PLUS: (Judging by the previous years) Email will outlast any social media outlet.

Directly contacting your audience gives you the opportunity to bring a visitor or reader back to website over and over again. Whether your e-commerce business is having a promotion, or you’ve added new content to your website that you want your audience to see, direct email has a lot of value in your relationship with your audience.

Here’s the crooks of it: You’re not going to get new subscribers if you don’t ask.

So….

How can you get more email subscribers?

Here are ten tips to get you ahead:

1. Give away something.

Offer something in exchange for an email address. Whether it’s a white paper, a pack of royalty-free graphics, a t-shirt, or anything that makes sense for your company, being able to deliver it by email is a great way to get subscribers. Make sure that you obtain the necessary permissions (e.g. an opt-in) when you are getting email addresses.

2. Use all the copy available to you.

On many online articles, there will be a line of text underneath the title — that’s the byline. It’s a great spot to offer a service, such as alerting readers when new posts are made. When someone signs up for the updates, they’re opting in to getting your emails. This is similar to the Instagram post notifications feature, which allows users to be notified when a certain user posts.

3. Use a widget.

Having a space on every page dedicated to getting email subscribers is a good thing. You might choose to use a widget on the sidebar of your page to ask for emails. However, if you have any significant length of content, that area will disappear as readers scroll down to continue on with your article. For maximum impact, make the widget stand out to really draw attention to it.

4. Use tools.

Familiar with website tools? Try our favourite Opt-In monster , a set of tools aimed at collecting emails. There’s so many options to help grow your list with opt in monster or sumome. Below are a few ideas.

There is a fine line to be toed when it comes to these tools. Overuse could be seen as intrusive and lead to a negative perception.

Make it a menu option.

If you have the background knowledge on how your users are navigating through your website, there could be a big opportunity here. This works best in combinations with the method of giving away something. If you add a link to your giveaways in your menu, you can collect subscribers through that option as well.

Prompts after exit intent.

This method relies on Javascript to track cursor and keyboard actions of website visitors . When the script senses the visitor is intending to leave the website (certain cursor movements or keyboard actions), a pop-up will appear, giving you the opportunity to ask for an email address.

Content specific extras. 

Again, this tip works best when combined with having something to give away. That give away, however, has to be relevant to why the reader is on that specific page in the first place — maybe you had a great article, interesting photos, or a how to guide. By making your content cohesive and beneficial for readers, and including a bonus that builds on what you’ve written, you can get more people wanting to hear what you have to say.

Welcome gate.

Usually shown to first-time visitors of a website, the gate is a subscription box that loads before the webpage is shown. The gate can be modified to be shown in front of any page that any newcomer visits, just the homepage, or a strategy that suits your needs. You don’t necessarily have to give something away for this, either. Simply state what you intend to deliver to the reader that submits their email address, and follow through.

Landing pages.

This can be used in conjunction with promotions through other channels. If you have a social following that you interact with, promote yourself through a link to a landing page that asks for an opt-in. Whether you’re giving something away or providing more information, you’ll be able to funnel a casual audience member (e.g. passive follower on Twitter) to an engaged audience member (one that opts in to receiving your emails.)

Contests.

Continue to convert your casual audience members to engaged ones by giving them a reason to engage. As an example, run a poll on your website to get your readership’s opinion. Ask for the email address to count as a vote, and get their opt-in through this method. You could further the interaction as well by giving something away (a white paper, templates for their own use, etc.)

 

No matter what tip or tips you use, you still have to get people to your website! Like all businesses, you rely on traffic, and converting that traffic into sales. How can you get more traffic?

Be the poster child.

You might have hated that one kid in your class growing up — always the example that you were supposed to follow — but if you can be that person, it can pay off. When you use someone else’s advice, let them know, and share the impact that it had on you. Dig for resources online, track the ones you use, follow them to a T, and then let the creator know what you did, how you did it (which should be exactly as outlined in their original resource), and what the impact was.

After you share with the creator, share with your audience! Your readership deserves to know what makes you successful, as it may help them in the future. Let the original creator know, again, about your success and how you shared it with your own audience. The original creator may share your results as an endorsement, helping lead traffic back to you.

The social formula.

There are a few steps to the social formula. What it consists of is:

Writing your content — a blog post, an article, whatever suits your company. It has to be great quality, and of significant length. Do your research — what are people looking for? Try to find comments in other articles about the topic you are writing about, and make sure you’ve addressed them in your own content.

Make a list — find the current most-shared articles on the topic of your original content. You can use buzzsumo.com to find these. If your topic was on “how to grow website traffic,” you would probably use terms like build a website, increase site traffic, and so on. Using Buzzsumo, you can find who’s shared an article — voila, you have now found your audience.

Next, contact them! There are many ways to get the email addresses of this audience. Reach out to them and explain that you noticed they shared the article in question, and that you’ve written content that has more information about the subject. Link them to your post, and watch the traffic come.

Reach out.

You probably see this yourself as you surf the Internet — users commenting on blogs, joining forums, talking to Facebook groups, all the with the intent to increase traffic to the content they’re promoting. How can you do this yourself?

If visitors are coming your site because of Facebook, use it! For example, let’s say that you have a website that you want to share with small business owners. See who on Facebook is in your target market, e.g. groups specifically for small business owners in an appropriate geographic area. Join these groups and engage with them, genuinely. Add feedback on posts and comments, read what is relevant to them at this moment via shared articles, and more.

As you continue to engage with the community, make posts yourself. You don’t necessarily have to be promoting your website itself, but contribute to the well-being of the group. This brings you to the top of mind, and drives more traffic to your website. Don’t spam, though — you need to show since interest and deliver on what you say.

With the amount of tactics outlined above, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. Some will be more appropriate for your website and email list than others. Gaining email addresses and driving site traffic takes time, but all it takes is starting on one — and maybe only one — tip to get the ball rolling for you.

Hope this helps.

http://www.slideshare.net/joemurfin/how-to-get-your-first-100-email-subscribers