Various Methods of Growing Your Subscribers List

We have already talked about the value of email marketing and the importance of attracting new audiences through this channel of communication with your readers. But before you begin your march to success, you should take the first positive step. This step is the creation and gradual expansion of the base of subscribers for your newsletter.

There are many ways to collect and increase the list of subscribers. We will consider the black methods that can lead to spam filters sanctions. Such an approach is short-sighted and dangerous. Instead, we have collected the top 5 effective and relatively simple ways to build and expand your list of subscribers.

After reading these tips, you will be able to choose the optimal strategy depending on all the features of your project on the WordPress platform. However, we recommend using a combination of all these strategies, considering reasonable limitations. In this case, restrictions will be directed to ensure that newsletter does not bother the audience too much.

Collect Feedback

Testimonials help to develop any project. On the one hand, they serve as a guide to select the most appropriate content creation strategy. After all, your users can directly tell you what they expect from your blog or website unless you give them that opportunity. And even simple estimates can give you some understanding of what content readers like, and what they care about.

On the other hand, the mere presence of feedback motivates you to develop your project. All in all, if someone pays attention to your project and spends time on some assessment, then your work is not in vain.

In addition, reviews can be a great excuse to collect the list of subscribers. Special plugins were created for the collection of emails in the evaluation process and writing reviews. Thus, you do not need to puzzle over coming up with ways to combine these features – creators of plugins for WordPress have taken care of it.

An example of such plugin can be Excited! Testimonials Showcase for WordPress. This plugin does not only offer opportunities for customization blocks with reviews and ratings for all projects on WordPress, but also built-in function of collecting emails from interested users. The plugin is fully integrated with MailChimp service to automatically replenish your list of subscribers.

Popup Plugins

Various popup plugins will help you not only to acquire new subscribers, but also to motivate old visitors to leave your email. Thus you are pursuing two goals. First of all, you stop leaving part of readers. After all, most of the visitors are unlikely to visit your site again without being asked. It is a reminder you can guarantee them if they leave you an email. The second goal is to convert permanent passive readers to active audience. With newsletters you can stir the most inactive readers of your website or blog.

Popup plugins presented in a huge variety for website owners in WordPress. You can select the plugin with a minimum set of features and the most friendly interface for the novice. If you are an experienced administrator of a site on WordPress, then you will find plugins for developers with great experience and web programming skills.

We advice you to read our previous review about Best eMail Newsletters Plugins for WordPress. In this article you will find a detailed description and comparison of different popup plugin and you can choose the best option for your site or blog.

Contact Form

Contact forms are an alternative to popups in collecting a list of subscribers. The contact form has less active and aggressive impact on the audience of your website in order to get their emails. If popup can prevent reading of the content or annoy users with its unexpected appearance, then contact form is constantly present on the page, but does not interfere with the reader navigation through the site.

This contact form can also be changed to suit your site. It can be painted in different colors, use different images and be placed in different locations of the page. Also with the help of modern plugins for WordPress it is easy to make a contact form, which will follow the user scrolling the page.

One example of a good plugin to generate contact forms is Ninja Kick: WordPress Contact Form. This plugin is fully compatible not only with MailChimp, but also with the majority of mailing services, which you can use in your work.

Subscription Forms by MailChimp

A simple form of subscription to update your site can be created with the help of basic MailChimp service functionality. You just need to create at least one list of subscribers, which can have a zero amount of email addresses. After that, you will see the function of creating a simple contact form, which you can easily place on your website. More information can be found in one of our previous posts on the subject of working with Mailchimp.

This form of subscription is unlikely to bring you the rapid growth of the mailing list. The advantages of such an approach is the speed of installation form on the site and there is no need to have any additional knowledge in the field of web design or programming.

Social Networks

Social networking can be a powerful source to replenish your list of subscribers. But you need to interest the audience in social networks, get high prestige and then take advantage of your status to collect emails. In our special post you can see the details of creating a succesful social media marketing strategy.

You can also use social networks in conjunction with the popup. To do this, you will need to create a custom button in popup with login via social networks. Such feature is provided by the most of modern popup plugins.

Sucker Punches

You should also bear in mind that there are methods of creating and expanding the list of subscribers, which may lead to ban of your account in MailChimp or loss of the majority of subscribers due to the exposure to the spam filter. We will list the most common violations, which you should avoid:

• Buying a list of subscribers. This option will inevitably lead to falling into the spam filters. Subscribers who have never visited your site and did not give their consent to receive newsletters, with high probability will send your emails in spam. Imagine yourself in the place of mailing recipients. How often do you read the letters from unknown addressees with questionable content?
• Newsletter subscribers of the old list. If a person had subscribed to your newsletter a few months ago, it is likely that he forgot about it. Thus, your emails will be regarded as a spam again. Do not let your subscribers forget about you and submit the first letter no later than a few days after subscription.
• Lack of segmentation. Not all subscribers want to receive any information from you. Therefore, segmentation of the list depending on interests of your subscribers is a very important step towards a successful campaign in email marketing.
• Sending a newsletter instead of transactional emails. Transactional emails are sent to those who issued the order, or contact the site administration through the feedback form. Typically, such letters are automatic and contain some information about the order or a link to confirm the action on the site. If a visitor of your site received transactional letter, it does not mean that he is willing and ready to receive the newsletter. The key point is that he left his email for a particular purpose, and did not give consent to receive any additional mailings.

Final Words

Creating a list of subscribers is an evolutionary process, but not revolutionary. This process should be accompanied by the development of your website or blog, and have the appropriate pace. If one of these two processes will overtake the other, the result will be much lower than expected.

Listen to the important advice: think of your subscribers as good friends and not as your business clients. In this case, you will be able to develop the most friendly email marketing strategy and people will be really pleased to receive your newsletter.

Use all of the above tips and you will surely be able to build your own list of subscribers!