Looking to boost the numbers of subscribers to your newsletter or email marketing campaigns? Try our tools and tips to increase your readership and reach.

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To some companies, email marketing may seem like
an old fashioned concept.
Now that we have various forms of Digital Marketing,
with Inbound Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and
Content Marketing to start, Email Marketing may
seem retro.
But it is still an incredibly important and lucrative
marketing channel that you must make use of.
So how do you go about boosting your subscriber lists
to your Newsletter and other Email Marketing
Campaigns? We’ve compiled a few handy tips and
methods in order to give your company a boost of
Email Subscriber opt-ins.

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digital marketing
Assess your Landing Page
When you look at the landing page for subscribing to
newsletters or your latest email campaign, there are a few
things you should ask yourself:
• Is your heading clear and enticing?
• Do you list the benefits a customer will gain from
subscribing to your emails?
• Does your call-to-action to subscribe stand out from the
rest of the page?
• Is the placement of the subscription form effective?

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You don’t want to constantly annoy potential customers with
sign-up forms, so placing is essential. The best places are on
the right hand side, as people generally read top to bottom
and won’t notice this initially, and again at the bottom of a
page, as the likelihood is that if they’ve read an entire piece
of content, they are most certainly interested in your
offerings.
It may also be worthwhile giving customers an insight into
what to expect, with a snapshot of the emails they will be
receiving.
There are many other places you can place the forms. For
instance, do you have a form on your “About Us” page? This
is a page many people visit before leaving a site, so it may be
worthwhile gaining some more returning traffic by enticing
people to sign-up to company updates.

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TED has a simplistic and clear newsletter page

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Change your wording
Which sounds more enticing? “Get email updates” or
“Download Free Ebook Now!”
If the call-to-action is plain and boring, people are going to
be a lot less likely to follow through and subscribe. If you
have something to offer, make this known. And if not, “Join
us for News and Updates” sounds better than “Subscribe to
Emails”.
Have a play with your wording, and consider what your
target audience is most likely to respond to. For B2B
purposes, no nonsense is the way forward, But for B2C, they
are more likely to respond to more enticing wording, or
offers and freebies.

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digital marketing
Pop-ups and Overlays
Love them or hate them, pop-ups get the results you need.
What you need to consider is whether you will be severely
turning off your target audience or not.
What’s the smart way about doing this? Using a WordPress
plug-in such as Optinmonster allows you to create
professional pop-ups in a matter of minutes. There are a
huge range of plugins and other forms of pop-ups out there,
so it’s a matter of browsing and seeing what suits your
business best.
Do you want the background to fade whilst the pop-up is
displayed? Do you want the pop-up in the centre or bottom-
right hand corner? How direct do you want to be? The choice
is yours.

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MoneySavingExpert utilising a one-step pop-up

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Exit-Intent Technology
for Abandoning Customers
People who are going to leave, are going to leave regardless
of what you’re offering. So why not have one last shot at
attempting to keep them to stay on the page, or at least
interested in what you have to offer?
By tracking the mouse to assess when a user is about to
leave, you can display your overlay at just the right time. If
they haven’t already subscribed, what have you got to lose?
Absolutely nothing. Here’s a chance to turn an abandoning
visitor who will probably never return again, to a fully-
fledged Email Subscriber. You can do all this
with BounceExchange.

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Optimal Time to Opt-In
When do you think the best time to ask a user to
subscribe to your emails is? It’s straight after they’ve
taken an action they is of some value to them;
whether that is gaining information from your website
or content, or perhaps they’ve purchased something
from your Ecommerce website.
If you ask a customer to subscribe to your newsletter
straight after they’ve scored a bargain through your
company, they’re much more likely to be happy to
pass over their details. Makes sense, right?

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Give Them a Reason to
Subscribe
Okay so, you want to get more subscribers. But what will the
customer get out of subscribing? They don’t want yet more
emails clogging up their inbox for no reason. Consider
offering a money-off coupon, special deals, or some other
form of benefit.
If you’re not an Ecommerce business, explain the value and
benefits of what you’re offering to send via email; whether
it’s tips and tricks within your industry, or news and valuable
information they should not miss out on. Whatever your
business, you can offer the customer some form of incentive
to sign up to your emails. Consider putting together a more
extensive ebook or whitepaper, as a bonus for those who
choose to sign-up.

