According to the below chart from Statista based on stats from the email marketing company BlueHornet, almost 33.8% of American consumers check their emails throughout the day.

Mobile is a huge reason why many people check their emails more these days.

Consumers have their smartphones with them at all times, everywhere they go. That means, they can immediately check new messages when they arrive.

The above chart shows that 1.6% of email users never check their emails once a day.

Understanding Email Marketing

Email marketing means sending emails to prospects and customers.

The purpose of email marketing is to convert prospects into customers and turn customers into loyal fans.

Email marketing generates higher returns than every other marketing strategy.

In this article, you’ll learn the most important aspects of email marketing.

I’ve broken this article down to different sections.

1. Why Email Marketing Is Important
2. How to Create Your First Email Marketing Campaign
3. How to Build a Huge Email List
4. How to Personalize Your Email Marketing Campaign with Segmentation
5. The Things I Do to Improve My Email Open Rates

Introduction: Why Email Marketing Is Important

Email has been an important part of the web for years. You need email for everything you want to do online today. Most websites ask for your email when you’re signing up.

In the last decade, we’ve witnessed the rise of powerful social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Despite a lot of people using these platforms, email remains the best place for businesses to develop strong relationships with consumers.

Email marketing should come first before any other marketing strategy.

Here are some reasons why you should make email marketing a top priority:

Consumers prefer to communicate with brands through email. According to a study by Marketing Sherpa, 72% of consumers say they like to receive promotional messages from brands through email.

Email is more convenient for consumers. The messages they receive through emails are more personalized than what they see on other marketing channels like social media, websites, etc.

Email helps brands reach more consumers than other marketing channels.

Prospects won’t visit your website regularly. There are hundreds of millions of websites online. You don’t expect prospects to visit yours all the time.

Prospects may also miss your messages on social media. They are probably following tens, or hundreds of other brands on social media and they aren’t always online to see your latest social media updates.

Email is the only true way to ensure that prospects see your messages most of the time. They are unlikely to miss your messages because they’ll see it whenever they check their email. Circle Surrogacy, one of the top surrogacy agencies in the United States only asks for the email address of potential egg donors during the sign-up process.

Sometimes, I go back to unread messages I received weeks ago.

Email is an inexpensive way to reach prospects and customers. Organic reach on Facebook is gone. You have to pay for your Facebook fans to see your posts.

It’s also tough to compete on Twitter and other social media platforms.

But with little investment, you can reach prospects and customers on email.

Chapter 1: How to Create Your First Email Marketing Campaign

You need to collect emails. Not just emails from random people. You need to collect emails of your prospects and customers. These are the people who are interested in your products and services.

Some marketers buy email lists because they can’t wait to build up their lists. Never buy an email list from anyone.

The email list you buy has probably been sold to thousands of other marketers.

The people who own those emails don’t even know you and your business. Some have abandoned their emails because of spam messages they receive from individuals and companies they don’t know.

Don’t add emails from business cards to your list. Because those people gave you their business cards doesn’t mean they want to be in an email list.

Collect emails online. Preferably on your website.

You need an email marketing service. There are lots of email marketing services out there.

I recommend that you use OmniKick with an email marketing service.

OmniKick collects emails on your website and stores them with your email marketing service. Email marketing services don’t do a great job when it comes to the collection or capture of emails. They are only good at storing emails and sending messages.

By using OmniKick on your website, you’ll be able to collect lots of emails on your site.

Here are some email marketing services to use with OmniKick.

1. MailChimp

MailChimp was an underdog some years ago. Today, it’s one of the most popular email marketing services. MailChimp is free for businesses with less than 2,000 subscribers.

Paid plans start at $10 per month. It can go as high as $30 for 2,5000 email subscribers. Here’s an in-depth take on Mailchimp pricing with all available plans and offers.

You pay more as your email list gets bigger.

MailChimp works well with OmniKick.

2. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is another wonderful email marketing service. You can do a lot of complex stuff with it.

For example, you can set up autoresponders that will send messages to your subscribers for months to come. You set it up once, and it’ll send emails at the predefined times, days, weeks or months you want.

ConvertKit is affordable at $29/month for up to 1,000 subscribers. It’s $49/month for 1,000 to 3,000 subscribers. ConvertKit allows you to send unlimited emails per month.

ConvertKit is the ideal email marketing service for online creators like authors, professional bloggers, and speakers.

3. InfusionSoft

InfusionSoft is a full CRM system and email marketing solution for small and medium-size businesses. InfusionSoft is highly advanced and more expensive than MailChimp and ConvertKit.

It does a lot more than you can get from those two.

If you have a B2B business and it takes weeks or months for a prospect to convert, InfusionSoft may be the perfect email marketing service for you. You will be able to interact with potential leads and score them based on their interests, and readiness to convert.

If you have up to 1,500 subscribers in your email list and want to use CRM, you’ll be looking at paying around $247/month.

That may seem expensive to you, but it’s worth it if you sell products or services worth over $500.

Comparing InfusionSoft to MailChimp or ConvertKit is like comparing Rolls-Royce to Toyota.

OmniKick integrates well with InfusionSoft.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing software. Its email marketing service is one of the many features it has.

Here are some things HubSpot does:

• It’s a blogging platform.
• It lets you create landing pages.
• It helps you manage your leads.
• It offers various kinds of marketing analytics.
• It helps with SEO.
• You can monitor brand mentions on social media.
• It has an email marketing software.

Want a complete platform that manages your whole digital marketing campaign? Choose HubSpot.

But, HubSpot isn’t cheap at $800/month.

You can manage 1,000 subscribers on this plan. You’ll have to pay $50 per additional 1,000 subscribers.

I don’t recommend HubSpot to small businesses.

OmniKick is also compatible with HubSpot.

5. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a wonderful email marketing service that lets you send emails based on customer actions. You can send super personalized and beautiful emails with ActiveCampaign. It also comes with a CRM system.

ActiveCampaign is cheap when you pay yearly. For example, their Plus plan is $70 for 1,000 subscribers when you pay monthly. It drops to $49 per month when you pay yearly.

You can use OmniKick with ActiveCampaign.

6. GetResponse

GetResponse lets you send high-quality, responsive emails and autoresponders. It also comes with a superb A/B testing capability. GetResponse allows you to send targeted email campaigns.

It’s affordable at $15/month for 1,000 subscribers.

GetResponse is a great email marketing service that works well with OmniKick.

But don’t expect the kind of quality you’ll get from decent services like MailChimp and ConvertKit.

MailChimp and ConvertKit are my favorites.

You can start creating your email campaigns after paying for one of these email marketing services. MailChimp lets you start for free.

These services have instructions on their sites. So, you shouldn’t find it difficult setting up your email campaign.

Chapter 2: How to Build a Huge Email List

It’s time to start collecting emails on your website. But prospects and customers won’t give you their emails because you asked. There has to be a great reason.

What’s in it for them?

People won’t sign up because you use our tool, OmniKick with an email marketing service. These tools only help you collect emails. They don’t convince people to sign up.

Your offer is what will convince people to join your email list. It should be so compelling that prospects won’t wait to give you their email addresses.

This offer is what digital marketers call a lead magnet?

Lead Magnet Examples

A lead magnet is what you offer visitors in exchange for their email addresses. A lead magnet is the most effective way to collect emails.

Every business needs a lead magnet.

Here are some popular lead magnet examples:

• A checklist
• A toolkit
• A web app
• An eBook
• An industry reports
• A webinar
• An email course
• A giveaway
• A free trial
• A case study
• Free consultation

These are just some lead magnet examples.

How to Create a Great Lead Magnet

Lead magnets can help you collect lots of emails. But you can’t just create any lead magnet and expect visitors to give you their email addresses.

Your lead magnet should be great. It should be special.

Your Lead Magnet Should Be Easy to Read or Use

Let’s assume your lead magnet is an eBook. It doesn’t have to be a 450-page eBook. Prospects want something they can quickly download and learn a few important things from it.

The eBook should be well outlined. It should be well-designed.

Your Lead Magnet Should Help Prospects Take Action

Whatever your lead magnet is, whether it’s an eBook, a toolkit or a case study, it should help people start taking action immediately.

Don’t make it hard for prospects to use what you’ve just given to them.

If the lead magnet is a tool, it should be easy to use.

If it’s an eBook, write it in a way that makes it easy for prospects to start acting. For example, include some action steps.

If it’s a case study, ensure that you explain the steps and process you took to prospects.

Your Lead Magnet Should Improve Prospects’ Lives

Your lead magnet should have a noticeable impact on your prospects’ lives. Your prospects should be able to look back weeks or months later and credit your lead magnet for making their lives better.

Your lead magnet should be as valuable as your products or services. Prospects should discover something they don’t know before. Or, they should be able to do things they couldn’t do before.

Your Lead Magnet Should Be Relevant to Them

Don’t create a lead magnet your prospects don’t need.

A great lead magnet is for your prospects. It’s a solution to their problems. It provides the answer to their questions.

Your prospects should find your lead magnet relevant and useful.

Your Lead Magnet Should Available Immediately

Prospects shouldn’t wait before they receive the offer you promised them. Give them immediately they give you their emails.

It should be instant.

Prospects should see a “Success Message” that tells them they’ve subscribed and a link where they can download the offer.

Don’t make them wait.

Your Lead Magnet Should Be Unique

Your prospects shouldn’t find the same type of lead magnet on your competitors’ sites.

Your lead magnet should contain information prospects can only find on your website. It should be so unique and interesting that your competitors may even want to opt-in too.

Here’s one example:

Bidsketch proposal software lets marketers create, electronically sign, and track professional looking client proposals in less time compared to other options. Bidsketch created a proposal template kit and offered it for free.

Bidsketch’s lead magnet is unique. You can’t get the information elsewhere.

It’s available for instant download upon giving them your email address. It helps prospects take action.

How to Create an Awesome Optin Form That Converts Visitors

When your lead magnet offer is ready, the next step is to create an opt-in form and put it on your website.

Having a great lead magnet is crucial. Your opt-in form should be well-developed too.

A bad opt-in form could prevent visitors from giving you their email addresses.

Here are the things you need to develop an amazing opt-in form that converts visitors.

• A captivating headline: Your headline should capture the attention of visitors. It should make them pause and subscribe. The headline should contain a big benefit your site’s visitors won’t want to miss.
• A clear, powerful description: The description should enchant visitors. If the headline had gotten 40% of their attention, the description should get the remaining 60%. The description should be short, clear and powerful.
• Include an attractive image: Including a photo of an attractive person could boost conversions. Use an image that invites attention to the form. The image could be anything. Make sure the image is something your prospects will respond to.
• Make the form simple: Don’t ask for too much in the form. Ask for their first names and email addresses. Web users don’t like filling forms.
• Use a powerful call-to-action button: Your call-to-action button is the button visitors click to confirm they’ve filled your form. Use the right words in this button. Don’t use the words “Submit,” “Sign Up” or “Click Here” because they are too common on the web. Your call-to-action button should have non-generic words. Use a powerful color that draws attention to the button.

Chapter 3: How to Personalize Your Email Marketing Campaign with Segmentation

According to DMA, 77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns.

Segmented emails are more targeted and relevant to their recipients. When you segment your emails, your subscribers feel like you’re talking to them and not a random person.

Email segmentation is the process of breaking subscribers into different categories or groups based on their interests, history with your business, and more.

You can’t send the same type of email message to your complete list and expect the same responses from all of them.

Some are loyal fans. Some are not.

Some have forgotten that they even subscribed to your email list. You have to remind them from time to time.

Email segmentation helps you develop a better and stronger relationship with each subscriber in your email list.

Email Segmentation Boosts Revenue

You’ll earn more when you segment your email list.

Look at the below image based on a study about email segmentation.

It shows that companies increased the average value of their customers when they do email segmentation.

Looking at the above image, you can see that the VIPs are the most valuable customers. They are valued at $150 on average.

Customers who recently churned have the lowest average value. They are valued at $3 per customer.

By segmenting your email list, you can focus more of your time and effort on high-value customers and less on low-value customers.

Email segmentation lets you allocate your business resources on where they matter most.

Email Segmentation Helps You Write Messages That Resonate with Subscribers

It’s hard to write for everyone in one email message. A single message is likely to resonate more with some prospects than others.

All subscribers want to receive messages that resonate with them.

Through email segmentation, you can learn a lot about your prospects and customers and send them emails they will find relevant and useful. You can write emails that entice subscribers to click and act.

How to Segment Your Email List

The more you know about an email subscriber, the easier it is to segment them.

So, how do you segment your email subscribers?

Here are the top ways to do that:

• The page they signed up: Which page was the subscriber visiting before signing up? Make the lead magnet related to the topic of each page. If a visitor was visiting a page about LinkedIn marketing and your opt-in offer is about the same topic, you can continue to send them emails related to LinkedIn marketing.
• New subscribers: The messages you send to new subscribers should be different from the ones you send to old subscribers. Send new subscribers welcome emails. Send them a series of messages that’ll help them remember your brand.
• Interests: If your subscribers are clicking some messages related to a particular topic more than the others, it tells you their interests. Your subscribers have different interests. Some may be interested in shoes while others may like shirts. Send them messages related to their interests.
• Location: If you know the locations of your subscribers, you can also send them messages related to their areas.
• Shopping Cart Abandonment: Some customers won’t complete their shopping carts. Send them emails that remind them to complete the checkout process.
• Open rate: Subscribers who open and read your messages regularly should be rewarded for their loyalty. Active subscribers deserve more. Give them discounts. Give them some exclusive information that will keep them opening your emails.
• Inactivity: You can turn an inactive subscriber into an active subscriber. Remind inactive subscribers they haven’t opened your emails for a while. Give them a mouth-watering offer that will turn them into loyal fans. You can send them a series of messages over many weeks. Your messages should be so interesting that they don’t want to miss them.
• Old customers: Segment customers by past purchases. Old customers tend to become more loyal than new customers. Send them emails that show you appreciate their loyalty. Give them some bonuses they won’t get from your competitors.
• Amount Spent: You know customers who had spent certain amounts on your website. Whether they are new or old, customers with higher spending should qualify for more benefits than customers with lower spending. Send them email messages that show you recognize and reward them.

