How to Get Subscribers to Sign Up for Your Mailing List
So! Now that you’ve done the hard work of planning your mailing list, finding a service, and writing some newsletters, you’ll need to find subscribers. This is going to be an ongoing, long-term task, so you should always be promoting your newsletter. Here are some tips on how:
Put your sign up form prominently on every single page of your website.
That’s right…every single page. That one sign up form on your contact page is nowhere near enough. Neither is that tiny “email me” link at the bottom of your page. Your potential subscribers might not make it to your contact page. You want them to be able to sign up no matter what page they’re on.
And don’t hide your signup form. For some reason, a lot of people tend to put their forms on the bottom of the page or keep it on one page of their website. If you make your visitors look around for the signup they won’t do it. It should one of the first things that they see when they land on your website. The top left hand or right hand corner is usually best.
Don’t ask for too much information.
Some artists make the mistake of creating a long contact form for new subscribers to fill out. A long form asking for postal addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information is a hassle to fill out and will also scare off potential subscribers. The first thing that will cross their minds is “Well why do they need to know my phone number?” Remember, these folks don’t know you yet and even handing out just an email address requires an act of trust.
Keep it short and simple. Just asking for a name and email address is plenty for an email mailing list. You’ll have time to ask for more information once you get them on your list.
If you’re going to ask for a phone number or snail mail address, then you better have a good reason why you’re asking for it and explain why on your signup form.
Give them something of great value immediately.
Remember that asking someone to sign up for your mailing list is a trade. Customers are giving you information in hopes of getting something useful back. The promise of future newsletters and updates are fine, but you’ll get a lot more signups if you can offer something of immediate value like:
- A printable coupon to use on your website or at your next show
- A free article or special report with tips or useful information
- An audio or video download with tips or how tos (these are extremely powerful incentives)
- Access to a “subscribers only” section of your website (you should list what’s in this section on your sign up page)
- Entry into a contest or giveaway
Don’t forget your blog and email.
If you also maintain a blog in addition to your regular site, don’t forget to include a sign up form there as well. Blogger and Typepad makes it fairly easy to add a sign up form directly on your blog. If you use WordPress.com you’ll need to use a service like Feedburner or Feedblitz because they do not allow you to add forms to your blog.
Plus, think of some way to mention your mailing list in your blog posts and encourage people to join. You can even post a link to your mailing list page at the end of every post with a message asking people to join, kind of like a signature message for your blog. By the way, you should also include link to your mailing list sign up in your email signature so that you’re encouraging people to sign up every time you send out an email.
*Here’s a super tip: If you have a WordPress blog running on your hosting service , there’s a plugin that you can install called “What Seth Godin Would Do”. Here’s what it does: when someone lands on your blog for the first time it automatically puts a brief message along the top of the first post. In most cases the messages says some like “Welcome my blog, please sign up for my RSS feed”. Instead of the default message, I’ve included my newsletter sign up form in the message and asked for people to sign up for the newsletter. About 75% of my new subscribers sign up through this message! You can find the plugin here:
Please note that you will need to have WordPress running on your own web host…this won’t work if you have a free blog at WordPress.com
Tell everyone about your newsletter.
Don’t keep your newsletter a secret. Tell everyone you know about it and ask them to join. Contact your current customers and ask them to visit your website to sign up. If you have a Twitter account, or a Facebook account talk to your Twitter and Facebook friends about the latest article or giveaway you’re featuring in your newsletter. Whenever I post a tweet about my latest newsletter article on Twitter I always get at least 3 or 4 new subscriptions that way.
Promote your newsletter off the web too, through your voice mail messages, through signups at shows and open studios. If you hadn’t had a chance to listen to my audio on How to Market Offline, download it listen for more ideas on how to get subscribers off the Internet.
Don’t obsess over unsubscribes.
When you’re first starting out, you’ll probably keep your eyes glued to your subscription statistics. So of course you’ll probably get a little disappointed if someone unsubscribes from your list. Don’t worry about it. Your numbers are going to fluctuate and unless you start to notice a downward trend in your subscriptions, don’t obsess every time you get an unsubscribe.