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Tesco promises exclusive offers upon sign-up

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Checkboxes
Do you have customer fill in other forms on your
website? If you offer whitepapers or ebooks, what
details do you gain when a customer downloads
them?
It may be worthwhile adding a checkbox at the
bottom of the form, which subscribes them to your
newsletter. This is perhaps one of the simplest
methods if you have customers filling in alternative
forms otherwise, including when checking out.

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Segment and Categorise
Just because someone has signed up to your newsletter, doesn’t
mean they’re going to be interested in every little thing you have to
say.
Instead, it may be worthwhile segmenting users into different
interests, so you can personalise your email output, and avoid
annoying potential customers with stuff they are not interested in;
which will only force their hand to unsubscribe. And you don’t want
that to happen.
Coca Cola makes
use of segmenting
subscribers

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digital marketing
Encourage Sharing
Why inhibit the reach of your emails or newsletters
when you can have your customers share them for
you?
This can be from the emails themselves, with a
comment such as “if you found this resource helpful,
why not send it to a friend?” or perhaps on a landing
page, suggesting they spread the word to others who
may find the content useful. Ensure users can share
on Twitter and Facebook at least, and consider other
Social Networks depending on your business.

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Content and Competitions
This can be a tricky one for some businesses, but it gives people
a more valuable reason to sign-up to your newsletter or email
updates.
Of course, the prize must be in-line with your target audience,
company, or industry, to ensure that the people signing up are
the people you want. There’s no point in offering the prize of a
new iPad if you are a car dealership. People will be uninterested
in your actual products and offerings.
The best way of doing this is to give away a sample, trial, or
demo, of the services or product that your company offers.
Doing this will mean that the people subscribing to your emails
are genuinely interested in what your company offers, rather
than purely being interested in a free tablet.

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National Express entices subscribers with news, offers, competitions, and a cash prize

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Saving Unsubscribers
If a user chooses to unsubscribe, you shouldn’t make
this an impossible task. Instead, you may wish to lead
them to an unsubscribe landing page that offers the
option to reduce the mailing frequency of emails.
If they are sick of constant emails every week, but still
wish to view your content, maybe they wouldn’t mind
opting for a monthly email instead.
Going from 52 emails a year to just 12 will be a
significant change in their inbox, and you still retain a
potential customer who can return to your site at a
later date.

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Subscription Bar
Another thing you may have noticed numerous blogs make
use of, is a Subscription bar at the top of the website. This is
a very tidy and unobtrusive way of reminding people,
whether they’re navigating elsewhere or not, to subscribe to
your newsletter or email campaign.
You can do this with the HelloBar optimisation tool, or
alternatively, the WordPress plugin Viperbar. Both are sure
to have a significant impact on your subscriber list.

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Social Proof
Already have a lot of subscribers? Show the public that fact!
If anything is likely to convince customers to subscribe, it’s
that other have already beaten them to the punch. Who
wants to miss out on the resources and offers you are
sending out to a host of other people? Of course, telling the
world that you have 42 subscribers may not be as
convincing. But if you have a few thousand, then it’s
definitely worth mentioning.
Otherwise, ask for customer feedback, or from an influential
member of someone in your industry. If someone your
target audience admires acknowledges and recommends
your newsletter, then they’ll be much more likely to opt-in.

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Feature Box
There’s a difference between a Feature Box and a pop-up, in that
feature boxes are much less intrusive.
If a customer does not wish to subscribe, they can carry on reading
the content, whereas a pop-up fully takes over their view. And users
of your website will want to stay in control of their browsing. Why
should they submit to what you want them to do?

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So if you’re struggling to give your email subscriber list a boost, try out some
of these tools and tactics. It could be the lifeline that your Digital Marketing
strategy needs.
If you need a hand putting together a Digital or Email Marketing Strategy
together, get in touch with us at Xanthos, we would love to help you out!
What has been the most effective tactic to gain email or newsletter
subscribers for your company? Have you come across any particularly useful
tools? Join the conversation on our blog!
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About Xanthos
Xanthos is an innovative Cambridgeshire-based digital marketing agency.
Our services cover digital marketing, web design, web development and e-
commerce.
For over 10 years we have helped B2B and B2C customers achieve
exceptional results online.
We understand: your business and the role of
digital marketing in delivering business strategy
We deliver: results by taking an integrated coherent
approach to web design, development and digital
marketing
We go to the extra mile: to satisfy our customers not
just answering phones but delivering results that
meet or exceed client expectation
Xanthos Limited
08450 740 068
www.e-xanthos.co.uk
Adam Barsby
Digital Marketing Executive
abarsby@e-xanthos.co.uk