Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on September 16, 2024.
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When it comes to building traffic for your blog, there is one source that is really hard to overlook- newsletters.
While you have to put in the work to get readers to become subscribers to see future content, once you have their opt-in consent, you will build a direct connection that few algorithms can impact.
This is why This Week in Blogging is primarily a newsletter, and why newsletter marketing is one of the most powerful sources of traffic today.
Naturally, with all the changes going on in search engines and social media, many bloggers are looking to supercharge their newsletters. For those looking to find new ways to build your list of subscribers, we have some ideas to find readers for your content- some free and some paid!
Opt-in Forms on Your Site
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To start this one, we would be remiss if we did not look at the basic opt-in form. These subscribe boxes, placed in-content, are one of the most used ways to get readers to provide their email address and join your newsletter.
But not all opt-in forms are created equally. There really are some inventive options that think outside of the box that help increase your opt-in rate considerably. Some options to consider include the following.
First, your newsletter company likely will have several forms you can embed on your site- ranging from static forms to pop-ups. In our experience, these tend to have the lowest opt-in rates, if only because our designs are often fairly easy to overlook when scrolling.
Pop-ups are a caveat to this, as they can be triggered upon a set of conditions happening like on-click, on-scroll percentage, or even with exit-intent to only pop-up when a user is likely to leave a page. Of course, pop-ups are also viewed as a bit more invasive, which is why alternatives like our next idea may be a better compromise.
Second, Mediavine's Grow plugin has novel lightboxes that can have eye-catching graphics pop to increase the opt-in rate as well (with the added bonus of opting into first-party data for ad targeting, for those on the network). The pop here is more of an embellishment to force the eyes to the subscribe form, which goes back upon continued scroll, and is generally thought to be just a little less invasive than the more conventional pop-up forms, above.
Compared to more static forms, our opt-in rates climbed considerably when switching our subscribe forms over to Grow.
Finally, a third opt-in form we love is the Save This tool available on Hubbub Pro+, visible at the start of this section. This one is essentially a conventional opt-in form that emails the user a link to the article for future reading, while also subscribing them to your newsletters in the process.
When placed at the top of our content after our disclaimers, our subscription rate surged about 300% compared to Grow. Not a bad uplift at all!
- When testing opt-in forms on your site, be sure to A/B test everything. Create unique forms and/or subscriber groups for each form placement, test changing locations (higher in content, lower in content, after content, etc.), alternate copy (more on that below), etc. Repeat with a new idea whenever you see positive gains.
- Likewise, you may settle on just one or two placements with the best ROI for subscribers. While all of the above are great options to consider, we also found that having every type of form on our site just looked way too busy- especially alongside display ads. Too much can be as bad as too little!
Be Clear in Your Offer
When it comes to the copy you include in your subscribe prompt, one thing that we have found helped increase our subscription rate is simply being exceptionally clear on what readers get when they subscribe.
Is the newsletter going out every Tuesday morning for free? Note it. Are emails customized or simply sending out the latest articles? Readers may want to know the difference! Are you offering an email series with [X] recommendations? Highlight it! Are you giving a discount code or other downloadable as a thank you? If you aren't promoting that, you may be missing out.
Readers are, rightfully so, getting more reluctant to hand over their email to a stranger online. Even with burner accounts and tracking tags to help minimize spam, an email address is a private and sometimes coveted item online. So, if you ask your readers to hand over their information to you, you want to make sure that you're giving them everything they need to know to justify that decision.
So for this one, we simply want to recommend that you take a look at your sign-up prompts and see if you can overhaul any of the copy around the form so your readers know exactly what they are getting into when signing up for your newsletter. In many cases, the form may not be the problem, it is your pitch to join!
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups are an excellent outlet for bloggers to run as they give your community a place to gather and share posts, be it images, links, or questions, within your niche. Our Pittsburgh Facebook group, for example, quickly exploded and now has well over 125,000 members (perks of being a recommended page in the algorithm, we will admit)! We even have a private Facebook group for bloggers for This Week in Blogging members, too.
