Emails are the lifeblood of a business. The first thing I do every day after sitting on my desk is checking my emails. Emails let you reach thousands of users. But for that, you need to have 1000 subscribers in your email list.
Reports say there are over 3.9 Billion email users globally. This means every second user in the world uses emails. Exposing your business to all those users will get you great traffic, increase conversions, and revenue. All you need for this is a big email list of active users.
But do you know what’s the toughest challenge in building your email list? It’s getting your first 1000 email newsletter subscribers.
It takes time, patience, and infallible tactics to get your first 1000 subscribers. If you don’t follow the right methods, you’ll get 1000 subs but after an eternity.
So if you’re looking to grow your email list, the tips written below will help you get your first 1000 email subscribers in a jiffy. If you don’t have enough time to read the text, you can also watch the video.
9 Tips To Grow Your Email Subscribers Fast
There are many methods you can use to grow your email list. But the tips I’ve listed here are the most effective ones when it comes to collect email subscribers. So let’s begin with the first one:
1. Identify your target audience and their problems
Readers will only subscribe if they think you solve their problems. And you can do that only if you know what it is. So stop shooting in the dark and start identifying the problems your target audience face. Once you start addressing their problems, they’ll connect with your content and subscribe for more.
What you can do is, create a buyer persona to get a fictional representation of your audience. That’ll help you understand what your target audience is and what issues they face. Once you know their issue, you just need to create content that solves it.
For example, if your target audience is dog owners, you can create freebies that lists the best dog food available in the market. Or a checklist or a guide on how to take care of your dog.
Resources could be anything, but make sure your audience can connect with it at a personal level. Otherwise, they’ll ignore it just like a poor salesman.
2. Reward users for subscribing
Emails are confidential for users. They won’t provide it to you just like that. So to grab their emails, you can reward them in return for the email subscription. And nothing would be better than a freebie we talked about in the above point.
Once you create your freebies, you can offer them as a reward.
Here’s an amazing example of this. I found on Optinmonster when I was researching on email marketing automation guide
They aren’t asking you for your email address to send you more emails. They’re offering you a guide that addresses one of the biggest problems of online store owners, that is cart abandonment.
If anybody is facing this issue or wanna know how to recover abandoned carts, he/she’ll not think once before entering their email. Trust me, it’s the best way to grow your email list.
3. Add freebies in your popular posts
Find out what blogs have got the most traffic in the last few months and add your best free resources in those blogs. This will expose your downloadable to more website visitors and make them subscribe for it.
Source: Growcode
Just make sure that the freebies you’re adding in your blog resonate with it. If you’re writing a blog post on email deliverability, don’t add a freebie about marketing automation, even if it is your most downloaded one.
A pro tip: If you’re adding a freebie in between your blog post, always check their scroll report. The scroll report will tell you the percentage of customers scrolling ahead and driving away after seeing your freebie in the blog. You can use tools like Hotjar, Clicktale, Crazyegg, etc to check the scroll report.
4. Create a lead page
Using lead pages is one of the best way to grow email list. They’ve less distraction. It’s easier to make visitors sign up using a lead page instead of a blog post.
Create a lead page with a precise message on why should they provide their email. Here’s a brilliant example of HubSpot’s lead page
The page has no header and other distractions but a CTA. This leaves website visitors with no option but to click on it. Once they click the CTA, a simple form will appear where they can fill their name and email.
5. Use Facebook Ads
Facebook ads work really well in growing your email list. You just need to run a lead generation campaign on facebook. Select your target audience, and offer your freebies to that audience.
Make sure your audience connects with your freebies. If they do, they’ll fill your lead form to download your resources.
Many of you must be thinking using Facebook ads to grow email lists will agitate your pocket. But trust me, if you do it successfully, the results will be astonishing.
And yeah, generating leads with Facebook ads doesn’t cost you a fortune. Carrie Green says in her video(I’ve embedded above), you can even convert users into leads in as little as 39 cents.
6. Use Popups and CTAs
Popups can be annoying. But only if you use it in that way. If you design and display your popups strategically, it can make a tremendous impact on your email list. Look at Socialmediaexaminer how they’re using this popup on their website.
I do not find this popup annoying from any angle. Try to create popups that do not bother users. Instead, they should contain a clear message, a simple form, and an aesthetic CTA.
Just like popups, you can use call to actions on your pages. Using a clear call to action will prompt the user to make an action on your site.
Using popups and CTAs to get emails is one of the most underrated tip to collect email subscribers. But if you use it tactically, your email list will boom.
A pro tip: Make sure that your popup doesn’t appear frequently on the window. Displaying pop ups will not prompt users to sign in but it can surely drive them away.
7. Connect with your LinkedIn connections
Almost 46% of social media traffic of B2B sites come from LinkedIn.
Linkedin possesses a superpower, i.e, it builds genuine connections. Unlike other platforms, linkedin helps you connect with people you can work with to grow your business, career, etc.