Chapter 4: How to Improve Your Email Open Rates

One of the hardest parts of email marketing is getting people to open your messages. You have to get people’s attention inside their inbox.

Lots of businesses and individuals send your subscribers messages. Your email is competing with every other message. Attention is scarce online.

If your subscribers say they want to check their emails for ten minutes, the time isn’t enough to read all the unread emails they have.

You need to ensure that your emails get opened and read.

1. Keep Your Email List Fresh

Most new subscribers are excited to join your email list. As time goes by, some of these subscribers will become less interested in your messages.

Some of these inactive subscribers are no longer interested in reading your emails.

If a subscriber hasn’t opened your email in 180 days, they’ve probably lost the enthusiasm they had when they signed up. Maybe they don’t need your product or service again. For example, a prospect of Elville and Associates, a Maryland law firm, who subscribed months ago may have moved on today.

Your average email open rate will be low if the number of your disinterested subscribers is high.

You need to delete those old subscribers who are no longer reading your emails. Doing that keeps your email list fresh.

Email service providers like Gmail and Outlook are watching your open rates. If your open rate is too low, they may start sending your email messages to the spam folders of their users.

You may send a message to inactive subscribers. Let them know that they haven’t opened your emails for months.

Some inactive subscribers may still want to be part of your email list.

If they still don’t open your emails, it may be time to say goodbye and delete them from your list.

2. Avoid Spam Filters

Spam filters are those signals email service providers like Gmail and Outlook have programmed into their servers. These spam filters help them know if an email message is a spam.

The truth is that even your best emails can still be caught as spam. You need to know these spam filters if you really want to avoid them.

If your message is flagged as spam, your messages will be sent to the spam folder. It’s highly unlikely that a subscriber will check their spam folder and click your message.

Here are the practices that will ensure you don’t get into that spam folder:

• Recipients must opt-in to receive emails from you. Don’t sign up for anyone. Don’t send emails to anyone who didn’t give you their email on your website.
• Send emails from a good IP address. If you’re using a reputable email marketing service like the ones given above, you should have zero problems with your IP address.
• Send emails through a verified domain name. If you’re using your own domain name to send email messages to subscribers, ensure that your email has been verified. Verified domain names are more secured and unlikely to trigger a spam warning.
• Your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript should be clean. If you must format your emails, make sure the code is clean and follow standard practices. If you’re using an email marketing service, you don’t have to worry about that as they’ll take care of it for you.
• Ask subscribers to add your email to their address book. You can also show them how to do that. Emails that are added to your address book rarely lands in the spam folder.
• Don’t send salesy emails. I’m not saying you shouldn’t sell in your emails. Describe your product. Tell subscribers why it’s good. But don’t be aggressive. Avoid using words like “discount,” “cash,” “buy,” etc. It tells Gmail and Outlook that your email may be a spam.
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines. Email service providers do a great job at detecting deceptive subject lines. Emails that contain words like “URGENT,” “exclusive,” and “revolutionary” could be deceptive.
• Include your location in your email messages. The bottom of your message is a great place to add your business or P.O. Box address.

3. Send Email Messages at The Perfect Time

Getting the timing right is critical to achieving success with your email marketing campaign.

If you send emails at the wrong time, none of your subscribers will see your messages. Therefore, only a few of them may open your emails.

Of course, your goal is to ensure that your subscribers open your email messages. Subscribers won’t open your email if they aren’t online inside their inbox.

How do you figure this out?

Check some tests that have been done in your industry or related industries to know when subscribers open their emails.

Below are some tests you may find helpful.

MailChimp found that open rates are highest on Thursdays.

Looking at the above chart, any day from Monday to Friday looks good. You should avoid sending emails on Saturday and Sunday if you want to increase your email open rates.

When is the best time of the day to send emails?

Studies show that 10:00 a.m., 8:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., and 6:00 a.m. are the best times to send emails.

Ensure that you conduct your own tests to find the best time for you.

4. Make Your Subject Line Stand Out

The subject line is the first thing subscribers see when they see your message.

Make your subject line attractive. Remember that you’re competing with many other individuals and companies who also send email messages to your subscribers.

Write subject lines that make people curious and click on your email.

Use numbers. Numbers will draw the attention of your subscribers to your email message.

Make sure your subject lines are fun and sound like a conversation.

Use words your subscribers use daily.

5. Write Like A Friend

Your subject line and the message should sound like a note from a friend.

Don’t write using corporate words or terms. Don’t try to be too formal.

Sound personal. It makes your emails fun to read, and subscribers will see you as a friend instead of a marketer trying to sell them something.

6. Segment Your List

People will open your emails if it’s relevant to them. People can easily tell your email is relevant to them from reading your subject line.

When you segment your email list, you’ll be able to write subject lines that stand out and make subscribers open the email.

According to research by MailChimp, users who segment their email list enjoy more opens, clicks, and lower unsubs.

Conclusion

Any business can use email marketing to boost sales. Whether you sell products or services, you can use email marketing. According to 2Stallions, a renowned digital marketing agency, there are no alternatives to having a mailing list.

With a powerful tool like OmniKick, you can start gaining lots of subscribers today.

Start a free trial.

The post The Complete Step by Step Guide to Email Marketing appeared first on OmniKick.

Email has been around for decades. Its adoption won’t slow down anytime soon.

Lots of online platforms and various sizes of businesses communicate with their customers through email.

Most web users have email accounts they check every day.

Digital marketers say, “The money is in the list.” It’s because it is.

In this article, I’ll explain to you how to get email subscribers that’ll turn into lifelong customers.

Why Email Will Always Beat Other Marketing Channels

There’ll always be a new channel where you can reach potential clients. Don’t focus too much energy on those new channels.

Instead, commit most of your time to email marketing.

Digital marketers who are good at email marketing will always beat their competitors.

That’s because it’s easy to develop a deeper connection with someone on email than anywhere else.

Email is more personalized

Email feels more personalized to subscribers than any other marketing medium when you do it right.

You can address a subscriber by his/her name in an email message. No other marketing channel lets you do that. Not Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

You can send messages to subscribers based on their activities on your site. Some email marketing tools make that possible.

For example, if a group of subscribers visited a specific page on your site, you can send them an email message based on the content they viewed.

Personalization is impossible on social media. When you Tweet something out, almost all your followers and their followers can see it.

A Facebook post is meant for all fans to see. Little personalization.

Because of this, it’s easier to convert someone on email than social media.

Email users are not likely to miss your message

Some people check their emails several times a day.

Most email users make sure they see the subject line of each new message they receive. Even if they don’t click the new email, they ensure that they saw it and are aware of the time it came in.

A study conducted by Statista found that 44% of email users in North American check it 1-3 times a day.

Email is like a mailbox. It’s your prospects’ digital homes. It’s where they live online.

Email marketing is cheap

Email marketing is cheaper than social media, Google Ads, influencer marketing and the rest.

When potential clients give you their email addresses, you can always reach them whenever you want. There’s no need to pay for ads.

Yes, you do have to pay for the service that allows you to send messages. The amount you pay is low when you compare it to other marketing mediums.

Someone who has given you their email address is yours for life. Unless they unsubscribe, or you remove them from your email list because they haven’t opened your message for a long time, that person will continue to be in your list.

These are the reasons email will always beat other marketing channels.

It’s easier to compete with anyone and anywhere when you have a solid list of subscribers.

Your subscribers will be happy to follow you on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They can share your updates on these platforms.

So, it’s easy to compete on these platforms when you have a list of subscribers that engage with your messages.

What You Need to Make Email Marketing Work for Your Business

To be a successful email marketer, you need a great email list.

A great email list means that your subscribers care about your product and brand. They were delighted to give you their email addresses.

Successful email campaigns have one thing in common: They had subscribers who looked forward to their messages.

It’s difficult to convert subscribers who can’t remember your brand. And it’s also hard to convert subscribers who don’t look forward to your messages.

Harry’s is a company that sells shaving products. They used a landing page to gather 100,000 emails in the week leading up to their launch.

They worked hard to drive lots of traffic to the landing page. They asked visitors to sign up on the landing page.

After a visitor had signed up, then Harry’s offer the new subscriber a reward if he/she shares the product with some friends.

Those who referred their friends got free products. Harry’s got new subscribers.

This tactic made Harry’s launch a successful one. Harry’s subscribers looked forward to their launch day.

Your email list needs real people who care about your brand and look forward to your messages.

Quantity is also important in email marketing. You will achieve more with 10,000 subscribers than you can with 1,000 subscribers.

The bigger the list, the better the outcome.

Don’t Buy an Email List

Buying an email list is a blackhat marketing tactic. It’s bad. It’ll hurt your reputation for a long time.

In the marketing world, when they say something is blackhat, it means it’s unacceptable or illegal.

There are a few services online that offer to sell you email lists. Some say they can sell 400 million valid emails for a mere $499.50.

Most of those emails are old and fake.

Old means their owners had abandoned them.

Fake means that they are all made up.

When you buy these services and send messages, zero or few people will see them.

These email lists have been sold over and over again.

The Right Way to Build Your Email List

The best way to build a solid list is to collect emails organically. That means people give you their emails because they are interested in your offer.

I don’t give my email to every site that asks for it. Sometimes, I leave a site because it asks for my email.

Build your list before launch

In the above Harry’s example, you’ll notice that they built their email list before their product went live. It’s an email marketing tactic that helps you to start seeing some sales on the first day of business.

However, if your business is B2B or a B2C that’s been running before now, then you can ignore the advice. It doesn’t matter because you’ve started already and maybe have some customers.

But if you’re a startup that’s looking to launch, then this makes sense. You start making some cash on day one. Or, at least, get a good number of people using your service.

Today, HubSpot is a successful B2B marketing software company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

If you’re in the digital marketing space, you’ve come across one of HubSpot’s blog posts or pages in Google’s search results.

The HubSpot site rank for most top digital marketing keywords. Their services are successful. Lots of small business owners use them.

What you may not know is that HubSpot built a big email list before they created a single product.

That tells you that the best time to start building an email list for your business is now. Right now.

Start with Your Current Network

You know some very good people right now who could buy your product or service.

Or, they know someone who could buy your product. They could ask these potential clients to join your email list.

That was how Bryan Harris of VideoFruit started.

Today, he has thousands of email subscribers. But, Bryan started small with family and acquaintances.

He started with his network on Facebook.

With a tiny list of 49 people, Bryan generated $551 from 19 customers.

Don’t wait to collect emails. The best time to start is now.

Build an Amazing Blog

You won’t get paid because you have an amazing blog. But the truth is that an amazing blog will attract lots of potential customers to your brand.

When someone knows and likes your blog and the content you have on it, they’ll trust you. They’ll like you.

Your blog has to be unbeatable in your space, niche or market.

The content you publish on your blog should be so awesome that competitors admire it and want to create something similar.

Of course, some blog posts are expensive to create. For example, blog posts in the form of case studies aren’t easy to put together.

But that’s not an excuse. You can create something awesome without much budget.

You can make something you’re proud of, and people like and share on social media.

When you visit blogs like HelpScout.net in marketing, Smashing Magazine in web development and I Will Teach You To Be Rich in personal finance, these blogs are doing nothing new or extraordinary.

They do it better than their competitors.

Below is a screenshot of an article on Smashing Magazine.

Smashing Magazine has a terrific website design.

You can build a blog with a design that makes people feel comfortable and want to read. When you back that up with amazing content, you’re surely going to win readers’ hearts.

Blogging brings people to your site. You need that attention to build your email list. For example, Circle Surrogacy, a top surrogacy agency in the world maintains one of the best blogs on surrogacy. Prospects return to their blog to learn more.

Add multiple opt-in forms across different parts of your site to collect visitors’ email addresses.

As people browse through the pages of your blog, the opt-in forms are there to collect their emails.

GrowthFunnel lets you collect emails on your blog. You can collect emails using our FullScreen Welcome Gate, Popup Optin Box, Slider Optin Box, Inline Optin Box, and Floating Bar features.

These features let you collect emails with ease.

Build an amazing blog and let GrowthFunnel takes charge of building your email list.

Create a Lead Magnet

People won’t give you their emails because you asked for it. You need to do more.

Visitors to your blog shouldn’t feel you need their emails. They should feel they need to give you their emails.

And how do you achieve that?

Lead Magnet.

A good lead magnet collects leads. When visitors to your blog see your lead magnet, they should drop their emails.

A great lead magnet is the one that’s attractive to visitors of your site.

How do you create a great lead magnet?

Think about an offer you can create that visitors won’t resist.

For example, Bidsketch’s opt-in offer is too attractive to resist. They put together a marketing template proposal kit from analyzing 25,000 proposals that generated $270 million.

