Emailing is the digital communication tool that delivers the best return on investment.
Do you know why? First, because if you have someone's email address, it's either because they gave it to you willingly (out of interest in your brand, or in exchange for downloading a white paper, for example), or because you obtained it through a panel of potential consumers. In any case, you never send an email at random to just anyone: a prior link, however small, was already established to obtain that email address, and the recipient is likely a prospect who may be interested.
Therefore, if your mailing list is well built, your emails will get many more opens and clicks than your tweets or Facebook posts. Indeed, the latter can benefit from social networks' viral nature, but like pollen, short social posts can also scatter in all directions, spreading widely without necessarily hitting their core target.
How can you be sure to succeed with your email marketing campaign? There are X tips to reach that goal, which this article details for you.
We share our advice to create or grow your newsletter subscriber list.
1. Simplify the newsletter signup process
Who wakes up in the morning thinking “today I'm going to subscribe to a newsletter”? Not you? Well, me neither.
No one plans to sign up for a mailing list. It's only when a reader is redirected to the signup form from one of your pieces of content or your site that they decide to subscribe.
To avoid discouraging them, the signup must be as simple as possible. A name and an email address are enough to register.
And what about double opt-in, you ask? It's simple: it's not mandatory and the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) doesn't even mention it. By asking the reader to go to their email inbox to confirm their subscription, you give them extra time to reconsider. That's respectable, but risky.
Moreover, as you know, the average attention span of an internet user rarely exceeds ten seconds, and it's even shorter when browsing on a smartphone. Therefore, everything should require as few clicks as possible, and you should avoid forcing the prospect to leave your site to check their inbox.
2. Offer an incentive
“You don't get anything for nothing,” does that ring a bell?
To encourage someone to join your list, you must attract them with something that interests them. That's the whole point of the lead magnet, the flagship of inbound marketing.
It can take the form of an exclusive video, a white paper, a consultation appointment, a comparison… The important thing is to offer the prospect highly valuable content that answers a question important enough for them to exchange their details for it.
Whatever the incentive, it must be attractive enough to motivate your reader to give you their email address.
3. Create a partnership system
Highly valued in a customer retention approach, partnership also helps increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter.
The idea is to ask your customers or your regular readers to become your ambassadors in exchange for a discount, a gift, a contest… By recommending your site, notably by sharing your content with their circle, they promote your work.
The advantage of partnership is reaching your clients' circle — people likely to have the same interests as them. They will therefore potentially need your services at some point.
It's a cost-effective system, because by "pampering" just one of your loyal customers you secure a kind of variable but reliable "advertising income," since prospects are generally sensitive to word of mouth, which still influences their choices and ultimately becomes the deciding factor between different purchase options.
This ties into the essential idea for building your marketing strategy: the act of buying is not merely a neutral response to a material need — it is also a way of positioning oneself socially, marking membership in one circle or another. Being in contact with these people through your marketing emails is an advantage.
4. Polish every piece of content
Every piece of content published on your site must be interesting to your target. A reader who likes one of your articles will probably read several that same day or follow you on social media. You shouldn't disappoint them by publishing lower-quality articles just because you feel you absolutely must write a blog post.
And yes, succeeding with your email marketing campaign also requires an indirect approach—namely by taking care with the quality of the content you make available to your visitor. This is the strength of content marketing, which invites you to offer high-value articles that reinforce your expert position and allow you, in an information-overloaded, highly competitive context, to stand out in the prospect's mind as a trustworthy brand.
The more interesting and consistently high-quality your articles, videos, or infographics are, the more likely you are to gain new subscribers. This will also limit the number of unsubscriptions from your newsletter.
This is the precise targeting strategy: by publishing in-depth articles on specific issues, you will lose part of the audience that arrives on your site, but a significant portion of readers who subscribe to your newsletter will be genuinely interested and therefore loyal.
5. Emphasize interactivity
The internet is now an ocean of data and information, where timely yet quickly outdated content (so-called "hot" content) and valuable but potentially dense information (so-called "cold" content, like academic articles on an unchanging fundamental question) intersect. In any case, the user can quickly feel lost and, above all, passive in front of this immensity. Under these conditions, why would they bother giving their email address? To counter this dizzying, impersonal effect, you should instead offer the prospect interactive content that allows them to engage emotionally. This can take the form of a contest, a quiz, a free valuation of their property… and during this playful interaction you ask the prospect for their email address so you can send them the result later.
6. Also focus on offline contact
It may seem surprising, but growing your subscriber list also works offline! Take advantage of your likability and your ease of contact to invite visitors to sign up for your newsletter at a trade show, commercial event, or point of sale. It's very easy to ignore an online offer, but much harder to say no in person, especially if the interaction went well, if the person answered your practical questions and demonstrated your expertise in your field. Moreover, when these prospects receive your newsletter they'll associate it with the memory of your conversation, creating an initial attachment and making them less likely to unsubscribe later.
7. Offer co-registration
To increase the number of subscribers to your newsletters, the ideal is to offer co-signup to newsletters on related topics. How do you build these co-signups? It's recommended to rely on a solid base of already published blog posts. Review your in-depth articles and determine which ones resonate most with each other. For that, consider their themes, the internal link network that connects them, and their visitation data. Then plan a targeted newsletter for readers of certain article(s), and another similar newsletter for readers of other article(s). This way, you have a good chance of killing two birds with one stone by signing your prospect up for two newsletters instead of one—newsletters specifically chosen for them and highly likely to maintain a relationship that could one day lead to a purchase.
8. Segment your mailing list
You have two target audiences and only one mailing list? You have a problem! The solution to avoid boring your subscribers with content that doesn't always interest them is to create multiple mailing lists.
Again, to keep their attention, your prospect must always feel that this newsletter is made for them, that it answers exactly the questions they have and lets them pleasantly deepen their knowledge in one of their interests. There's no room for them to feel like just an address added to a list to bulk up numbers: that would be fatal and would cause indifference and unsubscribes.
Yes, you'll need to create two newsletters, but with tools like Mailchimp or Sendinblue, it's fairly quick to do once the basic template is set up.
Our tip to grow your subscriber list
Do you need your email or newsletter copy written? Order your texts easily on Redacteur.com. You can also have content written to attract people to your site and invite them to sign up for your newsletter to discover what's next.
By the way, all the articles are compiled in our newsletter. The best of digital delivered straight to your phone at breakfast time—interested?
You see, content creation also lets you collect emails!
