When I first understood the importance of email marketing, I just know one thing that is to add a subscription box on the side bar of my blog. But you know it did not work well I was receiving not more than 5 Subscriptions / week while my blog visitors were approx 5000. that means 1 person out of 1000 people is subscribing. So I thought I should do something on this.
Then I learnt that how good your content may be, that does not mean people will just subscribe and one more thing if I am not clear what I am going to give to my subscribers if they subscribe to my blog, then how can I expect them to subscribe to our newsletter?
But before we think about How to ask our Blog visitors to subscribe to our website, we should have the following things ready.
3 Things to do Before You Start Email Marketing
We can simply ask your blog visitor to subscribe to your email newsletter, But rarely a blog visitor want to subscribe just because your articles are good. If you have something in return there is high chance of getting the subscription, What are examples of Lead Magnets.
- eBooks.
- Templates.
- Worksheets.
- Free Online course.
- Free Coupons.
When it comes to eBooks and Online courses, you don't need to create an ebook of 100 pages, a 20-30 page eBook which is useful to the reader can help and an Online course which is just 1 hr long also is ok, after all you are giving it for free, I have seen some bloggers create an online course out of their 1 0 you tube videos.
Ok, Let us assume a Subscriber has opted in and now what, If you dont even have a welcome email or an email workflow, what will happen is Subscriber will forget about you.
- Autoresponder - available on email marketing softwares with paid plans.
- Workflows - Workflows are great way to engage with your email subscribers, set up a work flow and forget about it, You can schedule up 100 emails to go in 200 days using email marketing softwares like Getresponse
Let us assume you have a blog which covers about Fitness and you write articles n Yoga , Exercise and Workouts , Meditation etc, then people who come and read these articles have different interests, For example people who is interested in Yoga may not be interested in lifting weights in a Gym, So here your need to have 3 buckets of Audience.
- Gym
- Yoga
- Meditation
And you should have 3 different lead magnets, so that people who opt through each lead magnet will go to different lists, So that you can deliver right emails to them.
After having all these in place now comes the most important part How are you going to invite your blog reader to subscribe to your newsletter? Following are different ways you can enable your blog reader to subscribe to your newsletter.
8 Subscribe to our Newsletter Examples
This is the most common one, it is not highly effective but if your blog receives high amount of traffic and if you are Lead Magnet is irresistible, then there are chances that you will see high opt-in rate.
Subscribe to our newsletter example of a Sidebar Subscription widget
This is a perfect example of a Sidebar Subscription widget displayed on Jane Sheeba's Blog.
- Very good Headline.
- Her image to show there is a real human being.
- Blogging success foundation course - free (Irresistible)
- Good Call to Action.
Most people don't use this header bar, But it can be really a good way to grab attention or announce about a new product launch, Offer discount coupon etc. see the below examples.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter Example -2
Header Bar Subscribe.
This is a good example of how to use Header bar to grab email address, this is displayed on a website called www.getsitekit.com , The message highlighted in Yellow is " get a smart bar just like this for your site, and they are not straight away asking email address, they will ask it in next step- this type of opt-in is called 2 Step Opt-in.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter Example -3
Header Bar Subscribe with Yes/ No.
This is one interesting example of using header bar, dogsnaturally displays this message in header bar- giving irresistible offer and asking do you want access or not, By asking this way most of the time reader says Yes.
In post blog Subscribe form is good for blogs who have good following and engagement, As the reader is reading your blog with lot of attention and interest they cannot miss this type of opt-in form. In this short video I have explained what an in-post subscribe form is showing example of a in-post subscription form I have displayed on one of my blogs.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter Example - 4
In-post Email Subscribe Form
Subscribe to Our Newsletter Example - 5
Below post Email Subscribe Box
Any reader who read your blog post fully means, he likes your content , so he came down to end of the post reading it , when he is finished reading the post now he is thinking of what to do next, So at this point of time he gets something to act upon, there are high chances that he is more likely to take action, I mean he will opt-in, I have different type of opt-in forms on my site, but this one is the second best performing one.
Slide-in widget is a small box which is typically around 300 X 400 pixels, where in you offer the reader some kind of message, You can ask them to download something, You can ask them to visit an another blog post or ask them to watch a video on your youtube channel. It is like guiding them to the place you like to. You can see the video below to understand what is Slide-in widget email subscribe form
Subscribe to our Newsletter example- 6
Slide-in widget
Many people think popups are annoying for their users, Yes they can be annoying and lead to negative user experience. If you implement pop-up in the right way you can see conversion rates upto 10% , With this Blog I have achieved 7% conversion rate with one pop-up, through this pop-up i was offering 26point Niche Selection Checklist. see the video below.
Subscribe to our Newsletter Example -7
POP-UP Subscription Form
Home page for any Blog or website is very important to showcase about your products and Services and what you have to offer, But many professional bloggers like Brian Dean from Backlinko and Neil patel etc use their most valuable above the fold space on home page to grab email addresses of their readers, Thats shows how important it is to get email subscribers.
This is a screenshot from www.bloggingjoy.com , this blog is being run by Santanu Debnath, who is also from Hyderabad like me. when you visit the home page first thing you will notice is his smiling face (which is good to build instant trust and human connection) and the lines I have highlighted which motivates user to take action.
This is the screenshot taken from. my blog - www.healthydietfordiabetics.com , Main headline is motivating, image of what they get, and Call to action words chosen carefully.
I would like to hear what is your favourite Email Subscription form type ? Which one is giving you the best results, if you are yet to implement Email Marketing, you should do it as early as possible, I could sell 500 copies of my eBook using Email Marketing
Love to hear your thoughts, also please share this post on facebook and twitter.
Gowardhan Doddi
Founder of Blogging Mistakes
Blogging has changed my World, I was first introduced to Blogging in 2010 , Learnt that Blogging can change my Life but to succeed at it took me more than 6 years , I failed several times and made many blogging mistakes, Through this blog I want to teach you how to blog without making many mistakes and succeed..
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