If you send lots of proposals, this is the kit you want to download.

Every blog post on Bidsketch has this offer on its footer. You can see it after reading a blog post on the Bidsketch’s blog.

You can offer a free ebook, tool or template. You can also offer a free trial of your product or service to visitors.

For example, Karen Brody is a highly sought-after relationship coach to men. She uses a high-quality free ebook to collect prospects’ emails on her blog.

Change your opt-in offer once you see that visitors aren’t responding to it like before. For example, if you’re getting fewer subscribers than before you launch the offer, it means it’s time to replace the offer with another interesting one.

Cute Smiles 4 Kids and Orthodontics is a San Antonio dentist and orthodontist. I like how they collect leads on their site. At the very top right side of the site, you see a link that asks to schedule an appointment.

Make it easy to spread the word about your brand on social media

It’s difficult to succeed online if people aren’t talking about you on social media.

Prospects should mention you or your post in conversation with their friends on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

You need that traditional, free reach to gain higher visibility on the web. You can’t do it alone. You need your loyal fans.

If social media users are talking about you, it’s easier to collect emails. Visitors have read or heard their friends praising you.

They trust you even before they land on your site.

It’s hard for most first-time visitors to give you their emails even if they think your offer is attractive. They don’t know you before.

But when they’ve read from their friends how nice subscribing to your list is? That’s an easy decision. They know they can trust you.

They like you because of the good things they’ve heard about you.

Social media is important to becoming a successful email marketer.

It spreads your name all over the web.

A mention by a follower or friend on social media is like an approval. Their followers will pay attention to that.

The more mentions you get on social media, the more your name and company spread around the web. And the more these things happen, the more subscribers you’ll get.

To get people talking about you on social media, make it easy for them to do so.

How do you do that?

Display the buttons of the top social media platforms your subscribers hang out online. Two to three social media buttons are cool.

I prefer Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The more social buttons you have, the more difficult it becomes for people to share your posts on social media.

If you’re a marketing agency, LinkedIn and Twitter should be your social buttons.

Conclusion

It’s time to grow your email subscribers. This article tells you simple steps to follow to achieve that.

You now know how to get email subscribers that convert into customers. It’s time to start.

And don’t forget that GrowthFunnel is a powerful tool that can help you grow your email list faster.

It’s free to sign up for GrowthFunnel.

The post How to Get Email Subscribers: The Proven Tactics That Always Work appeared first on OmniKick.

But when you get it wrong, it can be a complete waste of money and time.

One of the wrong ways to do email marketing is to buy an email list.

Seasoned digital marketers all agree that it’s a bad practice.

If you’re new to the digital marketing world, you may be tempted to use this tactic.

Email list buying is a shortcut that seems appealing.

There’s nothing like a shortcut to success in email marketing.

Email marketing is the #1 way to sell anything online.

However, you must do it right.

An offer to buy an email list of 50,000 emails you didn’t build sounds attractive.

What you don’t know is that these subscribers know nothing or little about you and your company.

They didn’t give you their emails.

Perhaps, they are not interested in your brand and its products and services.

It’s not the right way to use email marketing.

There are eight reasons you should never buy an email list from anyone.

Reason #1: It’s a low-quality list

Email list sellers are in it to make money.

They’ll say a lot of nice things to make you buy.

Their goal is to get your money. They don’t care if you make money with the list.

That’s not value.

If you’re paying for something, you should be sure you’ll get value from it.

There are lots of issues with email list they sell.

• Insufficient subscribers data (no first names)
• Obsolete emails (subscribers no longer using those emails)
• Getting emails through criminal means like harvesting

Getting tens of thousands of emails may sound awesome, but what’s their use if most of them are out-of-date?

Worthless.

You can’t sell to a list where most emails have been abandoned.

For example, below is how an email can be harvested from the web, especially from search engines. Note that email sellers automate this process.

Reason #2: Trying to sell to a list you bought will affect your reputation

Recently, I receive the email in the below screenshot.

I never remember ever coming across this brand, yet they are sending me emails.

When I visited their site, I realized that this is a real business that sells products and services that are relevant to me.

I can’t understand why they’ll want to buy an email list.

Well, they want fast results. Everyone does. But this is not the right way to get anyone to buy from you.

If I come across this brand organically, I don’t see myself buying their product or service because they have a negative reputation for buying emails.

No web shopper will want to associate himself/herself with a spammer.

Web shoppers are used to receiving and deleting emails from unknown companies. Don’t make your brand one of them.

Once you spam a potential customer, you have zero chance of converting them in the future.

Reason #3: Your email service provider will kick you out

If most of your emails aren’t getting opened and read by subscribers, your email service provider may ask you to move your business elsewhere.

Email service providers care about the performance of your emails as much as you do.

They don’t want their service to be used as a platform for scam and spam.

Email platforms such as Gmail, Apple iCloud, and Outlook watch emails coming from your email service provider.

A service provider with so many users with outdated or bought lists won’t be effective for new users.

So, providers want to have a good reputation with platforms like Gmail and Outlook.

What does this mean?

It means your provider will kick you out first when their automated system detects that you don’t have a good list.

In fact, AWeber went a step further by claiming that “they’ll close your account and you won’t get any refund.”

This makes an email list you bought almost worthless to you.

Reason #4: Many other people are buying the same list you have

The sites that sell email lists are selling the same lists to anyone who’s interested.

Imagine that you’re one of the 1,000 marketers who bought that list.

If all of you are sending one email each day, it means subscribers will receive 1,000 emails each day from companies they don’t know.

How will those subscribers find time to read a thousand unknown emails when they haven’t read all known emails?

Merchants who sell these emails are scammers.

They’ll sell those emails to as many marketers who want them.

For example, the site in the below screenshot sells 10,000 emails for $100.

Buying 10,000 emails for such a small amount looks like a great deal, but the truth is that you won’t see the return on your investment because most of these emails are useless.

Reason #5: Very few people respond to spammers

If you’re sending messages to people who didn’t give you their emails, you’re a spammer.

Web users have no love for spammers. They rarely open spam messages.

And when they do, they see this warning sign from their email platform, asking them not to read and click any link in the message.

Spam messages are associated with bad acts such as phishing and virus spreading.

Over 260 billion spam emails were sent out every day in 2010.

The number could be much higher today.

Almost every web user receives spam emails on a daily basis.

Email users don’t respond to spam emails.

They also don’t unsubscribe from spam emails because they didn’t opt-in to receive them in the first place.

Trying to unsubscribe from a spam email list is like telling a spammer you exist. That will only make them continue to send more spam emails.

Don’t expect subscribers from the email list you bought to respond to your messages. They don’t even know you in the first place.

Reason #6: Consumers trust your business less

Many factors lead to success in business.

You need a great product that’s in demand. You need an effective marketing strategy. You also need the tools that’ll help you implement your marketing strategy.

However, nothing is more important than trust.

In an age where consumers have so many options to choose from, you need trust to sell.

Selling online is getting more complicated each day, and competition continues to rise..

A potential customer who’s aware of your business may be taking their time to subscribe to your email list and buy your product.

For example, you didn’t start buying from renown brands like Amazon and Zappos immediately.

You’re well aware of many brands you can buy from. Now, assume you wake up one morning to find an email from one without subscribing to their list, you’ll be surprised.

This company you trust and know has now lost that trust.

You didn’t subscribe to their email list, but they are already sending you sales emails asking you to buy their products.

So if your company is already known, you shouldn’t buy an email list from anyone because of that.

Buying an email list can make you lose that trust you’ve built over the years.

For example, I know Dollar Shave Club. I admire the company.

I’ve mentioned them a couple of times.

The most surprising thing is that despite loving the brand, I’ve not bought anything from them. I’m not subscribed to their email list.

Now, imagine that I see their emails tomorrow advertising their product to me, that would shock me.

As a result of that, I may have less trust in the company itself.

Reason #7: You could get your company into a serious legal trouble

In the United States, there’s a law against sending out spam emails. It’s called CAN-SPAM Act.

Canada has Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

European Union has their own law called Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications.

Most countries have laws that prohibit email spam.

If your company is registered and you buy an email list, you could get yourself into a serious legal trouble.

For example, one of your email recipients could report you to the authorities.

Spam laws are complex as most countries have different laws.

If consumers from different countries report you, you’ll be dealing with different laws and cases.

It’s not a good situation to be in.

If you want to continue serving any country, avoid buying email lists from anyone on the internet and elsewhere.

Also, when you buy email lists, you can’t be so sure people from other countries you aren’t selling are not on the list.

For example, if someone from Europe reports you, while you may not be selling to Europe, you’ll have to abide by European laws.

Reason #8: Marketers don’t approve it

Email marketing gives the highest ROI. That’s why a lot of brands and marketers pay attention to it.

The days of email blasts are officially over.

Marketers see email marketing as a way to connect with their audience.

They want email readers to see them as friends, not marketers.

You have to know the people on your email list before you send a single message to them.

That is completely impossible when you buy email lists.

And of course, most emails in your list will be out-of-date when you buy them.

There’s simply no reason for learning about someone behind an email address when they’ve abandoned the email itself.

That is why experienced digital marketers will never recommend the act of buying an email list.

How to build a profitable email list

To succeed in email marketing, you have to take the first important step:

Building your OWN email list.

More emails don’t equal more opens, clicks and sales.

A list of 100 real emails you’ve collected from people who are interested in your business is more profitable than the 1 million emails you bought.

So how do you build an email list that makes sales?

There are 4 things you should do to build a profitable email list.

1. Create gated content
2. Create tools
3. Publish high-quality content on a consistent basis
4. Write emails that make people buy

1. Create gated content and ask people to give you their emails in return

What is gated content?

Gated content is any content a website visitor will only be able to access after giving his/her email address or lead information.

Chances are you’ve seen gated content many times on the web.

For example, when you visit a site that asks you to give your email address to download an ebook, checklist or watch a video – that is a gated content.

Gated content is a powerful way to capture lots of emails, which is why many sites are using them.

For example, a webinar is the gated content.

Before you ask people to sign up and receive a gated content, you need to ensure that the content is high-quality.

With a tool like GrowthFunnel, you can create a gated offer in popups on your site and use them to collect emails. It’s free to start using GrowthFunnel today. You can sign up here.

2. Create tools people want to use

Ask yourself.

What kind of tools your prospects use on a daily or weekly basis?

Can you create an even better tool and release it for free?

Google (Google Analytics), Facebook (React) and HubSpot (Website Grader) all create tools and give them away regularly.

It’s because it helps their business.

It raises interest in their business.

You can do the same thing.

Develop a tool your prospects will want to use and give it away in order to collect emails on your site.

CoSchedule created headline analyzer and let their prospects use it for free. Of course, they are using it to collect emails.

Popups created with GrowthFunnel produce amazing results. You can use them to collect emails before referring a prospect to the download or use page of your tool.

GoSmartSolar created a tool that calculates how much money solar power will save you. They collect prospects’ email and personal information using this tool.

3. Create content that promotes your gated content or tool

After creating a gated content or tool that will help you collect emails on your site, you need to promote it.

Because if no one is visiting your site, it’s almost impossible to build a list with it.

You need to have visitors. Lots of visitors on your site.

HubSpot doesn’t just wait for people to discover their Website Grader free tool, they take it to them through their active content creation efforts.

Where do your prospects hang out online?

Go there and promote your gated content and free tool.

Unknown to many, content creation is the key to success when building an email list.

4. Write emails that make people buy

Selling through emails is different from selling on your website. Yes, both are on the web.

But they are different.

If you’re a subscriber to many good sites like I am, you probably receive tens of emails per day.

Except you want to spend the whole day inside your email, it’s impossible to read them all.

But some great email marketers still manage to get my attention in my email every time I see their messages in my inbox.

They get me to read their messages and act on those messages.

These marketers have mastered the art of email selling.

If you want to sell through emails, you shouldn’t just know how to build an email list. You should also know how to sell to subscribers on that list.

How do you sell to your list?

It’s one word:

Use infotainment.

Infotainment makes subscribers look forward to your email each day or week they check their emails.

Infotainment means telling stories about yourself and others.

It’s a nice way to sell.

If you can capture anyone’s attention in their email and get them thinking about your brand, you can definitely sell to them.

Conclusion

Don’t think about buying an email list. It’s a waste of time.

Instead, spend your hard-earned cash on building your own list.

And if you’re really serious about building your own list, you need GrowthFunnel.

GrowthFunnel is an advanced popup technology that will help you capture emails on your site.

It’s free to start using GrowthFunnel. Sign up today.

The post Why You Should Never Buy an Email List (And How to Build Yours) appeared first on OmniKick.

You’re about to eat a sweet meal, then the phone rings:

“May I speak with Ben,” asks the telemarketer on the other end.

“This is an important message about the design of your website. It looks ugly, and you need a new one.”

Maybe you agree that your business needs a new site design, but this call is ruining your meal. You want to get off the phone.

This type of marketing is interruptive and annoying to potential clients.

There’s a better marketing strategy that draws people to your site and makes them want to do business with you.

It’s called inbound lead generation.

Inbound lead generation helps you get leads on your website.

What is a lead?

A lead is someone who has shown interest in your company’s product or service in some way, shape or form.

It could be that this person visited your site and is strongly interested in your product or service. This person becomes a lead.

Inbound lead generation helps you create awareness and interest in your brand without being annoying.

A visitor becomes a lead when they give you their email address. You can now reach them because they’ve given you the permission to do that.

