So how does your blog gets visitors? Perhaps Search Engines and Social Media, and if you are lucky, your visitors remember your blog URL and visit directly. Asking your visitors to connect with your blog via their preferred Social Media channel such as Facebook and Twitter is another way to make them come back to your blog again and again.
Asking them to connect with your blog via an email newsletter is best of all, because, you are the one who is in control, there is no algorithm to screw your reach, emails are more personal, they are exclusive and above all, convert way better than any other other medium.
So, despite knowing you have all these perks of having newsletter subscribers, if you still don’t take steps to make people subscribe to it, you are losing on your business big time.
I am listing 5 of the best things you need to improve your conversions.
Put Subscription Box as CTA (Call to Action) to Your Posts
When a visitor lands on your blog, they want to read the content, as it’s the reason they clicked on the article link in the first place. They have two options to act after reading the post.
a) Close your blog and move on to the next thing. b) Act on your CTA, Subscription box in this case.
Tell them to subscribe to your emails newsletter, make it easy for them to subscribe. When they read your post and make it till the end, Chances are high, they liked what they read. Asking them to subscribe to your newsletter will increase the probability to getting them on your list.
Make the Subscription Box looks nice.
We all know the importance of design, a clean, high-quality design builds trust among the readers. Same goes for the Subscription box as well, The Subscription box you use on your blog, should blend with the design of your blog and should look a part of it and not as third party ad.
Some bloggers have reported that a different looking subscription box has worked well for them, but it was the opposite in my case, I have found positive results using a subscription box that blends with the design, on all of my blogs.
You don’t have to spend too much got getting a nice looking subscription box on your blog, I am using WP Subscribe Pro for showing Subscription boxes on my blogs, it’s quite simple and straightforward, you can also set up subscription pops on your blog. You can read my review here.
Use Subscription Popups to Increase the Subscription
Just as I told you above about the WP Subscribe Pro, our next pointer is to use the Subscription Popups to increase the subscription rates.
I have actually tried and reviewed most of them on my blog, I closely watched the kind of results I got after using them for a specific period of time and It was very promising, it proved that this method works pretty well.
Especially the exit indent popup, which is a feature in Ninja Popups and WP Subscribe Pro both. It is a feature that pops up your subscription box when the users is trying to leave your site, these plugins track the movement of the cursor and when it moves out of the browser, the popup appears.
If you have something to give to the user in return of their email, it is a good reminder to call upon a reader who is going to close your site anyway. Having known that the use of Subscription popups is quite controversial, I’ll leave it up to you whether you want to use it or not.
Offer them a Very Valuable Free Gift
This pointer is an extension to the last sentence of the last pointer. Offer them something in return of their email address. Simply asking them to “subscribe to get updates via your blog” isn’t the best way to ask for their email address. (Even though I am offering updates via email, I have a list for exclusive content, special deals as well)
Create a starters guide for your blog readers or simply pick the best post (or posts) and put them in a PDF file which can be downloaded and read offline. My wife created a starters guide for her recipe blog readers and gave it away to the firs time visitors via the Exit Intent feature and it resulted in a huge jump in conversions.
You can do the same for your blog, it works really well.
Give Your Subscribers a Special Treatment.
Don’t create a subscription list just to send them to your regular posts just like you do with Facebook and Twitter. Instead, Treat them well, name them something like Pro, Members, Stars etc, to give them a feeling of exclusivity, promise them to give them access to the exclusive content, deals, alerts, etc.
So much so that it becomes difficult for them to ignore. I experimented by giving them access to a members only area on one of my blogs. The members only area had very well thought and organized content for starters. You can do similar things for your list.
So, by following all these 5 points, you will get high-quality subscribers that will give confidence to your and make your business become more profitable. If you are still wondering how to get started with Email Newsletters, Here is a guide to set up email newsletter for your blog.
