The Ultimate Guide To Building Your Mailing List From Your Blog

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The Ultimate Guide to Building your Mailing List from Your Blog

I often see popular blogs online that are capturing a LOT of traffic from their content marketing but seem to have a difficulty converting much more than 1 – 2% of that traffic into subscribers for their mailing list. In this post, I’m going to show you how you can double, if not triple the amount of subscribers you’re getting to your blog by following a few simple instructions.

What are your Findings Based on?

The findings that I present to you in this blog post are based on 6 case studies that I’ve been running recently on my partner’s blogs. I approached a number of high profile blog owners and offered to use the software that I co-created (Hybrid Connect) on their own sites to increase their signup conversion rate.

On each of the sites, I have been running split tests and trying out new ways of increasing the signup rates. And, as a result of my efforts, I’ve found some commonalities that seem to produce excellent results across the board. That’s what I’m going to share with you right now.

Step 1. The sidebar optin box

The first place to capture names and email addresses is in the sidebar of your content. Offer something valuable and use a benefit oriented opt in box to entice readers to sign up for your list.

Often an ethical bribe such as a free gift can increase conversions – caveat: the gift must be a hot button for your audience. Giving away something for the sake of giving it away is not a good approach.

I suggest this: Take your ideal customer for your product/service and take some time to understand the number one problem that they’re experiencing. Your goal is to offer a small and instant solution to this problem.

Beginner’s mistake: when it comes to free giveaways, more is not better. In many cases more is worse. We tested an opt-in form that used a large book as a graphic and a small report as a graphic. The small report variation converted nearly twice as many prospects.

If you’re creating an ethical bribe about traffic, then don’t give away a 120 page book with everything there is to know on traffic. You don’t want to spend two months creating it and your subscribers will likely not perceive a “free” report as being high value enough to read through such content.

Instead cover one traffic strategy. Or compile a list of traffic strategies that span no longer than a few pages. You must wow your audience, but you haven’t earned their attention yet, so you don’t have long to do it. Think “short and instant”.

On the right hand side, you can see an example of an optin box that we use on our blog.

Let’s talk numbers. Statistically, this will convert between 0.5% and 1.5% of your traffic into subscribers which on its own is not a substantial amount. Here are the stats from the sidebar you see above:-

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The common misconception in the blogging world is that a sidebar opt-in form is optimal for conversions. It isn’t, as you’re about to find out…

Step 2. Post Footer Opt-in Forms

At the end of each post before your comments section, I recommend having another opt in box. When a viewer gets to this part of your content, they are engaged. This is the perfect time to ask your readers for an optin.

You have a choice – we’ve had good results asking people simply for updates:-

Or, of course, you can offer the same freebie the same as in the widget:-

Both tend to produce pretty good results. You can expect to convert a slightly better rate of subscribers through the post footer as in the sidebar. We’ve experienced anything from 1% to 2.5% and here are the exact figures from one of our case study sites:-

Step 3 – Slide in Bars

Slide in bars are one of the least intrusive forms of interruption advertising. Unlike a lightbox where the user has no choice but to interact because they take up the whole screen – the slide in box will happily sit there on the edge of the screen unobtrusively allowing your visitor to carry on reading the article.

The great thing about the slide in bar is that you can use a variety of triggers. My personal favourite trigger is the scroll – we commonly set the slide in bars to appear when the reader scrolls 50% down the page. Your other trigger options are time and, of course, a click on a banner.

To get good results with any kind of interruption advertising you need to a catchy headline. A simple “Sign up for more updates” headline will not cut the mustard – you need to think benefits and make an irresistible offer. Remember, you are effectively trying to distract the reader from whatever he/she is currently doing on your site in order to make the conversion.

Here is one of the best slide ins that we have run on our online entrepreneurship blog:-

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This was the highest performing slide in bar and is currently converting at 2.56% which is huge – especially given that it is competing against a sidebar and post footer optin box, too.

Step 4. Squeeze Page

A squeeze page gives the visitor two options: sign up to the mailing list or leave. They are popular for lead generation because a well constructed squeeze page will achieve a conversion rate higher than any other form of lead capture mechanism.

You might be asking why is it important to have a blog in the first place if the squeeze page is so much better at capturing leads. The answer is that squeeze pages on their own severely limit your traffic options. It’s close to impossible to rank a squeeze page in the search engines and, in fact, most search engines won’t allow you to use a squeeze page as a landing page for paid traffic.

Blogs allow you to use content marketing strategies to generate traffic. You can then direct qualified traffic to your squeeze page to capture leads.

One of my favorite strategies for combining your blog with your squeeze page for the best results is to use a slide in bar at the top of the page that advertises an extreme benefit in just a few words with a call to action. Here’s an example of one that we’re running on our site at the moment:-

This bar slides in at the top of the screen. When the user clicks on the button, they are taken straight to a squeeze page like this:-

As I mentioned before, the great thing about a squeeze page is that it has such impressive conversion rates. Here are the stats for our squeeze page pictured above:-

On your main blog, you can also include banner advertising graphics that lead people to your squeeze page. You can see this in action on a number of sites including http://www.quicksprout.com and http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com.

Notice how both creatives have a clear call to action in the form of a button to increase click through rate.

This form of lead generation is quite clever; the idea is not to present the reader with the barrier to entry (entering their name and email address) until they’ve made a small commitment by clicking the banner to express their interest. This will likely increase conversion rates due to a facet of human psychology called “commitment bias”.

Of course, squeeze pages are also very effective when attempting to capture warm traffic. A prime example is guest posting and linking back to your squeeze page in the resource box. This is commitment bias in play again – the visitor has read your post on another blog, witnessed firsthand the value you have to offer and decided to click your link in the resource box. A squeeze page is the best form of capturing that traffic into being a subscriber of yours.

Asking for Just the Email Address or Both the Email Address and Name

There have been a number of discussions about the possibility of increasing opt in conversions by asking the user to input only their email address and not asking for their name. While that may be true (we don’t have any concrete data on this yet) you have to ask yourself a couple of questions:-

Are the people who can’t be bothered to enter their name the type of people who are likely to buy your products and share your content?
Are you willing to sacrifice the ability to use personalisation in your emails to help improve engagement?

We have the added concern that we can’t sign people up to webinars at a click of a button without their names.

There is no right or wrong answer – but I urge you to decide who your ideal customer is and choose accordingly.

Takeaway Points – How to Maximise Subscriptions from your Blog in 4 Steps:

If you want to turn your blog into a list building machine then I recommend you do the following:-

Create a free giveaway that gives a quick and easy solution to a pain that your target market has. Think small and powerful, rather than huge and comprehensive.
Add an optin box in the sidebar, footer, as a slide in and as a squeeze page.
Use powerful benefit driven copy allied with a strong call to action in all your optin boxes.
Iteratively test to improve conversions over time.

Paul McCarthy is a software developer and marketer pursuing his passion for online ventures and travel. Paul is the product development manager for imimpact.com, where he also shares his insights in posts, podcasts and videos. Check out this interview where Paul uncovers the details of a successful 6-figure product launch done by a beginner.

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