To generate leads, you need lead magnets.

What are lead magnets?

A lead magnet is something you offer someone in exchange for their contact information. This could be their email address or phone number.

For example, BuyCustumes.com, a major US-based costume retailer is using a lead magnet by offering shoppers $25 off if they sign up.

Your lead magnet is a bribe that gets prospects to give you their email addresses.

There are 25 effective lead magnet types you can start using on your site today.

1. Tutorials

Many people struggle in school not because they aren’t smart. But because the crowded classroom isn’t for them.

They turn to online tutorials.

Tutorials are more private. People get the attention they don’t have in classrooms.

What topics in your niche can you create a tutorial about?

People want to learn. They are turning to the internet to help them learn.

Using valuable tutorials as lead magnets will get you lots of leads.

And how do you collect these leads?

OmniKick.

OmniKick lets you create high-converting popups visitors see on your site.

By putting your lead magnet on top of a cutting-edge popup tool like OmniKick, you’ll receive more leads from your site.

It’s free to sign up with OmniKick.

2. eBooks

Tutorials can be a combination of different types of learning like video, text, polls, and quizzes.

People are reading ebooks from all over the world.

Like tutorials, find topics that relate to your site and start using it as a lead magnet.

For example, Michael Hyatt is using ebooks to generate leads on his blog.

eBooks work well for lead generation because they help you educate your customers and prospects while providing actionable insights and solving a problem.

3. Industry report or research

Everything changes.

Like it or not, your industry is changing.

Your ideal clients are also in some industries, which are changing too.

Sometimes, it could be that there are too many changes happening for people to recognize something significant.

If you can arrange important trends into a well-organized report, prospects will definitely want to see it.

Then, you can use this report as a lead magnet on your website.

For example, Social Media Examiner created a report titled, “2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report,” and made it available for download on their website.

You’ll have to give your email address to download the report.

The report becomes a lead magnet because it helps them collect visitors’ emails on their site.

4. Educational and Interesting videos

First, we have televisions. Then, computers. Now, mobile devices.

Videos are everywhere.

Video learning is one of the fastest growing fields in tech.

Many people now prefer video learning because of its effectiveness.

Why is video more effective?

Research shows that, in just six months, people forget 90% of training materials.

And according to Forrester Research, employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than to read documents, emails or web articles.

Web users value videos than text content.

When you use videos as lead magnets, prospects are more likely to give you their email addresses.

5. Webinar

Webinars are a proven way to sell online to B2B prospects. They are more effective if you have a long sales cycle.

What is a webinar?

“A webinar is a live web-based video conference that uses the internet to connect the individual hosting the webinar to an audience–the viewers and listeners of the webinar from all over the world.

Hosts can show themselves speaking, switch to their computer screens for slideshows or demonstrations, and even invite guests from other locations to co-host the webinar with them.”

They allow you to sell to a large diverse, geographically widespread group without leaving where you are.

Keep in mind that webinars are ideal when you’re selling expensive products or service. For example, if it costs more than $2,000 per year.

Webinars allow you to collect emails.

You notify prospects who gave you their emails when the webinar is about to start.

This makes webinars lead magnets themselves.

6. Email Courses

An email course is just an autoresponder, which is a series of emails that are sent out over a period of time.

It teaches your audience something real. Each email delivers a lesson.

Here’s how an email course by Nat Eliason and Justin Mares looks like:

Giving away an email course as a lead magnet attracts the right subscribers who are likely to buy your product or service.

7. Free Shipping

Free shipping is attractive to shoppers.

It tells them they don’t have to pay an additional shipping charge – just the price of the product, and they’ll have it at their doorstep.

Lots of shopping carts are abandoned because shoppers feel they are being asked to pay for shipping.

Some shoppers will even wait for days to see if they’ll qualify for free shipping.

You can use free shipping to get people to sign up for your marketing emails.

8. Free Coaching Session

If lots of your ideal customers are people who would want to have coaches or mentors, then offering a free coaching session can help you get to know them personally, while they get to know you too.

This may not be scalable, but it will give you some high-quality subscribers.

Note that this lead magnet idea is only useful if you’re selling an expensive product or service that may require you talk to prospects.

When you get to know someone through a coaching session, they’ll forever continue to remember you.

And guess who they will come to when they need help related to the product or service you sell?

You.

9. A PDF Version of a File

A PDF file is an electronic version of a book.

PDF files don’t get damaged like real books. They don’t tear.

If you like reading online, on your computer or mobile device, chances are you’ve downloaded a PDF file in the past month.

Some people prefer reading important articles or ebooks in PDF files than on the web.

They’ll be happy to download the PDF version of your article.

You can use this as a lead magnet to collect emails on your site.

Do you know what the best part about PDF files is? 

They’re simple to create and edit, are universally compatible, and need less space.

But what happens when you want your prospects to download multiple PDF files?

Even if they want to read those files, chances are that they wouldn’t want to download multiple files where they’ll have to enter their email address again and again.

So, how can you make this process easier and not scare off your lead magnets?

By combining multiple PDF files into a single document for easy access and download.

You can effortlessly combine PDFs through multiple online sources for free. A reliable PDF merging tool is all you need to combine PDF files, edit them, add or delete pages, and arrange them according to your preferred configuration.

Now, you don’t have to worry about asking your prospective lead magnets to download multiple PDFs and chance losing them.

10. Transcript of an event

In a web where videos are everywhere, some people can’t just stop reading texts.

Some people prefer reading than watching.

When you create a video content, post it on YouTube, Facebook, or your site, you can offer the transcript of the video as a lead magnet.

Trust me, some people will want to download that.

Why would anyone want to download a transcript?

Maybe, because you talk too fast. Or, reading just interest them a lot.

11. Predictions or Forecasts

Remember, I mentioned creating industry report and using it as a lead magnet.

This is similar but different.

In this lead magnet, you’re not organizing industry trends.

Instead, you’re predicting the future. You’re telling your audience what will happen in the future and how they can position themselves to take advantage of the trend.

This is the reason why people pay Statista $588 per year.

For example, Statista predicts that virtual reality headsets worldwide will grow from 18 million in 2016 to 100 million units by 2021.

If you’re looking for a new industry, this bold prediction tells you where the market is going in the future.

Now, you can position yourself to take advantage of this emerging VR market. More VR headsets mean more opportunities to develop new programs for VR.

That is just an example.

Create relevant predictions and offer it as a lead magnet to your audience. Most of them will be willing to download it in exchange for their emails.

12. SlideShare

SlideShare allows you to turn your presentations into lead magnets.

SlideShare has a built-in lead generation tool that allows you to convert your SlideShare audience into email subscribers.

If you’ve been uploading presentations on SlideShare, simply click on “Collect Leads” on the navigation to get started.

13. A Roundup Content

No content can get people talking about your brand on social media like a good piece of expert roundup content.

But your roundup content should also be about a topic your audience loves, or it’ll be a waste of time.

A good roundup content is similar to featuring well-known artists on your song.

Their lovely fans will want to listen to your song.

A roundup content works the same way.

When you bring all these experts together to talk about a topic that is relevant to your audience, you get traffic, social shares, and brand recognition.

Use an excellent roundup content as a lead magnet.

14. Newsletter

Even though it’s one of the oldest digital marketing tactics, newsletters publishing is still effective today.

It’s a nice way to build an audience that cares about your brand.

Newsletters are great lead magnet ideas.

I still see websites asking visitors to subscribe to their newsletters.

I’m subscribed to some newsletters.

I look forward to them each evening I check my email.

I receive newsletters from Medium.com, Startup Daily Digest, and The Hustle.

I must confess the latter is my favorite because it sends me the latest tech and business news.

To succeed with newsletter publishing, send quality information.

15. Knowledge Library

A knowledge library is a place where people can access information about various topics they may want to learn.

For anyone to gain access to a resource in the library, they’ll need to drop their email address.

This lead magnet idea is pretty simple and straightforward.

The library is an organized place to discover free valuable content.

For example, HubSpot has a knowledge library on its site.

A perfect knowledge library has different topics and content types prospects can choose from.

16. Online Quiz

Quizzes are one of the most underrated forms of content online.

BuzzFeed is using it to keep visitors coming back to its website.

First, your quiz should be relevant to your audience.

For example, if your business is about food, don’t create a quiz about computers.

Your quiz should be related to your niche. If you’re a local-based startup, it could also be a quiz that is related to the city or state your business is located.

Ask visitors to take a quiz and give you their email addresses to view the result.

17. Giveaway

Launching a giveaway can generate real value for your business.

Visitors will want to be part of your giveaway because it requires nothing other than giving you their email addresses.

Giveaways work for both B2C and B2B companies.

You can use your website or social media channels to launch and promote a giveaway.

Giveaways can increase the reach of your business while collecting prospects’ emails at the same time.

For example, the below giveaway had 24,400 views and a conversion rate of 45.69%, generating 11,200 email addresses for 10 prizes worth about $30 each.

You can use a tool like OmniKick to ask people to opt-in your giveaway.

It’s simple.

In fact, you can use OmniKick to display your giveaways as visitors are about to leave your site.

18. Storytelling through comic strips

I’m including this one because I love comics and I’ve met many people who love them too.

Comic strips make people laugh. They can add some fun to your website.

If a comic strip is fun, it can easily go viral on the web.

Have some remarkable pieces of comics people will love to see?

Use them as lead magnets.

19. Access to a 30 Days Challenge

Web users love challenges.

They love it more when the challenge is going to last for some days.

Popular examples are 7, 14 30, 60 and 90 days challenges.

The most popular 30-day challenge I’ve seen on the web is the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that starts from November 1 to November 30 of every year.

There are many other challenges out there.

20. Free Access to Membership

Some internet users want to be members of a club, or community.

It gives them the sense of exclusivity.

If you are thinking of starting a membership site, you can use it as a lead magnet to collect more emails on your website.

For example, Copyblogger does this.

They use their membership site to collect emails of prospects.

21. Access to Become a Member of a Private Facebook Group

This may seem similar to a membership site, but it’s different because you’ll be building your community on Facebook, the biggest social site in the world.

There are a lot of Groups on Facebook. Most are horrible.

By creating a Facebook Group and making it private, you’ll win the hearts of people who like moderated communities.

Use email subscription as a requirement for joining your Facebook Group.

That means you’ll be able to reach members of your group through emails.

22. Free Trial

Free trials are a common SaaS marketing strategy.

According to Totango, 44% of SaaS companies offer a free trial.

If you’re a SaaS, you should be giving prospects a free trial.

For example, MedCognition, a healthcare startup based in San Antonio, Texas allows pre-hospital providers to test-run their patient simulation software for a week.

When you offer a prospect a free trial of your product or service, you get their email address.

If the customer fails to renew after the trial has ended, you can always reach he/she through emails.

If your primary goal is to get the customer’s email, then you shouldn’t ask for their credit card information during the sign-up process.

Asking for their credit card information may stop some potential subscribers from signing up, hence failing to collect their email addresses.

23. Exclusive access to an Interesting Case Study

According to data from Content Marketing Institute, case studies rank as one of the most popular content marketing tactics with 65% of marketers perceiving them as effective.

If you’re not using case studies in your marketing, you’re missing out on something big.

Web readers love case studies. Case studies give them insights they won’t get from normal blog posts.

It’s a true story of what was done and the result that was achieved.

Offering case studies is a nice lead magnet idea that will help you grow your email list.

24. Resource List

If you have quality content scattered across your website, you can organize them into a list and use it as a lead magnet.

After reading a great blog post, I sometimes check out other quality content by the same author on the site. But often, this is hard.

By organizing your best content into a list, you’ll be giving readers the opportunity to check your best work.

25. Checklist

Checklist is a popular lead magnet idea.

Nevertheless, many sites are using it for lead generation.

A checklist is a list of important points, tasks, or ideas given on a web page.

Some readers may want to save their tim

e by downloading the checklist instead of reading the whole content.

Conclusion

If you want to grow your business, you need to generate qualified leads.

Without leads to nurture into customers, your sales won’t grow.

What tool do you need to start collecting leads on your site?

OmniKick.

OmniKick allows you to create high-converting popups.

You can now put your lead magnet into the popups you’ve created on OmniKick.

It’s free to start using OmniKick. Sign up today.

The post 25 Lead Magnet Ideas: How to Generate More Leads on Your Site appeared first on OmniKick.

It has gotten to a point where web users don’t wait to click that “X” sign or “cancel” button on popups they see.

As a web shopper, I’ve seen many popups disrupt my shopping experience.

When you use popups in the wrong way, they could make customers stop visiting your website.

But when you know how to use popups, your conversion rates could increase by over 1,000%.

Nikki McGonigal is a full-time crafter and blogger. She owns the Etsy shop that sells handmade accessories. The name of her site is Nikki, In Stitches.

Nikki used popups to increase her site’s subscribers by 1,375%.

Southtree uses popups to turn visitors into subscribers and customers as soon as they land on their website.

Popups force prospects to see your most important marketing message.

For example, Crocs wants you to sign up with your email address so that they can always tell you about new products and special offers.

Many websites use popups to collect visitors’ email addresses. This is because email is the engine of digital marketing.

ROI from email marketing is 4x higher than social media, paid search, direct mail and other marketing channels.

Email marketing and popups are a powerful combination.

Popups allow you to capture email addresses, and email marketing lets you turn those subscribers into customers.

In this article, you’ll learn how to design popups that turn random visitors into email subscribers.