Make connections on LinkedIn and share your articles and freebies with them. If they find it helpful, they’ll surely download it and you’ll get more emails.
Not only this, they can also share it from their handles if they like it. This’ll help you reach their audience as well. And the more audience you reach, the more subscribers you get.
A pro tip: Try to make connections with the people who belong to your field. For instance, if you’re a PPC marketer, try to connect with other PPC marketers. If you do this, you’ll increase the chances of getting more collaboration requests. I’m saying this because I’ve experienced this personally.
8. Approach others for guest posts
Guest posts however are an indirect but effective way to grow your list of emails. All you need to do is pitch your content to other sites and if they publish it, you’ll get more visibility which results in traffic and eventually, more subscribers. This process contains some more steps so let me explain those in brief.
First, you need to find websites that have the same niche as yours. For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency, you can simply search on Google, “Top digital marketing agencies”.
Once you get the results, find out which of them accept guest postings. Commonly if a website allows guest posting, it adds a link to their guest posting guidelines in their footer.
Apart from this, here’s a personal trick I use to find out whether a website accepts guest posts. Whenever I read a blog, I check the author bio. If the author bio says the writer owns or works for any other brand, this indicates that s/he is a contributing writer. Here’s an example
Make a list of at least 10 websites that accept guest posts. Once you prepare your list, pitch your guest post ideas to them.
If the website has a guest post guidelines page, you can simply visit it to check the rules and contact info. These pages often have a contact email & form where you can submit your information as well as blog ideas.
But if there’s no email, form or page at all, you’ll need to reach them personally through email. The best thing you can do is to contact their editors. You can find their emails by using tools like Hunter, Voila Norbert, etc.
After getting their emails, you can mail them to pitch your guest post ideas. You can use this email template I found on Mailshake:
| Hello {Name}, Greetings of the day! I’ve been following your {Blog Name} for some time – I enjoy reading your blog posts; especially content on {your niche} topics. I’ve been working on an idea for a blog article about {Blog Post Title}. I think that it could be a great contribution to your blog and will provide a lot of value to your readers. Here is the summary of the post I am working on: {Bulleted List or Paragraph Summary of Your Post} Here are some of my previously published articles on other publications:
How does that sound to you? I hope you like my idea and give me a chance to express my love for creative content. Looking forward to your favourable response! Regards, {your email signature} |
Note: Don’t expect replies for each mail. If you’re directly contacting an author, most of the time you won’t get replies. But yeah if you’re contacting a website through their email they provided in their guest post guidelines page, you’ll definitely get a reply.
9. Automate your marketing
Over 3 Billion people use social media. That’s almost half of the global population. There are various social media platforms these days you can use to grow your list of emails.
What you need to do is, promote your content, freebies, lead magnets, etc on social media. But let me tell you one thing, social media promotion is a waste of time!
Yes you read that right. Promotion on social media eats tons of hours, but only if you do it manually. If you automate your social media promotions and posts, your email list will also grow automatically.
You can use some social media automation tools and promote your lead pages, freebies, and blog posts, etc. These tools will help you pre-schedule your content and post it automatically on a set time. This’ll increase your presence while saving your time.
Also use email automation tools to automate your email campaigns. Employing email automation will save your time you waste on sending emails manually.
Things to avoid while growing email list
So I’ve told you the tips you should follow to get your first 1000 email subscribers. But there are a few things which make this process even faster. But as usual, they’re unethical and can lead you to penalties.
So here are a few mistakes you must avoid while building your email list:
- Buying an email list: Buying an email list will get you 1000 subscribers in an hour. But I don’t know how many of them will be active. Moreover, you’ll also be violating rules if you send emails to the users without their consent. Sometimes these violations can cause your dollars.
- Forgetting your subscribers: Forgetting your subscribers is the last thing you should do. You should send emails to your subscribers at regular intervals. This’ll engage them and prompt them to open your mails whenever they receive it.
- Focusing on numbers: A big email list is worthless if the subscribers are inactive. So instead of focusing on getting more subscribers at any cost, focusing on less but genuine ones will get you better results.
- Using spam keywords: Using spammy keywords in your subject line or email body will not only present you as a spammer but also hurt your email deliverability. If your email deliverability is hurt, your chances of getting your emails into users’ inbox will decrease. Here’s a list of email spam keywords you should avoid using.
Conclusion
I don’t want to give you false hopes. I won’t say following the above tips will get you 1000 subscribers in 7 days. But yeah, using these tips in your early business days will really give you a head start.
So if you’ve missed some points or reading the conclusion directly, let me summarize the things quickly.
To grow your email list, create problem solving content. Add those content pieces to your blog posts, or you can also create dedicated landing pages for it. Automate your social media posts and email campaigns to promote your content pieces while saving time.
Try to avoid things like purchasing email lists, not nurturing your subscribers, using spam keywords, etc.
Do you have any tip that I forgot to mention here? You can write it in the comments below.