So how does this help you grow your newsletter?
Well, Facebook groups let you ask members questions upon entry, and we simply make one of those questions something along the lines of “To join This Week in Blogging's newsletter, share your email address!”
As members join, a good percentage of users opt-in to newsletters (~20%), and our newsletter grow along with our groups. This, of course, is massively beneficial for our group that is recommended in the algorithm and gets 200+ members per day, but this setup can be used for groups of all sizes.
For those who are growing at a faster pace, you may want to consider automating moving emails from your membership questions to your newsletter service, and the Chrome plugin Group Leads has been a real timesaver for us here. Within just a few clicks, the program runs through our membership questions, admits users, and when an email is detected, automatically moves it over to our newsletter on Mailerlite. While this plugin can be exceptionally buggy and require frequent updates, it has been quite a timesaver for us!
So if you run a Facebook group that is actively growing, don't overlook the opportunity to try and convert members into newsletter subscribers upon entry!
Facebook Ads for Leads
Did you know that Facebook now has an advertising option for Leads that allows you to collect email addresses? This one has also been a game changer for growing our newsletters, especially those in tightly defined niches, as you can target ads to the right users and convert them into subscribers.
When running a targeted ad for my local blog, targeting those who live in the metro area for example, my cost-per-lead on Facebook ads optimized to under $0.50 per lead at the time of publishing. Not bad at all for costs for newsletter subscribers!
Considering my advertising cost-per-page-like is often quite similar to this (albeit, perhaps slightly lower), I find it money well spent to get the potential reader off the social network and onto my mailing list that I alone control.
That said, I will point out that your ability to optimize costs like this will vary considerably by your niche and how well you can dial in the targeting for your audience. In my opinion, advertising favors local blogs considerably compared to others thanks to geographic targeting, so your mileage may vary depending on your blog niche. Still, it can be quite effective and can be tested on a relatively small amount of money per day!
- If you are looking for more ways to build a brand on Facebook, click the previous link.
Referral Companies
Finally, for those who have a bit higher budgets, there are several referral companies out there that may be of interest to you for growing your newsletter.
Companies like SparkLoop offer a fascinating setup where a script can integrate within your newsletter sign-up forms as mentioned above (typically native ones, e.g. Mailerlite's, as opposed to those from 3rd parties like Grow). After a user subscribes, a popup shows other recommended newsletters from blogs you've selected.
When a user signs up for a newsletter from your recommendations, you get paid (typically $1-$2). When you market your own newsletter and someone signs up for your list on another site, you pay that blogger in return. (This is one reason why we still favor native subscribe forms at times, even if Grow often has a higher opt-in rate.)
While these can be exceptionally valuable as bloggers in similar niches can recommend others for money, the upfront cost is pretty serious- most services require initial account payments of over a thousand dollars.
Likewise, other companies have Refer a Friend style services for progressive rewards (Early Parrot, SparkLoop, etc). Think of referral tiers like refer 1 friend and get a digital high five, refer 5 friends get a sticker, refer 1,000 friends and get a laptop, and so on. These are also fascinating because you can provide brand-appropriate loyalty rewards for getting out word-of-mouth campaigns where your readers have an incentive to refer others.
But, much like the services above, the good ones here tend to cost several hundred dollars per month- so your ability to get your readers to refer friends can greatly influence the cost per subscriber and may price this one out for smaller sites.
Overall, the sky really is the limit in the number of ways that you can help grow your blog's newsletter. These are just a selection of ideas that we find to work well for our own sites, and are some angles you may not have considered. But, as with all things, be sure to A/B test everything as what may work for us may not work for you, and what works for your niche may not work for ours. As always, the only way you can know is by testing and logging the data!
Do you have a favorite way to grow your newsletter? Comment below to share!
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