- Are you working your butt off to run your Internet business?
- A constant feeling you’re not making enough progress? (At least the bank balance says that)
- Slaving over weekly blog posts
- Marketing these on various social streams to build a social following
- Building a thriving online business may often feel like an insurmountable task
Does this sound like YOU?
A laser-sharp focus on growing and engaging your email list will ensure you turn casual blog readers into repeat visitors. This is always great for business.
Read my articles on Did You Know It’s Your Email Subject Line That Get Your Emails Opened? It will definitely help you sky rocket your current mailing list.
Here are four steps to addictive power of email to be used as an integral part of your online business.
Step 1: Hook Site Visitor’s With What’s On Offer
Everyone knows what a bribe is.
You need to make site visitors an offer they find impossible to say no to. The offer is the incentive to site visitors to give up their primary Email Id to you. A site visitor’s Email Id is a very valuable slice of information for you.
A Whitepaper or eBook is the most commonly used bribe, unfortunately site visitors have most likely downloaded a ton of eBooks to their computers that they have not even had a glance at.
Today, it’s pretty likely that your site visitor is not really turned on by a free eBook and hence will not consider it worthy enough to share their Email Id with you.
What’s worse and eBook is not addictive. A single eBook does not build long term connections between you (your site) and them as it does not invite them to come back.
So, how do you hook site visitors?
Build a content library.
Once you have a content library in place, give your site visitors the option of registering to get access to your content library.
This works a whole lot better that offering then a subscription to your feature packed newsletter, which you know often isn’t.
To create your content library, spruce up a series of Blog posts.
- Change their images to better ones
- Tweak the content to be crisper
- Review the in content links to make sure they point to great articles
- Covert some of the Blog posts to a podcast
- Convert some of Blog posts to a video
The second option for an addictive bribe is a short e-course.
In this simplest form of method, an online course with drip-feeds tips and email to your own subscribers.
Rather than connecting with you once a week (or longer sometimes – yes?) when you publish a new Blog post, your e-course allows you to email new subscribers more frequently. This can often turn cold connections into warm friends.
Creating an e-course is not as difficult as you might think.
Here’s what you can do:
- Research / Identify about 30 problems it’s likely your site visitor’s routinely struggle with
- Pick your favourite 5+ tips on the best (i.e. simplest) ways to solve each of the 30 problems
- Structure an informative (but succinct) email that drip feeds such solutions into their mailboxes
- Increase the value of these emails by including one or two free downloadable guides
- Try and re-use a couple of appropriate eBooks
- Create an eye catching / arresting name for your free e-course
Schedule your emails frequently. Perhaps every alternate day?
When readers join your course, they’re likely to be eager to learn from you. This is your chance to get such readers hooked.
For example:
If you join my 16-part build your own eCommerce website using WordPress, you’ll receive short focused emails every alternate with instructions that you can implement instantly.
If you ever get stuck we’ve got you covered in our superbly helpful free forum.
Exercise:
Jot down three different e-courses you can deliver your subscribers,
So they look forward to your emails?
So much so that they actually email you if miss one or two instalments?
Step 2: Invite Blog Readers To Register
How do you get the more casual blog reader / site visitor to voluntarily join your mailing list, giving you the opportunity to engage with them to convert them to paying customers?
Consider doing this:
Inbound Site Visitors You Control
These are site visitors coming in via a link in an Author Bio of a guest post or from a SlideShare presentation you’ve made. Rather than sending them to your Home page, create a dedicated landing page to increase your conversion rates substantially.
Remember that a site visitor coming in via such a link is already partially biased into signing up with you. Leverage this.
All Other Inbound Site Visitors
You can’t always control where site visitors land on your site. Search engine or social media foot falls can arrive anywhere on your site.
Add prominent sign-up forms on your Home and About Us pages. At the top of all Blog posts and archive pages, in the templates sidebar.
Use a carefully created, unobtrusive, great looking popup or slide out form and ensure that the form pops up only when:
- The site visitor is fully engaged with the page content,
- e. they have read page content beyond mid-way
OR
- When the site visitor indicates they wish to leave the page
- In either case always display a prominent CLOSE button on the popup or slide out form
A common mistake when enticing site visitors to subscribe to your mailing list is to promote it solely with features like a free eBook or e-course.
