Converting More Visitors Into Subscribers

  Tips and tactics you can implement now to get more new subscribers from the traffic you already get every day.

All the effort you put into generating traffic is necessary, but that only gets the initial visit. To get the best return on your investment, your new visitors need to do one of two things: either buy something or sign up for your newsletter.

It's far easier to get someone to part with their email address than it is to get them to open their wallet. And if visitors don't buy today, the next best thing they can do is sign up for your newsletter.

The following tips should help you turn more of your non-buying casual visitors into subscribers. When they do, and you can send them regular newsletters, you can build a rapport with them and earn their trust, and you have many more chances to make a sale.

  The Basics.

Always make it easy for them to join. Place a subscription box above the fold on your home page and on every relevant page of your website.

Remember that visitors can (and will) enter your website on any page that the search engines have listed, so give them the opportunity to join your list from any page on your website.

Above-the-fold space is in short supply, so you may want to keep those sign-up boxes small, but you can also place larger sign-up boxes with more details and benefits after the page content. When they reach the end of the page and think: 'What Now?', the option to sign up is right in front of them.

Always include a link to your privacy policy in your sign up boxes. (You do have a privacy policy, right?) Nobody likes spam, and we need to reassure our visitors that their email address is safe.

  Simple Conversion Tactics.

You can offer an incentive, something for free, that they can only get after they sign up for your newsletter. Reports, ebooks, software, wallpapers, anything downloadable that your target audience may find helpful or interesting.

You can run a contest for current subscribers. For a prize you can offer one of your products, or almost anything that has real value and can be downloaded, emailed, or mailed for very little. Just be sure that a) you have the legal right to distribute it, and b) it can't be found already at a lot of other websites.

If you want to appeal to a wider audience, than a good prize idea might be a gift certificate from someplace like Amazon.com: it's highly recognizable, respected, and the winner can choose their own prize. Also, if you have an affiliate account, then you may be able to offer a larger prize value than what it actually costs you.

If you make the contest open only to currently subscribed members, and announce the winners only in your newsletters, it will increase subscriber retention as well as improve the send/open ratio.

You can create a 'Cover Image' to give them a visual of your newsletter. Try to make it look like a 3D notebook or ebook cover, rather than a flat 2D image. A decent free tool for that is Scott's Box Shot Maker.

You can create a separate "Our Newsletter" page, with details of all the reasons why they should sign up for your newsletter. Think of it as a 'Sales Letter' type of page, the main point of it should be to tell them how they will benefit from signing up. For example: "Subscribe today and we'll help you learn everything you want to know about Cooking With Gas!"

Some other things to have on your "Our Newsletter" page:
* Testimonials from current list members
* A personal assurance of confidentiality
* Details about your freebie(s) and/or contest(s)
* Links to archived or example issues
* Your publishing schedule
* An unsubscribe link
* And sign-up boxes, at the top and the bottom.

Make a "More Info" link leading to that page in all of your sign-up boxes, add an 'Our Newsletter' link to your main menu and integrate one into your page content wherever you can appropriately place it.

  A Few 'Advanced' Tactics.

You can add an embedded audio or video file to popular pages to encourage visitors to sign up. (Make sure to give them an 'Off' button) Learn more about embedding audio files here or here, and about adding streaming video here and here.

If you can justify it, set a 'Price Point Value' for your newsletter. For example: "Join today and get this $47 dollar value for FREE!" This will improve the perceived value of your newsletter, but be careful about over-exaggerating.

You can use a delayed pop-up or a 'Hover Pop' that slides in ten or fifteen seconds after the page loads. I know this is controversial, and many people simply won't use them, but there is no denying that they are effective.

The problem with popups is that they get over-used and many people now have pop-up blockers. If you decide to use them, make sure the popup only opens once per browser session, make it load fast, and make it's appearance match your website look and feel.

Try the free popup tool included in the Javascript Utility Suite - it works even past most popup blockers. Or you could try the free Ace Popup software, or the online generator from fg-a.com, either will let you create code for a good popup. If you have the budget for it, the Popup Toolkit is more versatile and works in more browsers.

You can use an exit-pop. When someone leaves your website, give them one last chance to sign up for your newsletter. This would be a good time to add in one or more extra benefits: Another free ebook or wallpaper package, anything to make the offer more attractive. Get more info and a free exit-pop script here.

  A Few Parting Thoughts.

With your website, you get one chance to turn a visitor into a customer before they leave - possibly forever. But if they opt-in to your mailing list, you have the chance to sell your products and services to them for years.

Seen in that light, it's not hard to see why your mailing list can be one of your most valuable assets, all the effort you put into building it will be paying dividends for a long, long time.

To Your Success!
Tim

P.S. If you want a good list manager, I'd recommend YMLP, it's free up to 1000 subscribers and inexpensive over that, and they have features that even some high-priced services don't.

By Tim Brown © 2006. About the author: Tim is the webmaster at http://BLT-Web.com, where webmasters can find free tools, advice, tips and other useful resources designed to help them build a successful website.

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