5 Proven Ways to Attract Subscribers to Your Email Newsletter

Do you have a website that needs a steady traffic stream each week?

Of course … we all do.

But the question is always, “How?”

Today, we are going to be looking at your website, not only as your?digital hub ?where you publish your content but also as one of the best and easiest places for you to start generating a passive income to support your family.

Have you ever stopped to think about all the work that goes into bringing ONE reader or listener onto your website??What do you do with that reader/listener once they are there? Do you provide them valuable content or do you sit back and watch them bounce from your website as soon as they get what they needed.

This is the very reason why you need a newsletter and you need to be thinking about a few ways to not only attract readers to your website but ways you can turn them into repeat visitors.?Just think about all of the websites you visit each day.?How many of them are trying to get your attention by offering you freebies??They are looking to gain your trust and ultimately gain access to your email so they can promote their content to you.?There is nothing wrong with this and if they are doing it… then YOU should be doing it too.

But how do you grow your email subscribers? How do you build a newsletter list? Most important … what do you do once you have a list of names and emails.

In this post, we are going to focus on the first of these questions and try to help you come up with ways to grow your email newsletter step by step.?If any of these tips & tricks resonate with you, please leave a comment below or send us a note on?Twitter ?with your comments!?We would love to hear from you.?If this topic interests you and you would like to learn more, please take a moment and sign up for our FREE Online Course in the form below.

5 Tips And Tricks To Help You Build Your Email Newsletter Subscribers

Provide An Incentive FIRST … Then Talk About The Newsletter

If you have seen it once you have seen it a million times.?You visit a website and the first thing you see is a big Call to Action box asking you to become a member of their tribe.?These types of CTA's also often come with some type of free giveaway in the form of a PDF, a video, or a training program.??If you have spent any time on?TeacherCast , you have probably seen my Call to Action on either my sidebar or on the bottom right asking you to sign up for our newsletter.

If you are looking to increase your newsletter subscribers, one of the best things you can do is to create an incentive that directly speaks to the needs of your?Avatar .??As we discussed in our previous blog post on how your?Avatar should help you create your Content Strategy , you should always have an idea of what your reader is seeking when they reach your website.?Your incentive is simply a way to entice them to become a member of your community.

The better the intentive meets the needs of your readers, the more readers will ultimately sign up for your newsletter.

Create Multiple Incentives

If your website has multiple contact points with a variety of topics, you might consider creating multiple newsletter incentives.?This is something that I started doing this year and it has led to a nice increase in subscribers.

For example: If you are a Tech Coach, when you visit any of my Coaching pages, you are offered a free download of my?40 Chrome Extensions for Tech Coaches PDF .?If you are on a different page, you are offered another type of Edtech download.?This is set up so not only am I offering focused giveaways for each type of category but also so that a podcaster isn't offered a Tech Coaching book by mistake.

Focus On What Your Avatar Needs

One of the first things you should do once you begin to get newsletter subscribers is to offer them a short survey so you can get an idea of what they are looking for.?I have created a few surveys that go out to my newsletter lists based on which landing page they have signed up on.?I use the responses from this to help me determine not only my content strategy but how I will be marketing my content to them in the future.

If you keep in mind that it's your viewers that control the success of your website and not just the content, you will be able to use a few friendly emails to get a feel of who is visiting your content each day.

One of my favorite things to do is to remail a few new members and ask them what they are looking for.?If I have the content created, I will send them a personal email with some links.?If I don't have the content (and it's easy to quickly create) then I write a few blog posts and send it to them.

Rotate Your Giveaways Throughout The Year

How many times have you gone to a website and you see the same giveaway in December that you saw in July??It's easy to create a special incentive and use it to increase your newsletter membership, but it's another thing to create a new one each month.?One of my favorite blogs to follow is from Michael Hyatt.?I completely understand that Michael employs a pretty awesome team of writers and content creators to keep his online persona as professional as possible. That being said, just about every month they have some type of new giveaway to both attract new visitors and reattract current subscribers.

I have tried this over the last year with some pretty nice success.?If you check out my?FREE STUFF ?page, you will find a variety of freebies that I hope you have the opportunity to download and enjoy.

Keep It Simple

Lastly, the best advice I have for you when thinking about building your email newsletter is to keep things simple.?This includes both your opt-ins, your forms, and your method for attracting new subscribers.

Here are three things to think about:

• You don't need to ask for the moon when it comes to your signup form.?First name and email are really all you need. You don't need their last name.?It often turns people away when you ask for too much.
• The best place for your opt-in form is on the very top of your sidebar.?If it's any lower, people might not see it.
• Try to come up with a design that involves a contrary color to everything else on the page. This helps attract your user's eye to it right away.

In Conclusion

For many content creators, the value of email newsletters is often overlooked. For others, it's a complicated monster that many don't understand.?If you have any questions about creating, maintaining, or growing an email newsletter please feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to work with you to help you grow your network.

A healthy email newsletter list is one of the best ways to grow your readership into loyal listeners that might one day become paying customers of your goods, services, or products. As they say … the money is in the newsletter.

If you are looking to learn more about email newsletters, please consider signing up for my FREE “Build Your EU Brand” online course below.

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