7 Quick Ways To Add High Quality Targeted Email Subscribers At Little To No Cost
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Content may be king, but your targeted opt-in email list is the kingdom. It’s not just how you market efficiently to people already interested in your product or service, but also how you maintain relationships.
You build trust and authority by sending highly relevant info that your subscribers can act on.
One of the biggest assets you’ll ever build is your mailing list. Most business owners and marketers find that their business really takes off once they start building a list. That’s because once you have a list, you can make money on demand and boost sales simply by sending a targeted offer or promotion to the list.
So with that in mind, it makes sense to get as many targeted subscribers as possible onto your list. You’re probably thinking that building a list is easier said than done. Not true. You just need to know what to do and take action – follow through and do it.
To get you started, I’ve put together these easy to follow methods to grow your list quickly.
Offer A Highly Targeted Lead Magnet They Can't Pass Up
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They’re Valuable
Even though you’re giving it away for free, it should be something that you could easily sell. -
They’re Desirable
This is key – if people don’t want your lead magnets, then no one is going to join your list. The better your freebie is, the higher perceived value of your paid product or service.
So how do you make sure you have an in-demand lead magnet? Simple: you find out what other lead magnets in your niche people are getting excited about.
10 minutes of research is all it takes to find a strong FOMO-inducing lead magnet topic
One way to do this is to go to a marketplace like Clickbank.com to find out what other people are buying. If people are laying down good money for a particular kind of product in your niche, then you can bet they’ll happily exchange their best email address for it for free.
The second way to find out what’s popular is to check out what sorts of lead magnets and other content your competition is delivering. You can do this by:
- Subscribe to their mailing list to see what type of content they repeatedly deliver.
- Read their blogs to see which posts are popular (e.g., they get a lot of comments, or perhaps they’re even featured on the blog).
- Follow them on social media to find out what sort of content they’re sharing, and which of these pieces are popular among their followers.
My general rule is that if something works in the digital online marketing community, it’ll work for any niche or topic with a few adjustments.
For example, big lists are really popular lead magnets among digital marketers. They’re packed with valuable information in an efficient, browsable manner.
Ryan Diess has the Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas, which includes 212 ideas.
Jimmy D. Brown has the Ultimate List of Lead Magnet Ideas, with 101 items included.
Now you need only brainstorm an “ultimate list” of your own by integrating the overall concept with your buyer persona and niche.
- The Ultimate List of Killer Dress Patterns
- The Ultimate List of Profitable Upsells
- The Ultimate List of Webinar Ideas for Coaches
Just set aside a few minutes for research and brainstorming, and jot down as many ideas as you can. Focus on one, outline it, and fill it in with valuable and educational information. Save the original list for the next time you need a powerful lead magnet.
Match Lead Magnets To The Viewed Content
A very common mistake most business owners make when first starting out with online marketing and lead generation is using the same landing page for all leads. Don’t do it! I don’t care how much you love your lead page – you need more than one.
If you have a strong offer, you’ll get decent results. But if you want great results, you need to use hyper-targeted offers. That means something that is directly related to the exact content the visitor was just viewing.
For example, if you have a blog post that offers 10 tips for faster weight loss, then your lead magnet might be an action guide with 25 weight loss tips only pros know or 20 easy recipes guaranteed to help drop weight fast.
Another idea is to offer a content upgrade to your blog visitors. If you have a long anchor post on your site, then offer to send this post as a .pdf to readers. Alternatively, you can even offer the content in a different (deluxe) form, such as offering a video or audio version.
For best results, insert in-content capture forms. In other words, don’t make people jump through multiple hoops to get to your opt-in form. People do not like that!
Use An Overlay Capture System
That’s right, I’m referring to pop-ups.
Do visitors like them? You won’t find anyone who admits it, but the truth is, they work, and they work like crazy.
What we’re talking about here are popups and lightboxes that overlay your web page. These sorts of capture systems usually demand a response before the visitor can continue doing what they were doing on your website.
When you go to leave ServerWise.com, you’ll see a great example of an overlay capture system at work. This one is known as an Exit-Intent Popup. When your mouse heads to the exit button on the browser, you’ll see our exit pop-up with our lead gen offer.
Every retailer uses them because they work. How many times have you signed up for a newsletter or joined a list on your way off the site to get a coupon code in your inbox? Probably more than you care to admit.
My most important tip when using an overlay capture system…
Don’t have your capture system popup or slide in immediately after someone lands on your web page. Your visitor doesn’t even know what your site is about yet, so they’re not going to join your list if you drop an offer in front of them the moment they land on the page. That will only annoy your brand-new visitor and will raise your bounce rate.
My advice, use delayed overlays of at least 20 seconds and exit overlays for maximum conversions.
Redirect Exiting Traffic With A Last-Minute Exit Intent Offer
Just because your visitors are leaving without taking any action doesn’t mean they will never take action. Usually it just means that they didn’t see an offer that was highly targeted to their interests. So when they hit the “back” button to get out of your site, you have one last chance to put a lead magnet in front of them that will get them signing up to your list.
