22 Ways to Grow Your Subscriber List
By Catherine Franz
1. Don't bury your subscriber
form, place it on your home page and or every page and make it
VERY easy to find.
2. Add a one-liner to the
byline section of your online published articles. For example:
"You can subscribe to [name]'s free e-newsletter by visiting
[URL]."
3. Give people an additional
incentive to subscribe. Give them a free ebook or ecourse that
has valuable content on a topic that will attract the exact
type of ideal clients/customers for you.
4. During network events, ask
them if you can sign them up for your newsletter. Then you
manually add them when you return from the function with a
double opt-in feature. Explain the opt-in feature to them when
you ask them to subscribe. This gives them a way out if they
were just being polite. Keep asking and don't stop. Practice a
simple two or three liners to explain the frequency and
purpose of your e-newsletter.
5. Contact any trade
organization or associations you belong to or membership has
your target market. Ask for their member list. Member's
usually get this free, they may charge you if you aren't.
6. After you have the
organization's or association's member list, send a direct
mail letter, and offer a free subscription and another other
free offers you have that help them get aquatinted with you,
the type of services you provide, and the benefits of working
with someone such as yourself. You can educate them through
free ecourses that were created from your e-newsletter
articles.
7. Recommend your client's
company's newsletter in your e- newsletter. Ask them for a
reciprocal recommendation. Both of you win with new
subscribers.
8. Write reviews or provide
feedback to other newsletters (electronic or printed) you read
and enjoy. Many times your comments will get posted in a
future issue, along with a link to your site.
9. One of the top ways
to attract people is by giving them various ways to interact
with you at your web site. Use questionnaires, contests,
giveaways, games, or ask for post survey questions and post
the statistical responses. Send out a special e-mail
announcement when the results of the questionnaire, survey,
contest is posted on your web site. The Sales Lead Report,
http://www.imninc.com/macmcintosh/,
adds a survey with each issue, then uses the information in
his PR campaign with phenomenal success.
10. Offer a different writing
style. One that is warm, comforting, as if you are talking to
a friend on the phone. Write conversationally with a personal
tone. Add I's, me and you.
11. Always encourage your
readers to forward a copy of your e-newsletter to friends,
colleagues, and co-workers. You can even write a "forwarding
e-mail paragraph" at the beginning so it is even easier for
them to forward.
12. If you do speaking
engagements or sales presentations, use one of the first few
slides or last slide to invite them to subscribe to your
e-newsletter. Don't turn off the screen so it is displayed
after you are finish speaking if possible.
13. At speaking engagements,
pass around a clip board with a manual way they can register
for your e-newsletter. Start passing the board around before
you begin speaking. Place a small different piece of paper
with a short letter from you to them explaining the topics,
frequency, and objectives of the e-newsletter as well as the
opt-in option.
14. Send out a press release
to the organizations you belong regularly about what's been
going on in your e-newsletter. I began mine by sending out a
short press release whenever an article was published. When I
began getting published 10 and 20 times a month that no longer
seemed practical. Thus, I moved over to one a month with a
list of where the articles were published. Add a press release
section to your web site and post them there as well -- at
least the last six releases.
15. Find sites that give out
awards for e-newsletters and keep applying until you receive
one. When you do, send out a special announcement to your list
as well as posting it in a few issues of the e-newsletter and
rewrite your bio paragraph at the end of your articles.
16. Don't add people on your
list without asking for permission first. Always offer an
opt-in/out options. Give them a personal greeting if you are
responding to a particular networking even group or other
particular group. Some web hosts only need one s*p*a*m
complaint before they shut your e-newsletter down. And it
isn't worth the problems caused by not respecting this.
17. KISS your subscriber
form. Meaning, "keep it short and simple." Ask for their
e-mail and first name only. You can even simplify it more by
just asking for their e-mail address.
18. Set up section for past
issues of your e-newsletters. I recommend just listing their
main topic or name of the article and not by date. People
don't like to read things that they consider "old" easily. If
you create pdf files for past issues, remember that it does
save space but it also doesn't allow you to use unique meta
page tags so that they show up in the search engines.
19. Add your e-newsletter bio
line to all your e-mail signatures.
20. Send out your
e-newsletter articles as content for reprinting into other
media.
21. Offer targeted
subscribers a special report when they refer your e-newsletter
to three or more colleagues. Add a price to the special report
to give a perception of added value. A special report is 3-10
pages on a very focused topic.
22. Offer your readers
high-value content for them to read. Content they can't find
easily or ever somewhere else on the Internet and they will
keep coming back. This is the new wave for 2004. Subscriptions
to e-newsletters are going down because content is too
general.
Catherine Franz, a Certified Professional Marketing &
Writing Coach, specializes in product development, Internet
writing and marketing, nonfiction, training. Newsletters and
articles available at:
http://www.abundancecenter.com blog:
http://abundance.blogs.com

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