Everything in email marketing starts with the list. Not a big list for its own sake, but one full of people who actually want your newsletter and read it.

Growing one isn’t complicated, but it does take a mix of approaches and some patience. Here are 13 simple ways to do it, most of which you can start this week.

1. Use Stunning Sign-Up Forms On Your Site

A well-designed sign-up form should be included on every page. Most email service providers offer high-quality sign up forms as one of their features. Otherwise, you can work with a designer to create something unique.

As a general rule of thumb, if your website content is of a high enough quality, a proportion of your readers will be convinced to subscribe to your newsletter to see more of what you have to offer. By placing a sign-up form on every page, you’ll catch them when they are most invested, and not have them searching around just to find your sign-up form.

If possible, customize the form on specific pages (more on this below), depending on what’s being offered. Make sure it complies with the consent rules where your readers are, and protect it from bots with a hidden honeypot field or double opt-in. Bots signing up fake or stolen addresses through open forms is a common way lists pick up spam complaints.

2. Create High-Quality, Relevant Lead Magnets

Create a high quality, highly relevant whitepaper, ebook, cheat sheet, email series, or other free download to offer people in return for signing up.

This could either be something pretty generic (but still targeted at your ideal audience), which can be offered on all (or most) of your sign up forms to grow your email list.

Alternatively, you could spend time creating more specialized lead magnets to promote only on extremely relevant pages. For example, a step-by-step checklist that adds more context to a single article on your website. This takes more time and energy, but often results in higher conversion rates.

3. Use a Pop-Up Forms Strategically

Pop-up forms come in a variety of formats. Some pop-up right in the middle of the screen. Others appear as a “top bar”, and others as a scroll box in the corner of the screen.

It’s almost always best to have pop-up forms appear after someone’s been reading for a while, or when they’re about to leave, rather than as soon as they arrive. That way they’ve seen enough of your content to decide whether they want more of it.

Be careful on mobile. Google’s guidance on intrusive interstitials warns that pop-ups covering the content can hurt how your pages perform in search, so a smaller banner or slide-in is a safer choice on phones.

Most email service providers include pop-up forms. If you want more control and testing, dedicated tools like MailMunch are an option.

4. Offer a Coupon or Discount For Signing-Up

Another option is to entice visitors to complete a transaction by offering a coupon in return for signing up to your newsletter. These coupons could be a percentage off your products or services, a free bonus with purchase, etc. Whatever you do, make sure it’s enticing, and relevant to your audience.

Apps such as Wishpond will help you to create a coupon and have it placed in a pop-up window on your website. The use of coupons leads to higher conversions since customers will want to take advantage of the “limited” offer.

If you’re targeting EU nationals, be sure to check out the GDPR rules to ensure your offer abides by the regulations.

5. Grow Your Email List on Social Media

We’ve written before about why email marketing crushes social media marketing. But that doesn’t mean social media doesn’t have a role to play in growing your email list. This is your chance to let your social media followers know about your newsletter. Include a link that will direct them to a well-designed, enticing landing page containing your sign-up form. Share it regularly, but mix it in with your normal posts rather than repeating the same link, since most platforms show posts with outside links to fewer people.

Don’t forget to offer an attractive lead magnet, as this will have a large impact on your conversion rate.

Taking this a step further, you could share a direct link to the latest edition(s) of your newsletter so your audience can view the campaign within their browser. By seeing what they’re missing, they’re more likely to choose to sign up. All good email service providers will allow you to do this.

6. Try Lead Ads on Facebook and Instagram

Meta’s lead ads let people sign up to your newsletter without leaving Facebook or Instagram, with their email address already filled in. That removes most of the friction, which makes them good at producing signups.

The flip side is quality. Because signing up is so easy, some people do it without much thought, so connect the ads to your ESP, send a good welcome email straight away, and watch how these subscribers engage compared with others. You pay for the ads themselves rather than per signup, so test a few versions and track your real cost per engaged subscriber, not just per signup.