For example:
“Before you go, grab this free video to discover the seven best-kept secrets of looking 15 years younger…”
WordPress makes this very easy with an assortment of free to premium plugins available.
As a ServerWise client, you most likely are using the built-in exit-intent promo pop-up builder in Elementor Pro. Reach out to support if you need assistance.
Of course, if you’re willing to work with the code on your site, you can create these redirects yourself.
Funnel Your Social Media Visitors To Relevant Lead Pages
Social media is a great place to interact with your audience, launch viral campaigns and even get some sales. But what you need to do is focus on funneling your network back to your lead pages.
Many major email service providers (such as Aweber) have social media apps, such as the Facebook app. This makes it easy for you to add a tab to your Facebook page and start capturing email addresses directly from Facebook. That’s the best way to do it, because if you make your subscribers jump through hoops (such as clicking through to your lead page), you’re likely to lose them.
If you are a ServerWise client, this functionality is included in our funnel and landing page premium WordPress plugin.
Use YouTube Effectively By Posting Videos
Another great way to take advantage of social media is by posting YouTube videos that include calls to action at the end of the videos. This call to action should direct viewers to your lead page.
Here are tips for maximizing your success with this strategy:
- Present targeted offers that are highly related to the video. The free content you’re offering on your lead page should be a natural extension of the video. So for example, if you just showed a video on how to do three kettlebell exercises, then your lead page might offer a video with another dozen exercises.
- Create videos that are likely to go viral. Offer something unique. Inspire people. Make them laugh. If you can get your viewers to share your video, then you’ll effortlessly get your calls to action in front of more people.
- Pay attention to your tags, titles and descriptions. A lot of people use the YouTube search function to find videos on particular topics, so research keywords using a tool like WordTracker.com, and then use these keywords in your tags titles and descriptions. As an added bonus, these keywords will help visitors find your video when they use other search engines, such as Google.
Partner With An Influencer - It's Easier Than You Think
The influencers in your niche are the ones who have big platforms–such as mailing lists, popular blogs, and big social networks—that are full of people who hang on their every word and take them up on every recommendation.
I’m sure you are well aware of the influencers in your niche. But have you thought about how to ethically borrow their traffic? That’s right, if you partner with them, you can leverage their traffic to build your own mailing lists.
Here are six ways to do it:
- Create a webinar together. You can co-create this webinar to teach a topic together, or you can even interview your partner. The key here is that your partner helps you promote the webinar, and you build a list by having prospects register for the event by joining your list.
- Co-promote each other in your respective newsletters. You can do this once, or you can agree to insert links to each other’s lead pages for a set amount of time.
- Swap links on your confirmation pages. This is a great place to promote each other’s lead pages, since the new subscriber is in a subscribing mood.
- Create and distribute viral content together. This could be a video, app, report or other piece of content. Each of you promotes the content, and each of you inserts links to your lead pages directly into the content.
- Recruit the influencer to your affiliate team. Then give them 100% commissions on a product. They get to keep all the upfront profits, but you get the valuable list of buyers and all the backend profits.
- Guest blogging. Pretty simple – just persuade your partner to publish your exclusive article on their blog. In exchange, you’ll publish an article for them on your own blog or social media accounts.
That’s just the beginning when it comes to leveraging an influencer’s traffic to build your list. Get creative, because these strategies are often the best and quickest ways to turn warm targeted traffic into subscribers and, quickly thereafter, into loyal buyers.
Putting It All Together To Optimize Your Subscriber Growth Rate
You just discovered seven proven ways to get more subscribers fast. If you implement all seven strategies, you’re sure to see your list grow by leaps and bounds.
Test, Track & Tweak Everything
Now let me share with you a method for super-optimizing your results: test, track and tweak everything.
A lot of people tend to neglect this step. They figure if their lists are growing, then they’re not going to fix what isn’t broken. However, even small improvements to your lead pages and campaigns can produce big results.
For example, let’s imagine you have a lead page that’s pulling a 5% conversion rate. That means for every 100 people who land on your lead page, five of them sign up.
That’s respectable for certain.
But imagine if you did some testing and were able to improve that to a 10% conversion rate… or 15%… or even 20% or more. Suddenly, any paid advertising you do gives you a much higher return on your investment. And your list and your revenues are going to grow a lot more quickly.
Point is, it’s well worth it to test your campaigns. Here are the best places to start your testing and tweaking for maximal response rates:
- Your lead page copy, including headline, opener, bulleted benefit list and call to action.
- Your lead page design.
- The design of your call-to-action button.
- Text copy versus a video sales letter on your lead page.
- The lead magnet you’re offering to visitors.
- Placement of your lead page links and calls to action.
So now that you know these seven ways plus the bonus that makes them all more effective, it’s time to get started. Go ahead and put these to work for you today, because I think you’ll like your results!
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