Are you using email marketing for your organization?
If you’re not using it at all or if you’re only using it in the very basic ways you’re missing out.
According to BtoB Magazine, 59% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel for generating revenue.
Just about every Internet user has an email address and inbox. And many check their inbox every single day or at least every few days.
So if you want to market to your target audience, perhaps the best channel is email.
But it’s not entirely that easy.
You obviously need to get subscribers for your email list before you can market to your audience.
And today there are a few different ways to get more subscribers from the visitors on your website.
Here is an overview of the most popular methods used today.
Pop-up
If you’re like most Internet users you probably have a love/hate relationship with popups.
If you visit news websites you’ve probably experienced the dread popup ad. Advertisers always seem to be one step ahead of us when it comes to clever popup ads.
For businesses, it’s a balancing act when it comes to popup email forms because generally the popup is a great way to increase subscribers. But you have to balance the fact that you’re getting new subscribers with the fact that you’re probably annoying some of your website’s visitors.
But it turns out that website owners might be overestimating the annoyance factor with popups.
In this study, the increase in a few different instances found that popup forms doubled email subscribers and in some cases increased them 3, 4 and even 5 and 6-fold.
And the complaints from the popup being on the site were nothing or next-to-nothing.
The trick with popups is the timing.
When a new visitor comes to your website you’re often not looking to get them to signup immediately for your email list.
So you can have different triggers for your popup. You can set it up to popup only on certain pages (like blog pots) and only after a certain time has elapsed (maybe a minute or even more).
Sidebar, Header And Footer
A more traditional way of getting email signups is putting a signup form in the sidebar on your website. It’s most often used on a company blog or news section.
The sidebar is a place where visitors are used to seeing signup forms. The trick is that someone really has to want to get more of your content to scroll over to the sidebar to signup for your email newsletter.
The same is true for signup forms in the header and footer of your website. These are great places to put signup forms. People are used to looking there when they want to signup, but a visitor really needs to be interested in getting more content from you.
And even if they are interested in signing up for your newsletter or email program they may forget to look for the signup.
Usually part of the issue is that there are too many distractions on most websites.
When you think about each page on your website you have to prioritize the calls-to-action.
For things like blog posts, it’s often most important to get new email subscribers. So in this case you would want to minimize the other calls to action on blog posts and make the email signup more prominent so visitors can’t miss it.
You could put it in the header, the sidebar, the footer or even at the bottom of each blog post. Just make it stand out so it’s the most prominent call-to-action on the page.
Slide-up Or Slide-in
A new type of signup for is the slide-up or slide-in signup form.
The slide-up form is one you’ve probably seen more of lately. It’s not as invasive as a popup, but it does grab your attention by sliding up from the footer or sliding in from the side or from the top while you’re on certain pages on certain websites.
Let’s say you’re reading a blog post or article. As you work your way to the end of the post the signup form slides up from the bottom asking you to signup for more.
This is a great way to go beyond the typical sidebar/header/footer signup. It’s a moving item on your website so it’s hard for people to miss it.
The Bombardment Tactic
There was a great post on Buffer about how they increased their emails by using a bombardment of email signup forms on their website.
They were using the slide-up only until they started using all kinds of signup forms. After the change they noticed a big increase in signups with the slide-up being the number one form.
And actually the slide-up seemed to get more after implementing the bombardment tactic instead of just using the slide-up on its own.
Looking At Exit Pages
In your analytics you can also look at pages that have high exit rates.
These pages are where visitors leave your site for another website. These pages usually need an improvement on the call-to-action and could be great for adding email signup forms.
For ecommerce businesses, the goal is usually to get visitors to make their way through your shopping pages until they purchase. You don’t want to necessarily distract them to signup for your email list.
But let’s say you have something temporarily out of stock. Or you have an item that was popular in the past that is no longer available.
On these pages you could use a prominent email call-to-action to get people to get updates about new styles that they might like.
And after a person signs up you can always direct them back to relevant pages on your store.
Social Media
A quick note on social media and even on other channels: use them to build your email lists.
Social media is great, but email is better.
You don’t have control over the social media streams out there as much as you have control when you have access to a person’s inbox.
With your online marketing and especially with social media, entice your followers to signup for your email list where they can really get valuable information.
Conclusion
The trick with email signups is to understand the action you want your visitors to take on each page. For certain pages, like blog posts, the number one action you want people to take is to signup for your email.
So the goal then would be to make the email signup or signups incredibly prominent on the page so every visitor knows that they should signup for your email.
Do you need help with your email program?
Check out the SLD email design service and see how SLD can help you succeed with email.