7. Use Your Newsletter to Grow Your Newsletter

This might sound counterintuitive, since these people are already subscribed. But readers forward newsletters to friends and colleagues all the time, and you should actively encourage it. A simple referral program, rewarding readers for every friend who signs up, can turn this into a real growth channel. Many newsletter platforms have one built in.

This means it’s wise to add a sign-up link within the newsletter for anyone interested in opting in. Don’t forget to indicate what they should expect when they sign up such as special offers, updates, and interesting articles.

8. Use Pen & Paper to Grow Your Email List

If you have a physical store and customers interact with you face-to-face, the simplest way to grow your email list would be to use a sign-up sheet. Indicate on the top of the sheet what they will receive in exchange for them signing up (special offers, updates on new products etc.). Let them know they can unsubscribe at any time, that you’ll take their privacy seriously, and any other information that’s required in your jurisdiction.

If you prefer to use a tablet, you can use an app such as SignUpAnywhere, which simplifies the collection of personal data from interested customers. Listbuilder is an alternative option.

9. Capture Email Addresses At Events

Do you host events? If people register or reserve tickets for your event or show, chances are you already collect their contact information.This is also a great time to ask people to join your newsletter. This allows you to communicate with attendees before, during, and even after the event.

If they don’t sign up to your newsletter during the ticket purchasing process, ask them again at the event, so they can keep up to date about future events.

10. Let People Text To Sign Up

Sure, people can head over to your website on their smartphone to sign up. But there’s a simpler option: sending a message to a phone number. You might have encountered something similar in the past, such as “Text your email address to 1234 to sign up”. Or “Text SOCIAL10 to 4354 to get a 10% off code”!

Apps that provide this feature are Simple Texting and Join By Text. These services integrate with some email service providers so new subscribers will be sent to your list automatically.

11. Provide Free Wi-Fi Access

If you have a physical store, consider offering free Wi-Fi to your patrons, especially if you are trying to encourage them to stick around for a while, such as in a coffee shop, eatery, or book store.

Don’t make it mandatory that they sign up for Wi-Fi access, as most people will just unsubscribe from your email list straight away. Instead, use this as an opportunity to sell your newsletter, letting people know all the awesome things they can expect to receive if they choose to provide their email address. Many guest Wi-Fi systems include an optional newsletter sign-up step.

12. Offer Exclusive Content on Your Mailing List

Offer your newsletter subscribers something that nobody else gets access to. We’re talking things like early access to content, exclusive promotions, pre-launch updates, behind-the-scenes info etc

Be sure to mention this exclusive content on your sign-up forms and newsletter landing pages..

13. Run Relevant Giveaways

Run a competition where you offer a highly relevant prize to one or more of your email subscribers. Promote this wherever you can to encourage signups, such as on social media and of course on your website.

Remember to keep the prize engaging to your target audience to have the best chance of keeping them engaged, such as free personalized coaching, a valued product, or something closely related to what you do. A generic prize won’t single-out subscribers that will engage with your newsletter.

A Few Newer Options Worth Knowing

Since this list was first written, a few more channels have become common for newsletters specifically:

  • Advertising in other newsletters. Their readers already like newsletters. See how to advertise your newsletter in other newsletters.
  • Newsletter recommendations. Many newsletter platforms let you recommend each other’s newsletters at signup, for free or for a fee per subscriber.
  • Newsletter swaps. Trade a mention with a newsletter that has a similar audience and size.

These are just some of the ways you can start to grow your email list. Stick to approaches like these, add a bit of patience, and you can’t go far wrong. But remember, this takes time. Don’t lose patience and resort to buying email lists. These lists won’t be made up of your ideal audience, they’ll lead to high bounce rates (not good), and they’re often illegal. This could lead to your account being suspended by your email service provider.

Stick to the legitimate approaches to grow your email list, offer value at every turn, and make sure everything you do is extremely relevant to your target audience.

Track where each subscriber came from, and check after a couple of months which sources bring in people who actually read. That tells you where to spend your time.

References

  1. [1] guidance on intrusive interstitials — developers.google.com