February 22, 2023
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Have you sat down lately and thought about what you can do to increase your number of email subscribers? You should. There’s a good chance there’s something you’re missing out on, that could make the numbers in your subscriber list skyrocket.
So what are some things you can do to get more subscribers?
Think hard about your call to action. It’s supposed to provide focus for your site and give your users direction, but is yours powerful enough? A simple “Sign up here” button is a bit weak. It’s not compelling. It doesn’t stand out.
Try making your button interactive - you could for example make it change from red to green (signalling “Go” of course) - so that the reader can react to whatever your CTA does.
You could have a button saying something like “What do I get for signing up?” which changes to “Daily promotions, awesome offers and fun facts about elephants - what are you waiting for?”. Get creative; the possibilities are practically endless.
BirchBox, which offers subscription boxes filled with beauty product samples, does this nicely.
“Let’s keep in touch” and “Bring it” aren’t generic sign up requests - and the reader also gets a clear idea of what they’ll get by signing up.
You need to make it clear to the user what they are going to gain by giving you their email address. Are they going to get fantastic savings? Awesome, entertaining content? Daily pictures of cats wearing bow ties? Tell them!
You can’t afford to be ambiguous here. “Sign up to receive weekly offers!” is clear about the benefits they’ll get by giving you their email.
No one wants to spend an hour filling out a form to receive promotional emails: people just aren’t that desperate to give out their personal details.
If you’re asking customers for their name, address, birthday, their grandma’s favourite food, their dog’s shoe size and so on, you’re going to lose them. A simple email address and maybe a first name will do - you can always give them the option to add more details later.
This example from Web Design Ledger simply asks the reader to enter their email address, nothing more. The pop-up box is also a nice example of a CTA: 'Be The First To Know' makes the reader feel like they could be missing out by not signing up.
Engaging and interesting content is likely to get shared around. Put this kind of content into your emails and you’re on to something: emailing your customers top quality content will encourage them to share with their friends. And in turn their friends will want to receive the same content (or so the theory goes).
And of course it’s not just a case of making the content awesome in order to motivate your readers to share, you need to make it easily sharable: social sharing buttons are a must here. If your reader needs to whip out a magnifying glass to find your tiny “Share me with your friends!” button, they’re probably going to miss it altogether.
This snippet from theSkimm shows how you can tastefully add social buttons to your email, encouraging your readers to share your content with their friends. These buttons are prominent enough to be noticed, but not so in-your-face that they become intrusive and ruin the content.
By making sure your subscribe button is always on screen, you’re going to make it much easier for readers to give up their details. If they have to hunt around for your opt-in form, they’re going to get frustrated and give up.
Think about having a sidebar on screen at all times, with a “Sign Up” bar constantly present.
Groove have found this method particularly effective, citing an increase of 2000 email signups alone from their top-of-page signup bar. They explain that the benefit of these sign up bars is that “they follow the reader without being disruptive, so that they’re always right there at the moment that the reader decides to sign up”.
A special offer you can only get when you sign up is a tempting notion. Offering your customers something like 15% off their next purchase if they subscribe can be a great incentive for them to give away their information.
Links of London, for example, have offered customers a 10% discount on their next order if they sign up to the newsletter.
As you can see, there are lots of ways you can increase your number of email subscribers with very little effort, and which cost virtually nothing to implement.
Most of these are simply small tweaks to your landing pages which really will make all the difference. Try them, you never know: a small change can make a big difference.
