6 Excellent Online and Offline Methods of Growing Your Email Subscribers List

6 Excellent Online and Offline Methods of Growing Your Email Subscribers List

One of the best things an internet marketer can have is their own email list. These are people that will have subscribed to your list themselves so are already interested in your brand, product or service. And a healthy email list can mean healthy profits and revenue for your business but it can sometimes be quite a challenge to build your own email list. Email spam and sensitive and skeptical receivers are just one of the many hurdles you'll come across, so it's important to build a list with care and attention. However, there's some very simple and yet very effective ways to create and build your own email list, these range from both online and offline methods and few new methods and tricks that can considerably grow your email subscribers list with high quality subscribers!

Overall your main challenges to growing your own list will be;

• Being responsible and using methods in a responsible way.
  
• Following all laws and legal requirements.
  
• Having the upmost respect for your subscribers preferences.
  

Once you follow these three basic principles, you're ready to begin growing your list so let's learn some ways how!

I've broken this down into three online and three offline methods.

The online methods

Method #1: Place Email Subscription Forms Everywhere
Without a subscription form to enter an email nobody can join your list. So placing these forms on your site is an absolute must. Even if you don't have your own site yet or are using social media only. You should provide some way for people to subscribe to your list with an email subscription form of some kind. WordPress users can use a widget or embed their email subscription forms into posts or pages easily enough. Just remember to use a simple clean form with two or three fields for their name and email address is enough. It should have the same look and feel of your website but also stand out as well so that it's easy to find and simple to use. Signup forms or boxes work best when placed below the first ad in the sidebar or just above as results have shown that email subscription signup forms perform better in the top half part (the fold) of your website. Also put some details about why they should subscribe using some incentive or call to action so they have reason to!

Method #2: Account Registrations Email Subscription Forms
One way of getting one of the best subscribers you can get is by integrating an email subscription signup into site registration. So if they register for any reason, whether it's as a user, or reader or even contributor or something, give them an option which is ticked by default and let them choose to opt out when they register to your site. This can work great for WordPress sites and is easy to do and produces one of the best subscribers you can get because they know from the start what they're going to get. If you're a new site or an just affiliate blog of some kind even, the people who register on your site will likely already like your brand, product or niche, so they will be already interested in the newsletters, promotions and things that you send to them.

Some research was done that revealed that up to 79% of marketers use site registration for building their subscribers. So this is an excellent way to go about doing it too. If your site is popular and getting a lot of organic traffic, try to incorporate registration forms and encourage registration or login with Facebook, Twitter or another Social Media or Web 2.0 site. Example, OpenID, Blogger, WordPress etc. Then when they do and are presented with the page to set their username or email address etc then also put an option there which is ticked by default to add them to your subscriber list.

If you do this, just make sure to follow these basic principles.

• Make sure the reason for subscribing is made known or link to a page that explains what the list is for and what they get etc.
  
• Tell them about the benefits of subscribing to your email subscription list so they have a reason to actually do so.
  
• It will help you to collect geographic and demographic information on your subscribers so you can segment your emails.
  
• Make sure your call to action is clearly displayed and that it's been optimized for that particular page.
  

Method #3: Request Email when Request for Information is Made

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, if your site visitor or social media follower ever asks you for any details about your brand, products or services, you can use this as a way to collect their email address and add them into your subscription list. If your site just happens to give out things like catalogs, pamphlets, leaflets, flyers or other information like reports and papers or even price quotes, you can ask them for their email address in return for it. This is a really effective method to grow your email list actually for b2b business marketers, or offline businesses too.

If you don't have this kind of stuff, you can do something as simple as create a simple website white paper report or product service report and price list as a PDF file to download and can produce a high number of subscribers if those people are already interested in your brand, product or services. Just ask people to put their email address or stay opted in to get it obviously, and let them know they'll be subscribing to your list by applying the rules above! There is nothing wrong with doing this as what they are getting is of about the same value to what they give, in that you're getting a little bit of their personal information in exchange for a little of yours so it's a fair trade off and works well.

The offline methods

Method #1: Use Word of Mouth Advertising
Word of mouth advertising, when someone literally tells someone else about your brand, product or service audibly by mouth, face to face, or on the telephone, is the best form of advertising. When someone tells you the best place to get a kitten from you kinda believe them. This works best when you take advantage of your long time subscribers by offering them an incentive to to talk to their friends or family about you. You can make use of viral like components in your emails or site like "send to a friend" or wish lists, and perhaps any prize draws, competitions you're running because people that like to enter those sorts of things are usually more willing to tell other people like their friends and families about it so try to tap into any of that enthusiasm. This is where business cards and other promotional literature like flyers, leaflet or posters come in handy. Try to get their referrals email address and name as well though so you can provide a much more personalized email which has a much better conversion rate!

Method #2: Grab Their Email During Checkout
If you are an offline business as well and sell physical products, or even if you're selling a service offline in a booth or kiosk somewhere on a high street. But many big stores are doing this now and asking people for their name and email during checkout and it's a method that's gaining a lot of momentum too because it can be so effective. Whether it's an in-store or in person event, these kind of subscribers will can go on to make up the majority of your list and go on to become very valuable subscribers which are much more likely to buy from you again. Also, this can be done for during checkout on your website as well, always try to get them subscribed that way too if you can.

To make this effective it's important that whoever's doing it will;

• Ask the customer or client for his or email address for the email subscription service.
  
• Make sure they read back and double check the email address is correct before they leave.
  
• Tells the client or customer the benefits and advantages of being subscribed.
  
• Tells them what they can expect to get in terms of content and amount of emails.
  

If you do any employee training or use signs and promotional literature inside then this can help this campaign to be profitable and worth doing. You should get your staff or trainees to ask for these details when checking out and you could encourage people to actually subscribe by giving them a discount coupon codes they can use to get money off on things they usually purchase which most people will go for if it saves them money. You could say that you'll send them a free welcome gift for subscribing or give them a free product with their next purchase which most people will go for in exchange for a simple email address.

Method #3: Collect Emails During Calls
If your business handles inbound calls or even makes outbound calls to your clients or prospective clients then one of growing your list is to get your CTA's (Call Center Agents) to just ask people for their email address so they can subscribe them to their email newsletters and things and even tell them of the benefits, advantages and reasons for subscribing. Or even yourself when you speak to people. Even making cold calls to people who might likely be interested in your product and pitching to them who say no can still end up giving you their email address though if you ask for it. Once you have their email address, send them an email with a link in it to sign up to your email subscription list or add them in manually. Just make sure to apply all the same rules and principles that you apply in your email marketing plans.

Conclusion

So there we have six very effective, online and offline methods of growing your list with high quality subscribers. I hope you will like these methods and they are useful to you.

Do you use any of these list growing methods?

What are some other ways of growing your list?

Thanks!