Bold your popup message

If a message is important, you should make it bold on your website.

“Bold” conveys a sense of urgency and importance to your visitors. It gets their attention.

For example, The Atlantic bolds quotes on the site.

Bold gets visitors’ attention on the web.

So, bold important messages in your popups too.

Coffee For Less bolded “$5 Off” in its popup.

Web shoppers love discounts. By bolding “$5 Off,” it calls prospects attention to the popup.

AYR also bolds the most important message in their popup.

Write actionable headlines

Actionable headlines make visitors take action.

If a headline in your popup doesn’t make a visitor want to act, then it is useless.

Use the Five W’s when writing headlines for your popups.

The Five W’s are who, where, what, when, and why.

Here’s how you use it to write a short but catchy headline:

1. Who are the visitors?
2. Where are they on your website? The headline should be related to the topic on the page where the visitor is.
3. What do visitors want? The headline should introduce a solution or answer to visitors’ questions.
4. When do they want it?
5. Why do visitors want a solution?

A single headline may not be able to incorporate all the Five W’s.

If you can use two or three W’s in each headline, they will make visitors respond faster to your popup messages.

For example, the below screenshot of a popup has a headline that incorporates three W’s.

1. Who? Freelancers, consultants, etc.
2. What? More clients.
3. Why? More cash.

The screenshot of another popup below has two W’s.

1. Who? People who are struggling to get rich.
2. What? More money.

The below popup incorporates four W’s in its headlines.

1. Who? Entrepreneurs, service providers, e-commerce site owners etc.
2. What? A free site audit.
3. When? Now.
4. Why? They want to convert more customers on their websites.

Test and improve your popups

No popup is perfect the first time.

The only way to gain more conversions with your popups is to a/b test them.

What is a/b testing?

“A/B testing (also know as split testing) is the process of comparing two versions of a webpage, popup or app against each other.”

In our case, we’ll be comparing two versions of a popup against each other.

Testing removes the guesswork out of your popup design process.

Run an a/b test on every element of your popup.

Here are the elements you should a/b test in your popup:

• The offer
• Headline
• Image
• The popup’s form length
• The popup’s layout
• The popup’s call to action copy
• Button color
• Button placement
• Numbers in popup
• Urgency in popup

Talking about button placement, for example, here’s a popup that has its button on the left side of the popup.

And here’s another popup that has its button on the right side.

A/B testing tells you which button placement drives the most conversions for your popups.

With Growth Funnel, you can a/b test any element of your popup and track results. You’ll get detailed reports in your Growth Funnel dashboard.

Use compelling images

You’ll notice that I’ve used a lot of images in this post.

Images are interesting to look at.

Why do people visit sites like Instagram and Pinterest?

They go there to see images.

Web users love images.

Images draw more attention to your popups.

Your popups shouldn’t have too many texts. It makes reading boring.

The images you use in your popups should be customized.

If a visitor has seen an image you use in your popup many times before, they’re unlikely to be moved by it.

But if the image is new and interesting, they are more likely to pay closer attention to the message in your popup.

Use social proof

Social proof is when a lot of people are doing something.

It removes doubts from visitors’ minds.

Here’s a popup I saw on Jeff Bullas’ website:

Jeff Bullas receives 400,000 visits on his blog every month.

If thousands of people are visiting Jeff’s blog, it shows that he knows what he does. It shows that people trust him.

Because of that, you’re likely to subscribe to his blog through that popup.

Razor Social used social proof in their popup.

When you use social proof in your popup, you help visitors decide, feel confident in their choice and be excited in becoming part of something big.

If most of your family members, friends or neighbors something, you’re most likely to do it too.

If you’re a dog lover or owner, you’ll want to sign up on the above popup.

Because 310,000+ dog lovers like you have given their email addresses, you’ll trust the site to provide them with your email too.

Make sure that you continue updating the popup as you get more email subscribers.

The bigger your social proof numbers, the better it is for popups.

Note: As a bonus for being a Growth Funnel customer, you can use our social proof tool that displays recent customers on your website for visitors to see. This is a powerful feature that can more than double your sales.

Rethink the timing and display of your popups

The best time to show your popup is when visitors are most open to seeing your message.

This time varies for different industries and niches.

On a blog that talks about getting rich quick, visitors are ready to act from the first second because they are eager.

But if you’re in a niche where you need to educate prospects, displaying your popup may annoy visitors.

For example, it’ll be wrong for a business like Elville and Associates to show popups on their site within the first seconds of a visit.

They are in the legal niche, and their visitors are highly-educated and fairly wealthy individuals.

Timing is one of the most crucial factors when using popups.

You don’t want to display your popup too early so that you don’t upset prospective clients.

And you also don’t want to show your popup too late so that you don’t miss out on potential sales.

How do you know the best time to make your popups appear?

The best way to know is to sign into Google Analytics and find the average time visitors spend on your website.

I recommend that you show your popups 50% – 60% of your site’s average time on page.

If your average time on page is 2 minutes, show your popups between 1 minute to 1 minutes and 12 seconds (72 seconds).

Inside the Growth Funnel editor, you can choose when to show your popups.

When you’re in the “Display Rules” tab, select “After” in the list of options and manually type the number of seconds you want to wait.

Time isn’t the only way of measuring user engagement on your website.

Some visitors may open your website without reading the page. It could be that they are busy reading another page or doing something else.

Scrolling is another way to know if a visitor is ready to see your popup.

If a visitor has seen 50% of the content of a page, then he/she is ready to see your popup.

GrowthFunnel also gives you the option to display your popup according to how much content a visitor has seen on the page.

Inside the same Growth Funnel editor and the “Display Rules” tab, you’ll find the “After Scrolling Down” option. Choose from the range of 40% – 60%.

Offer a content upgrade

If you’ve published many articles on your blog, chances are 10% – 20% of them drive 80% of your entire blog traffic.

Since these blog posts are generating most visits on your website, offer upgrades of those articles to visitors.

Let’s say you’ve published 100 posts on your blog, and 20 are bringing in most of the traffic.

Create 20 better articles that are related to each of the top 20 articles, and use it as the offer in your popup for each page.

Okay, let me give you a real-life example of how this works.

Gael Breton is one of the guys behind Authority Hacker.

He published a post titled “How To Get More Twitter Followers And ‘Automate’ Relationship Building,” and it became successful.

So, he created a content upgrade that is relevant to the article and offered it on the page’s popup.

Brain Dean used content upgrade to boost his conversions by 785% in one day.

You can use content upgrade as the offers in the popups of your most popular pages.

Because those popups will be so relevant to visitors’ needs, you’ll be able to capture even more email addresses on your website.

Here are some types of content upgrades you can offer your site’s visitors:

• Checklists
• Video or audio recordings
• Comprehensive guide.
• Exclusive interviews
• Case studies
• Free trial of a related product
• Free courses
• Swipe files

If you’ve installed Google Analytics on your website, it will tell you the most visited pages on your blog.

Start creating a personalized popup for each page on your site using Growth Funnel.

Growth Funnel lets you create popups that convert random visitors into customers.

Start your Growth Funnel free trial today.

The post Popup Design: How to Create the Perfect Popup appeared first on OmniKick.

If you want to have a profitable and successful business then you need leads and lots of them.

Nothing happens in business without leads. No sales, no profit, no revenue, no nothing.

But, the main concern for the most marketers is generating both high quantity and high quality leads.

Today I am going to explain 29 actionable lead generation techniques that are proven to generate more leads. Though there are hundreds of techniques to generate leads, don’t hang your head with so many points.

#1. Blogging consistently

Blogging is one of the most effective lead generation techniques. According to HubSpot’s recent benchmarks report, companies that blog 6–8 times per month double their lead volume.

In spite of knowing this, not many companies have consistent content calendars.

You should post different type of content on your blog such as educational how to’s, and round-ups that educate your audience.

Make sure that your blog is optimized to generate leads by having a sign-up section for your newsletters. If you can offer high quality and valuable content then people will sign up for newsletters.

#2. Create a product video

People are not only learn by reading, some of them are visual learners and some are audible learners. According to the Social Science Research Network, 65 percent of us are visual learners.

By creating a product video, you can make people understand easily how to use your product more efficiently. By using technology like Wistia you can add a call to action in the middle of the video to collect the email address.

You need to ensure that the product video is not too long and complex and with the tools like Animoto you can easily make amazing product video.

#3. Optimize your call to action button

Is your call to action button prompts users to provide their name and email address?

Here are few things you need to consider while you craft your call to action button:

Your call to action must stand be contrasting with background color. If the color of your button blends with the background color, no one will notice it as a button.

The text of your call to action button must tell the visitors what will be the outcomes if they click. For example, if you use “submit” as a button text that does not mean anything.

If you offer an eBook the button text you may use “Download Free eBook”, which is meaningful and it clearly says what will happen if people click.

The placement of your call to action is also important. Make sure you place your button where the eyes go naturally.

Here is a neat example with a perfect call to action button.

#4. Use language wisely to boost confidence

We are all worried about the charge when we subscribe to any product or service. The biggest question is do I really need to pay if I want to subscribe?

You need to answer this question clearly. If you offer something free, you need to clearly state that it’s free because it adds confidence. Also, you need mention the offer ending time.

This strategy often increase the signups due to increased confidence.

#5. Statistics of success

No one want to jump into a murky lake alone as a first person. If people see someone is swimming, then it will make them feel safer of said lake as someone is already there.

It’s a natural tendency when we see the social proof that other people are doing one thing, we tend to follow suit.

We can take advantage of that fact by mentioning the number of people who have already signed up, purchased or downloaded.

Leadpage has perfectly used this technique. Just take a look at the below image.

#6. Use lead magnets

People do not buy the product or service at first visit in a website. They look around to find the best one with reasonable price.

But, if you can collect the email address at first visit that’s not a bad deal. Here lead magnet play a great role to capture the email address.

You can offer a free checklist, eBook or course that your potential customers are looking in exchange for their email address.

Then you can follow up with them until they become your customers.

#7. Include content upgrades

Content upgrade is an excellent technique out there to convert your readers into email subscribers. It provides additional value to the readers related to the blog post they read.

Recently, I have written a blog post on copywriting tips to boost conversions. On the blog post I also included a checklist which is downloadable in exchange for an email address. With the checklist people can get 2 Bonus tips. By using this technique we got a good response so far.

People won’t mind to give their email address in exchange of something valuable.

 #8. Make the form appear smaller

We all know the more field you keep on your form, the more conversion rates fall. However, based on your business or product, you may need to keep 4-5 fields in your form.

If it applies to your business, then try to make the form look smaller by adjusting the styling. Because, people often don’t just fill out a form when it looks longer and they think it will take a while to fill out the form.

Just take a look at the image below, both forms have the same number of field but the right side form appears smaller than left one.

#9. Minimize concern with trust elements

Because of the increase in spam, now-a-days people are not reluctant to provide their personal information through website.

Having the trust elements in your website can reduce your audience concern to give you their personal information.

Here are couple of points you may consider to implement in your website to boost the trust factor.

If you ask people to provide their sensitive information, include trust seals such as Verisign and Better Business Bureau etc. so that your audience know their information is secure and safe.

Adding a privacy message like “we respect you email privacy” indicates that their email addresses will not be shared with others.

#10. Include all necessary elements in your landing pages

You need to ensure that your landing pages have all the necessary information to convert the visitors into leads. If your audience can’t get all the necessary information then why would they give you their email address?

For example, your landing page must have a headline, sub headline, a brief description of the offer, product image, a form to capture leads and definitely a call to action.

Let me show you an example of a perfect landing page with all must have elements.

#11. Giveaway the full access to bloggers and influncers

Give away the full access of your product features to well respected bloggers and industry experts is the best way to get free promotion and additional leads.

All you need to do just find the bloggers and influencers, communicate with them and offer them a full access to your product. All you should ask in return is an honest review of your product.

It may cost you few bucks but if they like your product, they will promote it on their social network and you will also get an expert endorsement.

#12. Accepting guest post

Invite the famous bloggers and influencers to write for your blog. In exchange offer them a handsome amount of money and of course a backlink.

If you can have a guest post from famous bloggers and influencers you will get a quality article. Moreover, after publishing the post they will share the article on their network. You can expect to get some leads from their audience.

Eventually, you will get a brand exposure of your brand. Also, it will help you to build a long term relationship with them.

#13. Showcase the testimonials and reviews

One of the easiest way to build trust is by showing the positive testimonials and reviews from the existing customers.

To get the testimonials and reviews, you can ask your happy customers to write a testimonial or review to post on your website. They won’t mind to give you that if your product really had helped them.

When people will see others are happy with you then the new user will subscribe or sign up too.

Backlinko did a great job here. They are displaying the testimonials from industry experts.

#14. Remove the navigation menu from landing page

When your goal is conversion, having navigation menu on your landing page will reduce the chances of conversion. If you keep the menu on your dedicated landing page, people may consider to browse other pages instead of taking your desired action.

If it must then add a link to your homepage via your company logo. Make sure you remove all the distractions from the landing page which will help the visitors to be converted easily. The only option your visitors should get is to click on your call to action button.

Let me show you an example what I have explained. After landing on this page, visitors will be able to take only action which is to click on the call to action button.

#15. Make a presentation for slideshare

Slideshare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations.

If you can make a well-designed and visually attractive presentation with interesting content then Slideshare may feature your presentation on their homepage which will provide greater exposure to your website.

