Intro

Building and growing your mailing list is a crucial part of running an online business. A larger list translates into more revenue. In order to grow your list, you need to implement some simple techniques to encourage more of your audience to sign up for your newsletter.

Make it easy to sign up on your website

People have short attention span so if you require them to click through many pages just to sign up or if you require a ton of personal information, chances are nobody will be willing to sign up for your email newsletter.

Best if you just require them to just key in their email address. You can place a simple sign up form in the header or footer of your website. Another option is using popups or overlays to prompt your visitors to sign up.

Exclusive contents and offers for subscribers

Make it clear to potential subscribers that there are benefits to signing up for your newsletter. Give subscriber-only premium contents or give them discount vouchers to make purchases on your website.

This is one of the best incentive for an online merchant to give to their email subscribers. The very thought of free or discounted stuff is usually enough to make the recipient open and read the email.

Have a newsletter sign up checkbox in your checkout page

Nowadays, it is very common to see an online checkout page which has a checkbox that is checked by default and saying “I would like to receive email newsletter” or “Sign me up for the newsletter”. This is by far the easiest technique to implement and doesn’t require any action on the part of the purchaser.

Encourage your subscriber to forward your email newsletter

Add a subscribe link to your email signature in the newsletter so that if your subscriber forwards the email to another person, that person has the option to sign up too. It is also good to encourage your subscriber to forward interesting promotions or articles to their friends.

Remind users that they can unsubscribe at any time

Assure potential subscribers that they can unsubscribe at any time as most people are wary of simply signing up for stuff that ends up spamming them non-stop. Be ethical and respect any unsubscribe request. This way you’ll not be labelled a spammer and your subscribers would be more likely to recommend you to their friends.