Getting More Subscribers for Your Newsletter

An active, growing subscriber list is a vital part of a successful website, and "How do I get more subscribers" is one of the most common questions new webmasters have.

You want people to visit your website more than once, right? One of the best ways to entice them to return is to get them on your mailing list. Your newsletter can remind them that you exist and give them the latest news about website updates and special offers.

The following tips & strategies will help you grow your list.
Apply yourself to it, and soon you will be getting more subscribers every day than you thought possible.

Offer an Incentive To Sign Up
This is the most common tactic used, so common it as almost expected by the average surfer. You could offer a free gift (like an eBook, a sweepstakes entry, free series of reports, etc.) to people who subscribe. Anything that is downloadable but not widely available will work.

The best part is that you can set it up so it won't cost you a dime. Write your own eBook or reports, run a free sweeps through a company like themarketingagency.com or marketingresources.com... or give away any eBook that is in the public domain.

If you have a little to spend, find an eBook or software program that you can get the resellers rights for cheap, then give it away. That makes for a high-value incentive to help build your list. If you do that, make sure and tell them "This normally sells for $8.00 (or whatever) but if you join today, you get it for FREE!"

Discourage people from entering fake email addresses by setting up your system so your incentive (or the instructions on how to get it) is delivered in the "Welcome" message - and tell them how it will be delivered right on your sign-up page.

"Freebie" websites are popular, and many of them are desperate for new content. Once you have your incentive up and running, let these websites know about it and they will happily send people to you.

Encourage Your Subscribers To Share
This is such a simple thing, but it can work wonders. With a little prompting, your subscribers will think of someone who might be interested in your newsletter (or just an article in the current issue), you simply "remind" them that they can easily forward it.

Just put an "encouragement to forward" right in your template... a little reminder at the end of an article or page like: "If you have a friend who would be interested in reading this, feel free to forward them a copy" will do the job.

Then, when someone does receive a copy from a friend who forwarded it, encourage them to subscribe. Something like: "If you received a copy of this newsletter from a friend, you can read past issues and get future issues free by visiting http://yoursite.com/newsletter/archive.html".

That's assuming you have your past issues archived, if not you can still encourage them to get your incentive by signing up for future issues.

Integrate your sign-up form with your website design.
Your subscription form (or a link to it) should be easy to find and on every page. Add it into your nav menu and/or the top and bottom of every page. Don't neglect to mention the benefits of joining.

If you cannot fit the form into the nav menu, make a subscription page and link to it from the menu. Open that page in a separate window so you don't loose the surfer.

Your sign-up form should be easy to find, easy to read, and should fit in nicely with your overall website design. Choose a font that is easy to read, and clearly label all input fields. Modify the colors and buttons to match your website look and feel. (See this article for help on modifying the buttons.)

Swap Ads With Other Newsletters
Get in touch with other newsletter owners and ask them if they'd be interested in swapping ads. They run your ad in their newsletter, advertising your newsletter, and you do the same for them.

I'd recommend that you swap with newsletters that deal with complimentary content, rather than identical or unrelated.

If your newsletter is about handmade gifts, swapping ads with one that focuses on baby gifts would benefit both participants - provided that the other one does not focus on handmade baby gifts.

Write three or four example ads to give your swap partner a choice, and ask them to use the one that they feel is appropriate for their audience.

As with all such efforts, you should use some sort of ad tracking system for these types of ads. That way you get an idea of what works, and whether it's worth doing again.

Use PopUp Subscription Boxes
Popups are controversial, but there is no denying that they work. A small popup with your subscription form and a brief description of benefits can increase your subscription rate a thousand-fold.

The problem comes from over-use of popups. If you decide to use this strategy, make sure the popup only opens once per browser session, make it fast, and make it's appearance match your website look and feel.

Start a Co-Regestration Exchange
These can be a difficult thing to get going, but the potential benefits are huge. You find a couple other webmasters with complimentary content, and everybody agrees to place a description of each other's newsletter on their "thank you for subscribing" webpage.

Every time someone subscribes to your partner's newsletter, they are also given the chance to subscribe to yours. I've seen Thank You webpages that have way too many co-reg options on them - at most, I'd think that six is about the most you'd want.

There is software to automate the hard parts - Co-Reg Complete got good reviews. You can get a free trial, but the subscription is $29.99/month. They have some good articles and resources there, too.

Buying Leads or Lists
One word: DON'T!

Yes, it is possible to buy leads or even entire lists. But if you do, the best you can hope for is a list of people who may have expressed an interest in a subject like "gifts" or "babies", etc... While it may be okay to contact these people ONCE to ask them if they want to subscribe, it is NOT okay to just add them to your newsletter list.

Also - using these CDs with thousands of names/e-mails harvested off the internet will get you accused of spamming and will open a huge can of worms that just you don't want to deal with.

Use Online Classified Ad Websites
There are a lot of these kind of websites, most offer free and paid ad insertions. The only one I can recommend with confidence is AdLandPro, over the last three-plus years they have proved to be a consistently high-value and low-cost solution for everything I've done with them.

Promote Your newsletter Offline
If you are running a physical store or service, you can promote your newsletter to your customers and prospects with a printed subscription form. If you have existing forms, simply add a field for their email address if they want to subscribe to your newsletter.

One of the bookstores that I frequent has a clipboard on the counter with a brief: "Sign up for email-only special discounts and sales" and a place to write in your email address.

If you don't want to bother with printed forms, you could simply put a note on your cards, letterhead and brochures, telling people that they can get email newsletters for free, together with instructions on how to subscribe.

If you don't have an offline store, you can still advertise your website locally. Printed flyers, classified ads, bumperstickers... use your imagination. Many areas have weekly publications like 'Nickel Ads' or 'Thrifty Ads' that don't charge too much for a short text ad.

Make comments and include your byline at the end.
"Comments" can be a short product review on a shopping website, a reply to an article that you read, forums & blogs, even local newspapers. Give suggestions, share your experience with a product, ask questions... all these are opportunities for you to add your ID and newsletter info in your signature.

Get Yourself Listed In newsletter Directories
There are lots of different newsletter directories. Many list new newsletters for free, the popular ones charge a small annual fee. Getting listed in these directories can help you attract more subscribers, and maybe advertisers too.

There are other directories, but these will get you started:
newsletteraccess.com - standard listing $2.95/year.
ezinehub.com - add your newsletter for free.
ezinelocater.com - free and paid service levels.
new-list.com - ad-supported newsletter announcement service.

Before I finish, a few important points about your newsletter and your content:

If you want people to read your newsletters, don't focus on technical website features that they don't care about. Provide info and updates that are useful and relevant to your target audience.

You should take some time over your content. Try to make each issue something that they are going to want to keep and refer to more than once.

There are many places where you can get free-to-reprint articles to add to your own content and increase the value of your offering... just google-search for 'free reprintable articles' and take your pick.

A section for "What's New" and one for "Favorites" are good places for links to new additions and older items that are still popular.

A nice way to work in a link to an older product or service is to offer a 'tip' for potential uses, write it as if your tip is intended for people who already own the product. That not only sparks interest, but makes you look like a helpful expert.

Remember the 80-20 rule: 80 percent content, 20 percent advertising.

For your own protection: always use double-opt-in list managers, and always give your subscribers an easy way to opt-out if they want to.

One more thing, if you are using a list manager like Yahoo Groups, Topica or Bravenet, I strongly suggest you get a better one soon. I use and recommend YMLP, but there are many others that don't force registrations, serve dozens of ads or otherwise annoy your subscribers.

To Your Success!
Tim

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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