Moreover, Slideshare have a premium tools that allow you to embed email opt in within your presentation. From there you will be able generate some leads.

#16. Arrange a quiz

Offer some kind of quick and interesting assessment online and ask people to sign up by using their email address to get their results delivered by email. People will surely attend the quiz if you can offer something valuable as a prize.

But, there are few things you must get right to arrange an effective quiz.

• The topic must be interesting and relevant to what you do
• You must giveaway something valuable as an award
• The questions should be super easy

#17. Use exit intent pop-up

We all know people hate pop-ups. Not surprisingly, many studies found that 90-95% people hate pop-ups.  If that many people hate pop-ups then why pop-ups are used all over the internet?

The honest truth is that, people also respond to them. Many website owners have seen an increase in sale after adding pop-ups up to 40%.

Pop-ups are not always bad if you can use it properly. Showing the pop-up just after arriving to your website is not a good strategy. You can use it with mouse tracking before they just leave the page. Show a visible way to quit the pop-up if people are not interested on it.

XeroShoes, increases sales 9.81% just by using exit intent pop-up. Here is the pop-up they have used.

#18. Use twitter lead cards

Twitter is one of the big social networks. You can generate leads easily by using this platform. They have a special feature for lead generation which is called “Lead Cards”.

By using the lead cards you can collect email addresses in exchange for an offer. This is one of the effective lead generation techniques. Let me show you an example how HP Cloud using this technique.

Similarly, you can create a Twitter campaign to offer an eBook or other resources to your followers that requires sign up to claim your offer.

#19. Focus on benefits

People love to hear the benefits rather than specification. Therefore, instead of focusing on specification of your product or service, you must emphasize the benefits on your landing page.

Make sure you include brief paragraph or bullet points to explain the benefits. Having the benefits on landing page will encourage the visitors to take your desired action.

Just take a look at the below screenshot, how beautifully they have highlighted the benefits with bullet points.

#20. Enable social sharing

Having the social sharing option on your landing page will allow people to share your landing page with their connections. Therefore, make sure you include the social sharing buttons to enable your prospect to share your offer or content.

 If more people share your landing page, then more people will land on the page and as a result more people will fill out your form and will become your leads.

#21. Email marketing

Many business owners are believe that email marketing no longer working to generate new leads. In my point of view this perception is wrong if you can do that in right way.

Let’s say, you brought a bunch of email addresses and if you send them your offer or content they will recognize it as a spam. This strategy will work only if you have happy subscribers to your business.

If you send the valuable offer to your subscribers whether it’s a discount, downloads or educational content they will share it with their friends and colleagues. As a result, you will get some new subscribers.

#22. Answer question on Quora

Quora is a popular question and answer site. This platform will allow you to create a profile with links backs to your site or landing page.

If you can answer questions in useful and effective way that gets you direct exposure to leads who are asking about your solution.

Let’s say someone is looking for best books for CRO in Quora and if you are a CRO expert and have a book for CRO then you can redirect him/her to your landing page. Then you can easily collect the email address in exchange of your book.

#23. Create scarcity

Scarcity is when something appears limited and going to be finished soon. It has a psychological influence on us and making us feel like we need to act immediately.

This technique can be used in many ways. Often people use this by showing limited time offers or limited quantity offers.

For example, using the phrases like 20% discount during weekends, order in the next 2 hours for free delivery, only 2 seats left etc. create scarcity and make people to act quickly.

#24. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most cleverest and effective lead generation techniques. The more effective your SEO is, the higher your website ranks in search engine.

SEO help potential customers to discover your product and give you a chance to organically attract them to your product or service.

One of the exclusive advantages of SEO as a lead generation technique is that it can generate more qualified leads if you can do that in right way.

#25. Arrange webinars

A webinar is an online version of seminars. By arranging webinars you can generate some potential leads. But, you need to ensure that the discussion topic of the webinars should be interesting and educational but not promotional.

Make sure you keep a registration form to attend on your webinars. Via the online registration you can collect the basic information of the attendees. If people can learn from your webinars then they will invite others to join in your webinars.

This is also an excellent way to prove that you are one of the expert in your industry.

#26. Giveaway white papers or eBook

Offering white papers and eBooks are another way for you to show your expertise and thought leadership.

Pick the topics that are relevant to your target market and give the information regarding the common needs or challenges. People love to read when they find something interesting and useful for them.

Make sure that you have a landing page set up that needs visitors to input their name, email address for a chance to download the white paper or eBook.

#27. More landing pages means more leads

According to a study conducted by HubSpot, more landing pages means more leads. Companies capture 55% more leads when increasing their landing pages from 10 to 15.

The more offers, content and landing pages you create, the more chances to capture more leads for your business.

 #28. Craft an attention grabbing title

Having an attention grabbing headline is essential for generating leads. You might have a great content in your eBook or whitepaper but if the title is not interesting then no one even bother to have a look on it. People often judge a book by its title.

Don’t trust my words?

Hubspot changed an eBook title from “The Productivity Handbook for Busy Marketers” to “7 Apps That Will Change the Way You Do Marketing” and they found that the revised version outperformed the original title by 776% in terms of lead generation.

So, if you offer is content such as an eBook or white paper then make sure you create an amazing title.

#29. Give less choice

Increasing the number of choices in any decision will increase the amount of time required to make a decision. Therefore, giving less choice is always wise for conversions.

For example, if you keep several call to action button on your landing page then your audience will be confused where they should click. Eventually they will leave the page even without taking any action.

Less choice means less confusion and less confusion means more leads.

Final Thoughts

As a marketer, the pressure is always on to deliver more qualified leads. On top of the techniques described here, there are plenty of lead generation plugins as well which you can use. I hope by using the above 29 lead generation techniques you should be able to generate both high quantity and high quality leads.

What are some lead generation techniques have helped you generate most leads? Let me know in the comment box below

Related articles: email marketing strategies, grow your email list, best email services

The post 29 Sneaky Lead Generation Techniques You Can Implement Today! appeared first on OmniKick.

Email marketing is going to remain a top priority for companies in 2016-a survey says.

I know you will be surprised to know that how your competition has grown such a vast email list. You may be wishing you had a larger audience of your content and able to build a huge email list. Believe me; you are not alone.

Nearly one-fourth of companies’ says they will spend an average more than 30 emails per month in 2016.

Additionally, 86.7% of the survey respondents said they would spend more money on email marketing this year.

It is a bit of science to build a profitable email marketing list.

 Here I like to share few stats points of inbound marketing-

• Email marketing as a channel was the third overall lead gen source for marketers in 2013, producing 13% of all leads.
• Email marketing created above average lead conversions for 27% of marketers in 2013.
• 21% of marketers report that social media has become more important to their company over the past six months.
• Email marketing is considered the third overall most effective channel for lead generation for marketers in 2013, producing 13% of all leads.

Stats Source- Hubspot

Email proves, again and again, it’s the best way to engage customer, blog readers. Fans and others. Even with the rush of social media options, the best response rates comes from email.

Every 60 seconds-

• 120,000 tweets are posted
• 510,000 comments on Facebook are published and
• 1,350 photos are uploaded to Instagram.

Free PDF Download: Get access to the free checklist that will show you how to grow your email list with social media.

hi hi hi
That’s why you need to build an email list, grow it, and optimize it for your needs. So how do you get your people to take the next step and join your email list?

Here are thirteen simple strategies to try out-

• Goodbye to “Submit” Button
• Use “Share With your Network” Button
• Add in Custom Facebook App like  ActionSprout
• Use Twitter Bio
• Lead generation Cards on Twitter
• Host an event
• Generate A Pinterest Offer
• Post Compelling Photos on Instagram
• Publish links to gated Offer On Linkedin
• Add URLs in YouTube video
• Promote offers and Email sign-up through Google+ page
• Run a contest
• OFFER EXCLUSIVE CONTENT OR SET BENCHMARK  

Social media is all craze, but we can’t forget to use these marketing channels to fuel our growing email list. – Brian Honigman.

1.Goodbye to ‘Submit’ Button

There are many different app options to add and set up an email sign-up form to your Facebook page.

Some suggested email sign-up apps are-

• Constant Contact Facebook app
• MailChimp’s Facebook sign-up app
• iContact’s Facebook app
• Benchmark’s Email app
• JD Subra Email Sign-up app

To add one of these apps to your Facebook page-

• First, visit the top right app banner
• Click on the drop-down menu indicated by a number with an arrow pointing downwards.
• Add Facebook-app-tab

Click on this drop down menu to view your other added app and to install more.

Facebook Introduced the Call to Action button in 2014. This button resides on a page’s cover photo. There are several Call to Action button like-

• Sign-up
• Shop now
• Contact us
• Watch Video
• Save
• Donate Now

Here look at the example of “Sign-up” Call to Action Button-

Another example of “Donate Now” Call to action button-

When audience clicks on your sign up button, show them why they should give their email address to you. For example, “Download our checklist for free” or “Get Your Update Content”.

2.USE “SHARE WITH YOUR NETWORK” BUTTON

It is important to encourage your current email marketing list members to share your list. Remember, people are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend. It helps you to built an email list.

Wisely use your timeline to promote offers and be sure to “Share with your Network” or Social Sharing Button to the landing pages and thank you pages you send them to encourage to share your content and newsletter with their common zone network contact.

3.USE CUSTOM FACEBOOK APP( A GREAT TOOL- ACTIONSPROUT):

 Check if you’re CRM have a Facebook integration add a new tool called ActionSprout. They serve up Facebook to enable petitions to your audience.

ActionSprout makes easy for the social activist to take actions with one click. Their tool has a forever free plan so that you can try it out.

See another one…

4.USE TWITTER BIO:

You can use your Twitter Bio in a very effective way. It also can be a cool way to engage with your audience and build your email list.

You have to be creative to use your limited space. Place a link to your email sign up form directly in your bio. For example, OpenMerit promotes their free guide and email series using Twitter bio….

Source

A ‘Thank You’ message will encourage your audience to tweet more. It’s always nice to thank you to your audience and retweet their messages.

But think if you retweet their mentions of your articles it becomes an ambassador’s message and both thank you messages and retweet going to add exposure to sign-ups and newsletter.

5.LEAD GENERATION CARDS ON TWITTER

Twitter offers lead generation cards that allow you-

• To promote your content
• Collect information on customers

Here’s an example of a card from Cruise Line…

Source

You can promote anything you choose through this lead generation cards. From your email newsletter to a new secret part of your website.

So create a Twitter campaign to offer an eBook or a free resource to your followers that require an email address to reclaim.

6.HOST AN EVENT

Hosting an event is a great way to connect with your audience, Facebook makes it easier. Whether you host an online webinar or an event for your business make sure you’re collecting email addresses during the registration process.

Here’s how Ross McKenzie promotes a webinar-

Another Example of Twitter Webinar….

7.GENERATE A PINTEREST OFFER

You could leverage to host a variety of different offer that will help you to capture email addresses. Here I ‘m mentioning two Pinterest contest platform-

• Piqora and
• Curalate

Running a photo contest on Pinterest could be a great jumping off. Make sure you create a killer and eye catching call to action within the pin.

Pinterest is a super place to target and get closer to your target audience.

• 68% of the users are women
• 50% have children and
• 1% of users make $Six figure+ per year

People love to share infographics through Pinterest and it an amazing place to share sleek infographics. Here is one of the tactics is to create an infographic with a very specific Call to Action that will take your audience to a sign-up page.

For example, a button at the bottom of the infographic that says, ‘Like what you’ve seen? Click Here to subscribe to our blog

8.POST COMPELLING PHOTOS ON INSTAGRAM

One of the best things you can do if you are getting started is to  increase your traffic. You cannot grow your audience without traffic because no one will know about your existence. You will find Instagram to be an outstanding place to grow your website traffic.

You could leverage in a number of ways-

4. Post a photo of a discounted item or offered product exclusively for your email newsletter subscribers.
5. Upload a video showing the benefits of signing up for your email newsletter.
6. Make a post a picture or video that details your exclusive email content.

Here I also like to mention that regarding link posting Instagram offers you two options-

7. Either copy and paste your link onto your actual photo, Or
8. Include it in your Bio.

Make sure you include clear directions if you choose to paste the link onto a photo. Also, tell your follower about the email sign up a link in your bio.

9.PUBLISH LINKS TO GATED OFFER ON LINKEDIN

Publish links to gated offer in your LinkedIn company page. You can also publish in appropriate and related LinkedIn group discussions.

10. ADD URLS IN YOUTUBE VIDEO

People respond to images more than text means using video will most likely earn you more likes, shares, and follow than simply posting information. It will allow people to engage with your content and make them convinced to join your email list.

Add URLs and calls-to-action in your videos to encourage your audience to subscribe your email list. You can include links to relevant landing pages in videos’ text descriptions.

11. PROMOTE OFFERS AND EMAIL SIGN-UP THROUGH GOOGLE+ PAGE

Social media marketing and email listing both are effective in their own place. But when you combine the two you got the opportunity to grow your email list by engaging more with your audience.

By placing offers and email sign-up through your Google+ page by making use of your two sections-

• Google+ Updates and
• Google+ “About.”

Promote offers and email sign-up through your Google+ Page by making use of your Google+ updates and your Google+ “About” section.

By placing email sign up links within your social media channels, you’re given the chance to turn interested prospects into valuable customers.

12. HOST A GIVEAWAY

If you want to grow your subscriber, host a giveaway. You can try KingSumo Giveaways plugin.

