11 Proven Ways to Increase Newsletter Subscribers

As an online business owner, building a loyal audience is crucial for success.

One effective way to stay connected with your audience and customers is through newsletters and email marketing.

However, getting people to sign up for your newsletter can be challenging.

In today's blog post, we'll share practical tips about how online business owners can increase newsletter signups.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to grow your existing subscriber base, these tips will help you attract more subscribers and build a thriving community around your business.

What is an email list?

Well, to start, your email list is one of the best ways to communicate directly to your audience of both customers and leads, providing one of the highest returns on investment of any online marketing activity. More specifically, an email list is a collection of email addresses and other contact information (such as name, location, interests, etc.) that a business or individual has obtained with permission from subscribers who have opted-in to receive updates, newsletters, or other marketing messages.

These lists are often used to send promotional or educational content to a targeted audience who has expressed an interest in the sender's products, services, or industry.

Email lists can be a valuable asset for businesses and marketers, as they allow for direct communication with a receptive audience and can be used to build relationships, increase brand awareness, and drive sales.

Keep reading below to learn how to increase newsletter subscribers and promote your online business.

11 Ways to Increase Newsletter Subscribers

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies to promote a business.

To get started with your email marketing strategy, you need to collect email addresses from potential customers and work on your list building.

This means attracting email sign-ups and email subscribers who will receive your newsletters and will potentially become your customers in the future!

So let's see how marketers, entrepreneurs and online course creators can increase their newsletter subscribers with these simple steps:

#1: Offer an Incentive

A very effective way to increase your email subscribers is to offer an incentive for them to sign up.

The key to a successful incentive is to make it valuable and relevant to your audience. By offering something that they find useful, interesting, or entertaining, you can increase the likelihood that they will sign up and remain subscribed to your newsletter.

Many e-commerce stores offer a discount for people who opt-in to their newsletter, and you can do the same for your business, whether you sell digital or physical products or services.

#2: Create a Lead Magnet

Another way to offer an incentive and return value when someone signs up to your newsletter is with a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is generally a digital product or download that is offered for free with the purpose of collecting email addresses to add to your email list.

This list-building strategy can be a win-win for both you and your contacts since you are proving value by offering free content.

Learn more about creating a lead magnet to grow your email list: How to Create a Great Lead Magnet That Converts to Promote Your Online Course

As with the incentive, a lead magnet should be in line with your business and related to the other products you are selling. Common lead magnets creators use to grow their email lists include digital products such as PDFs, eBooks, worksheets and so on.

#3: Make Your Signup Page SEO Optimized

To ensure a high number of newsletter subscribers, it is important that people can find your website and the sign-up form where they can leave their email addresses.

To do this, your website or signup page should be SEO optimized. This means that new website visitors can easily access your site from a Google search since your show up on the first results on Google for selected keywords.

There are many different ways to improve your website and make it SEO-friendly. We explain all about SEO in this blog post: All You Need to Know About SEO to Sell Online Courses

In a nutshell, you should write your website or page copy in a way that includes all the relative keywords that potential customers might search for on Google when they are looking to solve a problem (assuming your business is the solution).

For example, if you are an online course creator who teaches people how to create a meal plan - when someone types on Google "how to create a meal plan," - ideally, your website should show up in the top search results.

#4: Deliver Great Email Content

Another way to get more email subscribers into your list is to deliver great content in your emails and let them know what they'll get once they subscribe.

While the goal of your newsletter is to convert subscribers into paying customers, you should not forget to deliver them great content and add value to every single email you send - so people are happy to receive your emails.

Let potential email subscribers know what your newsletter is about, what they will get if they sign up and how it will benefit them.

#5: Run a Contest or Giveaway

A quick way to collect many email addresses is to run a giveaway. A giveaway (or contest or sweepstake) is a campaign where someone offers a prize or a reward to a random participant who follows some steps or guidelines.

A while back, we ran our own giveaway, which helped us grow our email list and introduce more people to Heights Platform. In this article, we described how the giveaway worked, so you can get inspired for your own contest: Heights Platform $6000 Giveaway: Win The Ultimate Online Course Creator Toolkit

To successfully collect email addresses in a giveaway, you should ask for email signups within your contest entry form.

It is important that the theme and prizes of the giveaway are related to your business. Otherwise, you run the risk of people signing up only to join the online contest and unsubscribing as soon as the contest is over.

#6: Create a Waitlist for a New Product

Another great way to grow your email list and attract leads is by setting up a waitlist for your next product launch. This can work whether you sell online courses, or digital products or you own an e-commerce store.

This is a great strategy as you will be able to capture the email of potential customers who have a high interest in your upcoming product and will very likely become paying customers once the product is made available.

Plus, it is very easy to set up. You don't have to build a lead magnet, and all you need to do is create a web page with a newsletter sign-up form.

This is also a great idea for your potential customers, as they will be notified about your next launch and might receive special offers from you. We recommend that all course creators start building some kind of email list before launching their first digital product.