Remember site visitors are a ton more interested in the benefits of your eBook or e-course.
Ensure that you add the title of the eBook which must highlight its benefits like:
- How To Create Landing Pages That Pull In One Million Dollars Annually
- How Inbound Marketing Builds An Audience That Builds Your Business
- 20 Solid Tips To Create Engaging Blog Posts Each Time You Write
The landing page for my 16-part build your own eCommerce website using WordPress e-course promises such benefits:
- Create a great looking eCommerce website without any programming skills
- WordPress eCommerce plugins are robust and deliver superb buyer experience
- Connect to any payment gateway of your choice, PayPal, Stripe or other is just a few clicks
- We’ve got your back when you are stuck with our really helpful tech forum
Site visitors will join your mailing list and become fans when you clearly demonstrate you will make their lives easier and better.
Step 3: Constantly Monitor / Study Your Traffic Sources
All site visitors do not fuel your business income. A surprising amount of inbound site visitors bounce off your site never to return.
Constantly review your mailing list, building activities, to understand which incoming site visitor is actually converting into your mailing list subscriber.
Set up a goal in Google Analytics so you can see which in bound traffic converts best. This is how:
- Go to Admin at the top of your Google Analytics dashboard
- Under the View section, select Goals
- Click the red New goal button
- Select Custom, click Next step, the give your goal a name (e.g., site registrations),
- Select your type of goal — in most cases this is a destination
- Click Next step.
- Enter the URL people reach once they’ve completed the conversion — Usually a “thank you” page (NOTE: This thank you page appears after subscriber signed up for your lead magnet or newsletter or free trial, or even after they’ve make a purchased of your product)
- Click Create goal
You’re done. You just created a site registration goal, which will be monitored by Google Analytics each time the Thank you for subscribing page is displayed on your site.
Now you start evaluating your site visitor sources that convert:
- Which guest posts generate the most subscribers?
- How do social media traffic’s conversions compare to guest posts;s conversions?
- Which social media activity generates the most subscribers?
- How well does search engine traffic convert?
- Which landing page converts the best?
To strengthen your ability to grow your list, you must understand which of your activities work for you and which do not. Using Google Analytics to deliver appropriate statistics that tell you this is a great way of doing just that.
Step 4: Hook Site Visitors On To You
Today people’s Inboxes are bursting under the weight of too many emails. Nobody wants yet another email, yet another newsletter, yet another update.
Here is how you can stand out so that your readers look forward to receiving your emails.
- Write in a conversational tone, so readers feel your email is personal
- Consider adding titbits about yourself, so readers get to know you
- Be concise. Badly edited emails waste readers’ time and irritate them enough to unsubscribe
- Always always always add value and be helpful
- Stop thinking about readers as subscribers. Write as if you’re emailing a friend
Here’s What To Do Next
To seriously grow your email list block just 30 minutes in your Blogging work week and:
- Spend 15 minutes researching / generating / jotting down ideas to grow your list
- Spend 15 minutes brainstorming / jotting down ideas to engage with your list
- Identify two or three great ideas as your immediate priorities
- Give then a unique font color that makes them stand out – magenta, red
- Block time on your daily calendar to execute the immediate priority tasks
A responsive subscriber is the fundamental of a successful email marketing campaign, so the best method to build up a good email list, a.k.a asset, is to grow your email subscriber list and engage with your subscribers.
The Truth About Building A Thriving Business
The size of your mailing list is not as important as the enthusiasm and engagement levels of member of that list.
- Do they know you?
- Do they trust you?
- Do they look out for your next email?
- Do they miss you when you’re on vacation?
Treat your email subscribers like good friends, and you build your own tribe / community with those special relationships.
Exercise:
Jot down 3 different way that you can use to develop a relationship with your subscribers?
Jot down what’s the most addictive offer you present to your site visitors today?
In Conclusion
Please do share in the comments section below. Both my Blog post readers and I are really waiting to learn from the wealth of your experiences, please do share.