Your entrants just have to pop in their email address and then good to go.

Once they do that they can see on screen-

If your audience shares the giveaway on their social media or with their email list, then they have the opportunity to get even more entries for each person who sign up through your “Special URL”. Thus, you can create “Viral” giveaway.

Try one of the following Facebook apps to run your contest, sweepstakes or giveaway-

• Fanappz
• Votigo
• Bulbstrom
• Noth Social
• Offerpop
• Rafflecopter
• Strutta

Be sure to choose one that offers sign-up form as a type of entry for participation to generate emails from a contest on the Facebook platform.

13. OFFER EXCLUSIVE CONTENT OR SET BENCHMARK

As a person of the content world if you don’t have a product to giveaway think about what exclusive content you can offer.

On cloud computing, anything from a downloadable guide to a link to a secret content could be just the incentive your audience needs to give you their contact information.

If you thinking something to do that can blow someone’s mind…….see this-

Headbands of Hope is a company founded by a college student, Jess Ekstrom, that gives headbands to girls with cancer and funding to research For every headband sold, one is given to a girl with cancer. Headbands of Hope has donated headbands to every children’s hospital in the United States.

For every headband purchased, one is given to a child with cancer.

Take a look at the Giving Gallery-

CHANGE THE NAME

Long gone are the days of people joining a ‘Newsletter’? Either think of a creative name or even call it an email list, exclusive list or VIP list.

Have a strong follow-up series after they join and send them a series of emails over the course of a week or two. Talk about you, what you can share and share some of your best content. It’s a great way to welcome them and let your personality shine through as well as prove that your emails are valuable to open up.

Final Thoughts

“People don’t change their email addresses. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, People join and drop that pretty often. But changing your email address is a hassle. That’s why you still have friends with AOL and Hotmail accounts”- notes New York Times best-selling Author Jon Acuff.

I agree that it is better to have a list than to have never started one. I’m glad that you will no longer rely on social media only to get your message there. There are plenty of awesome list building strategies available. You will shine to see your business growth as your email list grows by following effective ways. GO AHEAD!!

Related articles: lead generation techniques, best email services, email marketing strategies

The post 13 Ways To Grow Your Email List With Social Media appeared first on OmniKick.

Over the past few years, the term “growth hacking” has become the new favorite phrase in the internet marketing space.

Local businesses talk about growth hacking their stores.

Bloggers talk about growth hacking their readership.

Startups talk about growth hacking their usage.

I realize that no one is talking about growth hacking their email list.

Most marketers are starting to forget this old powerful phrase:

“The money is in the list.”

In fact, Google Trends showed that interest in the new phrase has quickly surpassed interest in the old phrase.

Is it that marketers are starting to forget how powerful an email list can be?

No, I’m not trying to say that “growth hacking” is the new fad.

Growth hacking has been in existent for a very long time. It’s just that marketers don’t call it “growth hacking” until Sean Ellis coined the phrase and Andrew Chen popularized it. And that was just 2010.

An earlier, perfect example of growth hacking is Hotmail. That was 1996 – 1997, of course. That’s 13 years before the strategy finally has a name.

I like growth hacking. I breathe it.

When you build an email list, you automatically become a knowledgeable internet marketer.

You can sell to an email list over and over again – that’s the power.

But when you combine email list building with growth hacking, you not only become a talented marketer – you become the KING of your niche.

Let’s talk about combining these two powerful internet marketing strategies together.

How can your growth hack your email list?

How To Build A Valuable Email List In Less Time

Over the past years, I’ve read a lot (probably hundreds) of case studies, showing how some smart people built their big email list.

You’ve probably read most of those list building tutorials out there. They leave you with more questions than answers after you read them.

I stopped reading list building tutorials because they really don’t get into the main thing you have to do to grow a valuable email list.

For example, some tutorials will tell you to put a subscription box on your blog sidebar to grow your email list.

Maybe you’ve done that, then you expect some 1,000 email addresses as claimed by the tutorial within 24 hours, but nothing happened.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

That page is an HubSpot blog post on how to build an email list.

If you take some of the advice from that post, you may work for more than six months, yet you still don’t have a big email list.

To build a massive email list, you need to start from somewhere right?

You don’t begin from the top when you want to achieve something BIG. You start from the lowest point and then build your way up. The same thing applies to list building.

One of the best ways to build a big email list is to growth hack it.

How do you growth hack it?

There are four amazing ways you can do that.

#1: Ask All Your Friends And Family To Join Your Email List

Bryan Harris is the KING when it comes to list building.

Bryan always recommends that anyone who’s trying to build a solid email list should start from their current network. That’s what he did when he was starting out.

In fact, he didn’t have a website when he started building his email list. (Sounds crazy?).

Here are Bryan’s first two posts:

Those two Facebook posts generated 49 comments.

Bryan sent private messages to those 49 people and received 25 responses.

He developed a relationship with them and knew what they want.

He created a product they’ll like to buy.

He Facebook messaged those 25 people who responded to his emails, and 19 people bought his product for $29 each.

Bryan made $551 just from 19 customers?

No website.

No autoresponder.

No business name.

No logo.

He sold his products all through Facebook.

But Bryan didn’t stop there.

He collected another 575 email addresses through a Facebook group.

Note: He built his email list just by private messaging potential customers and asking people in the group to DM (direct message) him.

He launched another product and introduced it to his email list of 575 people.

Do you know what happened?

21 people bought his product at $397 each. Bryan generated a total revenue of $8,337 from that launch alone.

Who say you need a big email list before you can start making money?

You only need a few highly-targeted people to join your email list, and that begins with people you already know.

You can reach out to your current network of friends and ask them to join your email list, and even refer more of their buddies.

You can reach out to anyone who posts a question on a Facebook group and tell them you have a nice and lovely product that will help them solve their problem.

Here’s a perfect example:

This is a potential customer you might add to your email list and sell your product?

Facebook is just the right place when it comes to leveraging your current network to grow your email list.

If you can grow an engaged list of 500 people through your Facebook friends and groups you’re part of, you can be sure of comfortably making at least $2,000 from that list.

I have a friend of mine who runs a driving school in Brooklyn. About 90% of his business comes from his current network, and Facebook is a big part of this.

#2: Create Keyword-Targeted Landing Pages

If you browse the web a lot as I do, I’m sure you’ve come across a lot of landing pages.

Some landing pages are made to sell.

Some are made to promote social media profiles like a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Some are made to collect emails.

I like the last one.

I like the last one because it can still help me easily achieve the first two which are selling and promoting my social media profiles.

For example, if I collect your email, I can still ask you to follow me on Facebook and buy my product. There’s a high chance that you’ll do that.

But when you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, there’s a high chance that I’ve lost you as a customer.

Those social platforms are noisy places. You may not get to see any of my future updates. But you’ll surely see my update in your email (unless you don’t check it).

I like when landing pages are made to do one thing: collect emails.

How can you growth hack your email list from a mere landing page?

The answer is simple:

Rank for a high-traffic keyword and collect emails from that post by making it a landing page.

It’s called keyword-focused landing page.

I’ve found that this approach works a lot.

What you want to do here is find a keyword that gets decent traffic from search engines.

Create a blog post around that keyword.

Do all you can to make sure that post lands on the first page (or #1) of Google search result for the target keyword.

Then collect emails from that post.

Some businesses use this strategy to build a massive email list, and their businesses are now worth tens of million dollars.

For example, Copyblogger has keyword-focused landing pages that rank on Google’s first pages for “internet marketing,” “content marketing” and “copywriting.”

These keywords receive average monthly searches of 40,500, 74,000, and 110,000 respectively.

Let’s use copywriting in our example. This is a keyword that receives 110,000 average monthly searches according to Google Keyword Planner

Now, let’s see how this Copyblogger’s copywriting page looks like:

As you can see in the above screenshot, this page is made to achieve only one goal, which is getting more people to sign up for Copyblogger’s free copywriting course.

Through pages like this, the Copyblogger team has been able to build hundreds of thousands of emails over the past years.

They actively build links to their keyword-focused landing pages to make sure they rank high on Google.

So imagine you can make a landing page on a keyword that receives thousands of searches per month, and you get your page to rank on the first page of search engines, it means you’ll keep getting emails for many years to come as long as your landing page continues to rank high.

This list building growth hacking approach reduces your customer acquisition cost to almost zero.

#3: Lock Content To Increase Your Email Subscribers

Chances are your website is currently receiving some traffic from social media or search engines.

How can you leverage those platforms to growth hack your email list without annoying your current readers?

There’s a simple tactic I’ve used to build my email list on my niche sites.

What is it?

Well, I simply lock some part of my content.

If your content is really interesting or educative, a visitor to your website would want to see that locked part of your content. Trust me, they’ll be very curious to see it.

One tool I often use for this purpose is Opt-in Content Locker For WordPress (WordPress only).

It doesn’t matter if your blog currently receives little traffic, you can build an email list that’s even more than those with a high-traffic website.

#4: Offer Content Upgrades To Boost Your Email List

Content upgrades are less pushy than content locks, but they’re as effective too.

Unlike traditional “site-wide” lead magnets, content upgrades are unique to the specific content that people are already reading or listening to on your site.

Chances are if people are satisfied with the content on your web page, they will also be interested in an upgrade of that content.

For example, Pat Flynn saw a 500% increase in opt-ins when he started offering content upgrades on his website.

Brian Dean boosted his opt-ins by over 785% when he started offering content upgrades.

Here’s a screenshot of what he did:

You might say that both Pat Flynn and Brian Dean have huge readership base.

The good news is that you don’t need to have a huge readership before you apply this technique.

For example, let’s assume that your website receives 100 visitors per day. You could be converting at least 10% of that when you use content upgrades. That would bring 300 new email subscribers for a month. I think that number is still amazing for a small blog.

So you have zero excuses why you shouldn’t be building your email list.

With this four effective growth hacking techniques, you can start building your email list starting from today.

Please share this article with your friends on your favorite social site.

Thanks in advance.

The post How To Growth Hack Your Email List appeared first on OmniKick.

Your website is one such gear that ought to keep you abreast of your enemies.

However, how a website is going to be useful to you depends on how you use it.

If your website isn’t generating leads, then there’s no point in having one, is there?

Well, that doesn’t mean that you discard your website, it simply means that you hang out with me for the rest of this blog and find out 3 useful lead generation strategies to get much deserved leads from your site.

Good enough?

Read on.

What is the Function of a Homepage?

In the arena of internet marketing the talk is mostly about how you can optimize your landing pages for higher conversion rates.

A website is not much different from a landing page in the sense that it’s a collection of landing pages.

So when I say that you’ve got to optimize your website, what I really mean is that you have to optimize specifically one of your landing pages: your homepage.

Your homepage is the first page of your website or simply the original URL.

What the function of your homepage is, is for you to decide.

For different types of business it serves different purposes.

For instance, some use their homepage as their ‘About Us’ page, while others use it to launch in to great details about their products and services.

However, since your objective is to generate leads and eventually convert them into prospective buyers, you have to create your homepage in a way that is bound to attract leads.

Optimizing your website is not only about bettering your homepage, rather it is also about linking the other pages of your site in such a way as to ensure that you’re guiding your visitors in a certain conversion path.

1.  How to Optimize Your Homepage

When your homepage registers on the search engine results page, you’re going to have to be prepared to awe your visitors.

There are a few pointers that you’re going to have to ensure that you have on your homepage to make it click-worthy.

You have to remember that this is the first stop from a search engine result, a paid ad or any other source for your visitor and you’ve got to set bait real quick.

If you interested to know how to get more traffic on your website see what Brian Dean tells on his post.

A bait on your homepage is not going to be any one thing, but a composition of a few perfectly executed elements and they are as follows:

Heading

This is the element that’s going to be making the first impression because it practically tells the people what the page is all about.

The first most important thing about a heading is its visibility. Pick a legible font and size that’s h1 so that your heading stands out from the rest of the text.

The size normally used for headings is H1 which is preset on WordPress.

The next most important thing about a heading after its font and size is how attractive and at the same time, informative it is.

For some people, no matter how boring your headline is, they will go on to read it probably because it’s a part of a research or they came to learn something new.

For the sake of these people you will have to make sure that your heading has the bare minimum information that your entire content has.

Your heading must incite curiosity and the rest of the page must be in correlation to it in order to deliver whatever has been promised.

Here’s an example,

Although this is not the traditional heading but it does a great job in one, standing out and two, stating the purpose of the business clearly.
Kudos!

Here’s another one.

This is an example of a fabulous homepage. It’s neat and clean and very simple.

Even though the name of the company has been placed in the left hand corner, the center has been given to the most important piece of information: what the company has to offer its customers.

Subheading or a Brief Description

Since your homepage is not your blog page or any other content, your heading could be the name of your business or company.

This could be accompanied by a subheading or a brief description.

As you have seen in the screen shot above, just the word or heading isn’t enough and so they say where they’re specializing and what they’ve designed themselves to do.

Take a look at this page,

They makes the perfect use of subheading by concisely telling its visitors what services they can avail from this page.

Even the heading is informative!

Moving on, there’s something that all three of these pages have in common and that’s what I’m going to be looking at next.

CTA

While removing distractions is a great idea, you’re call-to-action or CTA has to be equally loud and clear.

Easy navigation is part and parcel of a page that generates large leads because a large part of your leads will come by making sure that you carefully guide them towards your preferred destination.

This is one page that’s gotten their navigation right.