#6: Add an Email Collection Pop-Up to Your Website

A pop-up form is a signup form that appears to visitors once they take a specific action.

You can set a pop-up form to appear once someone opens your website, after a fixed time or just before someone closes the landing page.

Common use case scenarios of pop-up forms include inviting potential customers to sign-up for your newsletter, offering a discount, a lead magnet and so on.

This list-building strategy can help you collect email addresses quickly and easily. However, make sure not to add too many pop-up forms on your site that could negatively impact the user experience and clutter your pages.

You can use a pop-up signup form to simply ask for emails, promote a lead magnet, or offer an incentive.

#7: Host a Webinar or Event

A webinar or live event is a great way to gather a large number of email subscribers eager to participate in the event, who will then receive your newsletter.

You can use your webinar signup form to collect email addresses before participants attend the event.

Hosting a webinar is a fantastic way to promote your business, offer value to your audience and get your name out there. It also shows potential customers that you are an expert in your field, which can be a game changer, especially for online course creators who make a living by selling their knowledge.

Remember that people who sign up for your newsletter from attending a webinar will expect to receive news about the event before any promotional emails.

#8: Build an Online Community

A free community is another great way to help you grow your email list. If you manage to build a thriving online community, new people will want to enter. A condition to enter a community should be to leave an email address.

If you use a community platform - like Heights Platform - new community members will be asked to create an account in order to join the community, so you can easily collect their email addresses and add them to your mailing list.

If you are an online course creator, integrating a community within your course can also offer learners the benefits of social learning, increased motivation, and a space to share ideas, ask questions, and provide feedback to their peers.

With Heights Platform's community feature, learners can easily access the community alongside their courses, while you, as the creator, can promote interaction, collaboration, and inclusivity to enhance the sense of community and connection among learners.

You can customize the community structure to suit your business needs by creating communication channels for different topics, grouping them into channel groups, and moderating posts within the community.

Get your customers involved in this collaborative experience and watch as they thrive in a supportive, engaging environment!

#9: Add Signup Forms to Your Website

The initial and crucial step in gathering email addresses from potential customers is to create a designated space on your website where visitors can input their email and contact information.

This area is known as a sign-up form and is an effective way to capture new email addresses and add them to your mailing list.

To implement a sign-up form on your website, you will require a website and email marketing software. There are various email software options available, such as ActiveCampaign and Convertkit., which offer features such as email campaigns, automation, and signup forms and pop-ups to add to your website and landing page.

In the case of using Heights Platform for your online course creation, you can easily incorporate your signup form into your course landing page to collect the contact information of potential customers.

#10: Add Email Signups to Your Social Media Accounts

One way to build a list of potential customers is through social media. By promoting a lead magnet, such as a newsletter, on your social media platforms, you can encourage your fans and followers to sign up.

You can also add a call to action on your profile (for example, on your Facebook page), inviting visitors to join your mailing list.

Additionally, paid ads on social media can help collect email addresses more quickly than growing your list organically. Although promoting high-ticket programs or courses through paid ads may not be ideal, using ads to promote a low-cost lead magnet can help cover the cost of advertising while growing your mailing list.

By focusing on collecting email addresses through ads, you can acquire them at a lower cost and add them to your email campaigns. This allows you to continue promoting your course without the need for ongoing advertising expenses.

#11: Promote Your Newsletter With Content Creation

Last but not least, if you want more people to sign up for your newsletter, you need to spread the word about it and promote it.

An effective way to advertise a newsletter is to mention it in every content piece you create. If you have a blog, talk about your newsletter and ask readers to sign up right inside your articles or by offering lead magnets. If you have a podcast, let your listeners know that you have a newsletter and instruct them on how to sign up.

Add a link to your newsletter under your YouTube videos and post about it on social media - and so on.

Learn more about other promotion ideas for an online business: A Complete Guide on How to Promote Your Online Course and Boost Sales

Conclusion

Building a strong list of newsletter subscribers is crucial for business owners and online course creators who want to build a loyal following of engaged customers.

By providing valuable content, offering incentives, optimizing your website and landing page, running a giveaway or live events, building a community and leveraging content creation and social media, you can increase your newsletter signups and grow your audience.

Creating and delivering valuable content is one of the most important things you can do to attract and retain email subscribers. Your email content should be engaging, informative, and relevant to your audience.

Offer a mix of original and exclusive content that helps your email subscribers stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in your industry. Use visuals, storytelling, and other creative elements to make your content more engaging and shareable.

Building an email list is only the starting point of email marketing. Keep learning with these articles from our blog:

• Guide to Email Marketing to Promote and Sell an Online Course
• 18 Email Marketing Best Practices For Online Course Creators
• 10 Tips to Write Powerful Subject Lines [With Examples] for Online Course Creators
• 7 Emails You Need to Send to Promote Your Online Course

In summary, building a strong list of newsletter subscribers takes time and effort, but the benefits are well worth it.

Start implementing these tips today and watch your newsletter list grow with new subscribers!

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