though the bottom right is the most popular one. It’s been a long time since these forms became the rule and their users appear very pleased with the results.
6. Floating Bar
The floating bar is fixed to the very top or bottom of the screen as long as the visitor scrolls. It’s always there, easy to attract attention, so it’s very effective.
7. Pop-Up at the Right Time
Pop-up windows are one of the best tools through which you can increase your mailing list, promote new offers, and more easily achieve each of the goals you aim to achieve. Still, there are many who use pop-ups recklessly and all they manage to do with that tactic is to force visitors to leave their websites too early to try to convince them to become subscribers.
Imagine that you decided to buy a new laptop and as soon as you enter the store, two salesmen run to you. One tells you to buy a discounted TV, the other one shows you a new model of the iPhone. And just when you accomplished to get rid of them and head to the computer department, a third seller appears in front of you and insists that you take a look at a new electric hairbrush. In doing so, no one even asked you why you were here in the first place. Most people in this situation will think: “They are insane, I’ll go elsewhere!“ Those who unwittingly place pop-ups on their websites achieve exactly the same effect.
Remember: No one comes to your website for the first time to follow your business account on social networks after two seconds or leave you their email addresses. Fortunately, you have the ability to decide for yourself at what point your pop-up will appear and we advise you to always use that choice you have. What you should avoid at all costs is to disturb the reading of the articles of your visitors, as well as to serve them a pop-up immediately after the page loads.
8. OnExit Pop-Up
Possibly our favourite way to collect subscribers. Why? Because it comes at a time when visitors certainly intend to leave the website and that’s the only activity in which we should distract them. Joking aside, this pop-up records a huge conversion rate across all websites, and all those who aren’t using it aren’t aware of how much they are losing.
9. On Inactivity Pop-Up
This pop-up appears if the visitor is inactive for any reason during the time period you designate as the website owner. We’d definitely advise that this period shouldn’t be less than 30 seconds.
10. Two-Step Login
This is where you set the form to appear after a website visitor clicks on a particular text, image, menu item, etc. This is actually the principle the slide-in form that we’ve already mentioned operates by.
According to a psychological principle known as the Zeigarnik effect saying that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks, those who started out something are more prone to complete it or process it. Given that a website visitor has already clicked on a particular word or image, chances are he/she will complete the process by signing up for a mailing list.
A Word, Two for the End
Even though you now know the best tricks for converting website visitors to email subscribers, it doesn’t mean that the pages of your blog should scream: “Sign up for my mailing list, for the love of God!“ It’s very important to be steady and think carefully about how to strategically arrange your forms. This way, you won’t put all the forms that have been mentioned in the article all over your blog.
