In the past couple of weeks, in various articles such as, “Utilizing Landing Pages To Grow Your Audience“, I mentioned the importance of using email marketing to grow your business. Before you can start sending those daily, weekly, or monthly newsletters, its important to get subscribers on your newsletter list. The other day I was chatting with a client; she was amazed at the amount of people I have on my list. I’m going to walk you through, how you too, can get hundreds of people to subscribe with less than a $50 investment.
Sign Up For MailChimp
This is the most important aspect of the how to grow your subscribers article. Select the right platform to send your newsletter to your audience. When I first started I was using Madmimi. They were easy to use and they had great customer support. However, I wanted to grow my business and the style of my newsletter. I did a plethora of research and landed on MailChimp. For the automation of your free newsletter or email marketing campaign to work, you must select the minimum $10 a month plan. Automation is not included with free plans.
Create a list
After you’ve set up your account and taken care of all the business essentials, then it’s time to create list. I have several different list within the MailChimp platform. This clues me in to how people signed up. Your list is simple right now, a list of people who have signed up for your newsletters; you can segment them later. Title your list “Landing Page Sign Ups”. This way you know exactly how these individuals got on your list.
Establish Your Free Opt-In
This is pretty simple, if you’re a blogger or you write blogs for your business. Grab your most popular post. Don’t just stop there by simply making it your opt-in. Add more content that is exclusive to the newsletter subscriber list. If you’re including links in your free opt-in, make sure you hyperlink that content. In addition, you can track the clicks by using Google Url shortner. This will help you know exactly what parts of the opt in most people are engaged in.
Designing Your Opt-In
If you’re on a tight budget for your opt-in, I would highly suggest using Canva to design your opt-in. The platform is virtually free, unless you need extra features like stock images. Just recently, one of my clients used Canva to design several of her eBooks. After she realized what she wanted, it only took her a couple of hours to complete them. You don’t have to make this something really big. Maybe 3-5 pages of content, that’s it.
A Great Title That Sticks
Normally, I am not a fan of sensational titles, but those are what draw the most clicks and link backs to content. Make sure you create a great title that your future audience would want to open. Utilizing Google’s Keyword search is a perfect way to do this. Don’t simply say “10 Ways To Style Your Wardrobe”, instead say, “Creating The Wardrobe of Your Dreams By Using Pinterest As Your Free Stylist”. Which one would you want to click and read.
Link MailChimp To Account
If you’re using a platform such as WordPress in the plugin, it is going to ask you what list you want to use. You will be sending all of the subscribers who click and sign up to this list you created. I highly suggest only having one opt-in on your website. Don’t try to diverse the content by having multiple options. This will confuse them. We don’t want them to be confused. We want them to sign up.
Upload The Content
Now that you have created a MailChimp account and designed your free opt-in, it’s time to upload it to your account. MailChimp has created a great free opt-in regarding how to set up automation on their platform. (download: Automation MailChimp Guide).
Spread The Word
This is where you need put a little grease on the wheel for it to move it along. You have several options on how to push this content, especially if, you are lacking site traffic.
- Twitter – schedule tweets about your newsletter with a link to sign up
- Facebook – Post once a month on your fan page about the free opt in. Also, you can boost this post to gain new audience members.
- Facebook Groups- Share in these groups that you have a free guide on a certain subject matter. They can download it when they sign up.
- Pinterest – Use styled stock photos to create several images that you pin to your boards. Create a separate no link page on your website that people don’t see. When they land on this page they will be prompted to sign up for your newsletters.
Creating a free opt-in that will grow your subscriber list, only takes a couple of hours of work and less than $50 to do. This is a great way to make sure you have an audience who is potentially interested in your business. We want you to land sales on the first day.