If you’ll look at the two pictures you’ll see that they’ve both got ‘Shop Women’ and ‘Shop Men’ CTAs on them.

This is subtly guiding the visitors to the next stage which is purchasing.

Once, somebody clicks on either one of those buttons, they’ll be lead to a page where every picture is accompanied by a ‘Shop Now’ button.

Check out the picture below,

The whole point of your homepage is to trap leads, yet if you’ve not left any crumbs lying around what do you expect your visitors to do?

This brings us about to our next important part to generating leads.

2.  How to Optimize Opt-in Form

You may have designed a great opt-in page that you’ve added on your homepage as a link.

Now, if you’re expecting your visitors to navigate through the correct link and signup then you’re doomed.

The best idea is to have your CTAs on the homepage itself.

Here’s an example,

Here we can see they have call-to-action that says ‘Get Free Card Reader’.

It has a simple opt-in form so people won’t be as reluctant as they are when faced with too many field to fill in.

If you think adding an opt-in form is going to spoil the anatomy then you could try doing what they’ve done here in the example below,

Send a pop-up opt-in form just so that your visitors know what needs to be done.

In this example instead of creating traditional opt-in pop he creatively said that he made 2 cookbooks with new recipes for his visitors and offer them for free.

What adds more value that he added 2 attractive images of his cookbooks and then added his call-to-action such this ‘yes, I’d like free cookbooks!’ This definitely attract the visitors to subscribe. You can make the best use of this idea!

If you’re not already acquainted with the finer details of how to optimize opt-in forms then you should probably go read up on it first.

This is the most crucial aspect of your homepage because generating leads depends solely on the action taken by your visitors.

Adding an email sign-up form right under your heading is one of the most high-converting places for your opt-in form.

That way there’s very little scope for distractions and the call is quite obvious.

At this point, if all has gone right for you, you’re all set to generate a healthy serving of leads.

3.  Nurture your Leads

Although you truly may have generated a lot of leads you’re nowhere near success … yet.

The real deal starts after you’re visitors have signed up for something that you promised to offer them.

Here’s a few things that will help you to make sure that your visitors don’t slip away.

The first thing that you’ve got to do after visitors have signed up is send them a thank you note.

Often it’s just an encouraging mail that can warm your leads up to you.

And sometimes it requires a little more effort than that.

Often leads are not yet ready to move on to the next step of the conversion or sales funnel, that is begin the purchase process.

This is why you’ve got to spend a good amount of effort behind them.

Like most businesses, if you’ve got a blog that is updated on a regular basis then you could get that to work in your favor as well.

The inactivity on part of your visitors will help you comprehend where they stand.

In that case, instead of mailing them a whole course-like series you could send them links to your blog on a daily basis.

You Know what’s Another Great Idea?

That’s listening to your visitors once in a while.

I mean, as internet marketers we often get way too busy trying to tell people, trying really hard to sell our products.

We rant on about our services and all the flashy offers we have, but we rarely hear from those people without whom our business don’t run.

Since this is a rare thing, listening to your visitors will give you an edge over your competitors.

Ask your visitors to send in a mail, or you could arrange for a live chat session where you could address their problems on a one to one basis.

Just make it worth their time and effort.

In fact asking your visitors or engaging in a conversation with them is an ideal move because it allows you to monitor your leads.

By keeping a keen eye on them you can easily understand how much they are willing to partake in a monetary transaction and consequently what your next step towards them should be.

Instead of blinding sending out generalized emails, you can prepare content for each group of your visitors.

And believe me; it’ll be totally worth it.

So before I wrap up let’s do a review of the things that you’ve got to stick to.

1. Homepage: You’ve got to create an optimized homepage which you could also do with some help that you can find online.

2. Opt-in forms: These have got to be top-of-the-class stuff since this is what baits your visitors and finally,

3. Nurture your leads: because just getting them doesn’t spell success.

Conclusion

Well that’s pretty much the definitive guide to how you can capture and guide your leads towards a successful endeavor.

Capturing leads is a lot like catching fish with a rod.

You’ve got to be stealthy, smart and patient.

Anyway, enough with the dramatics; I’ll let you be on your way so that you can go and begin with the magic.

Let me know in the comments below how you’re faring with your leads.

Questions are also welcome.

Related articles: conversion optimization tips, lead generation strategies, improve your conversion rates, boost landing page conversion

The post 3 Useful Lead Generation Strategies to Get More Leads appeared first on OmniKick.

Well, unfortunately, it’s not just a feeling, it’s for real.

In order to battle the foes and increase optin page conversion, there are certain pointers that if you follow, will light your path to success.

Below is an accumulation of the best and most effective ways that will allow you to optimize conversion of your opt-in pages, so read on.

What are optin pages

An optin page allow visitors of a page to opt in for or sign up for updates, news, offers, etc from a website that may eventually lead them to partake in a transactional relation. However, visitors may also opt out once they’ve signed up and this is the kind of thing you’ll want to prevent.

Before you rush onto creating an opt-in page you have to figure out what it is that you want as a marketer.

What group of people are you targeting and what exactly are you expecting from them? What is your ultimate objective by making them sign-up? Do you want your visitors to simply read free mail that you’re sending them, or do you want them to eventually sign up for an offer?

Once you have that figured out you’re headed one step in the direction that your goal lies. Now you can organize and design your templates according to your objective.

Ideally, you want to populate your mailing list so that your chances of a signed deal increases. So your opt-in form has to be as direct and inviting as possible.

How to arrive at the opt-in form

There are various ways in which a person could end up at your optin page. The point is which way is the best and most effective for it to be presented. That’s exactly what I’m here for, to tell you how to make it work.

There are two most used opt-in forms and I’ve seen that most of the websites that I’ve visited use both of them for maximum conversion. They either use an opt-in form on their landing page or have pop-up opt-in boxes. There’s a third less popular kind and that kind dedicates a whole page called the opt-in page for the same purpose.

Scroll on to read about each of them to achieve maximum opt-in conversion.

1 Landing page opt-in forms

If you’re grumbling at this point because your landing page is a no-show on search engines and you have difficulty in generating traffic, you might want to read up on landing page optimization before you continue with this.

Now that we’ve cleared that outlets move on.

You can place the opt-in form on the landing page or an optin page that allows your visitors an easy access to it. The most common place to position your opt-in form is on the top of the sidebar of a an optin page, above the fold so that it is one of the first things that your visitors see and also so that they don’t have to scroll down to access it.

You can also have an opt-in form beneath or at the end of each of your posts so that people can sign up for the mail once they’ve fallen in love with your content.

The idea is to make it the next most visible thing on the page after the content [be it text, image, video] or anything that you really need to say.
Despite the optimum positioning of this opt-in form, it requires to be lit like a neon sign so that it gets the attention of your visitors. Well, it’s easier than you’d think. You don’t have to head over to the home depot store to get yourself lights, all you have got to do is make use of these opt-in form optimization hacks and it’ll get the conversion rates cranking.

Here are a few more optin page conversion tips:

• Before asking people to hand their emails over to you, you have to say something about what they should be expecting in return. For instance, if you’re selling furniture promise to send them a free catalog or monthly updates of all the latest goods you get.

If people sign up it means they are expecting something so make sure you deliver it, otherwise it can be quite damaging for your image.

Newsletters are not enough, think of something outside the box, like a free ebook, magazine or something related to your product/service that is relevant.

• Try not to ask for too much information because that tends to turn off visitors. I think it tends to trigger a sense of insecurity and makes them skeptical.

Before you get all defensive here, I’d like to point out that people do not deliberately breed contempt and suspicion, but there are a lot of people who are phishing out there and the hesitation is understandable.
Make sure that you do everything  in your power to prevent people from running away scared. Here’s one example as to how you could earn the trust of your visitors

Notice the line under the opt-in button, Your email will stay 100% private, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

This is a particularly assuring phrase. It not only promises privacy, but also gives the visitor a sense of freedom: the visitor can choose to opt-out anytime. This is extremely crucial because there are several sites out on the web that are warning your visitors against signing up, like this handout for instance.

While any one can opt-out at anytime, the message isn’t always clear, and the directions as to how to do it are even more confusing.

Now that we’ve seen what landing page opt-in forms should look like, let’s move on to the next kind.

2 Pop-up optin page

These are the most widely used opt-in forms on the internet market today and also the most effective.

Pop-up forms or overlays have become popular over the last few years because according to Econsultancy pop-up opt-in forms have been found to generate “up to 400% more email opt-ins than a site that relies on an in-line form will”.

Another study showed that pop-ups have contributed to a 40% increase in conversion but at the cost of a 9.5% drop in engagement. Then again, this was the result of a specific site and you can only find out about yours if you have it tested.

Let us now take a look at some pop-up opt-in forms that just might make you chuckle.

This one’s quite interesting. See how the button says a very unconventional CHALLENGE ME! that makes the visitor want to opt in for it. I myself had mentally said Really? when i read it. I mean, who doesn’t like a bit of challenge?

While the wording’s nice on this one, if there’s someone who doesn’t want to opt-in, they’d have to struggle just like I had to to find the cross [x] button.

While this is a good strategy to keep your visitors on your page for longer, I’m not sure that they’d be leaving in too good a temper and that’s not something that you’d want.

Here’s another optin page optimization tip: you might want to add another pop-up or a separate dedicated page that says a thank you to your visitors for signing up. Take a look at the forms below.

This screenshot shows you a thank you page that loaded itself after I signed up for an eBook. Coolness, right!

You can not only add a thank you page, but you could also ensure that you ask for a reconfirmation of the email address. That way your convert will know that you’re not a fluke and also you’ll ensure that you’ve actually added another being to your mailing list. Yeah!

3 Optin page

Finally, here’s the newest kind of opt-in forms in circulation.
In fact the example that I have here is a combination of two of the forms discussed here.

The form up there popped up with a very simple button that says Learn More. On clicking that button, I was redirected to a new tab an opt-in form has a dedicated page and not a small box explaining what the program/service/product is about.

Visit the page just to see how there are several CTA buttons: one on the top right, one that scuttles on the left side of the screen and one at the end of the post.

Conclusion

Let me ask you a question, do you feel that tingling sensation running through your nerves?

If your answer’s yes, then let me tell you that that’s information that you’re now loaded with. With the knowledge of how to create opt-in pages that have high conversion rates you can go charm your visitors.

If you still feel a little lost feel free to comment to mail – I’ll be here to answer to my call of duty. Till then, cheers!

Related articles: why your opt-in page isn’t converting, ways to make landing pages, create emotionally engaging landing pages, landing page conversion

The post How to Create Optin Page in Most Effective Ways appeared first on OmniKick.

Although squeeze pages are an efficient way to obtain leads, in most scenarios it’s been  found that a squeeze page with high traffic volume is generating relatively low leads. I know how frustrating this can be, especially when you can’t find any good solution for it. Well, don’t worry, I’ll tell you the 9 major diseases with squeeze pages and how you can treat and nurture them into lead magnets.

1| Having dulled and unattractive Headline

According to Marketing Sherpa, only 77% of marketer who test are testing their headlines. Headlines should not be generic or boring, headlines should spread a welcoming feeling to the visitors to greet them and let them know the point of the page. According to copy bloggers’ “How to write Magnetic Headlines Post“, 80% of your traffic will just read your Headline and decide whether they want to read the rest of the post or not.

The first impression is the last impression that your page will make to convince visitors to spend their hard-earned money on your product.”

Ok, now that you know what’s wrong with your Headline, here’s how you can fix them.

Make sure that the headline is specific and reflects the contents of the page.

The headlines should be long enough to convey the message but not so long that the visitors click off the page.

Address your visitors by using terms like ‘You’ & ‘I’, to give your visitors a feeling of closure and hook them to post.

Effective headlines usually involve logical sentence structure, active voice, and strong present-tense verbs. They do not include “headlines.” As with any good writing, good headlines are driven by good verbs.

• Include Figures and Statistics
• Don’t sound like an ad
• Highlight benefits rather than features
• And don’t forget subheadings.

2| Asking for too much Information

A huge turn off for your visitors is having to provide too much information, such as a long form on your Opt-in Page.

Look at this form, I think you will agree when I say that it’s absurd, just imagine a squeeze page giving you this form to fill to download  a some e-books, for example, will you fill this up for the download, I sure wouldn’t. I mean it’s just a digital media, this form gives me the feeling that I’m buying a house or something of that size, it’s ridiculous. Your visitors would rather leave your page than type in too much-requested information.

This is why you should be very careful when you’re making your form. Keep your form short and easy to fill, refrain from asking unnecessary details and only ask for the information that is relevant for the specific purpose and those you absolutely need. Like,

Marie forleo has done a good job with their Opt-in, rather than asking for tons of personal information they just asked for the first name and e-mail for their free gift, this is a good technique and it has proven to be quite efficient.

You can make it even better, by just asking for their e-mail/mobile number and nothing else for subscribing, it would essentially turn your visitors into leads and it is the best way to maximize lead conversions.

3| Putting Multiple Call to Actions & placing them like a needle in a haystack.

According to Marketing Sherpa, 48% of landing pages contains multiple offers, and this confuses customers causing lower conversions, and squeeze pages with multiple offers get 266% fewer leads than single offer pages.

Look at the chaos on this page, there’s a search bar, an opt-in, 2 CTAs, this is a mess, you don’t want this. Trust me. Confusing your visitors is not a good idea if they can’t find what they came for at their first glance, most of them would rush to the back button.

You can fix this, by keeping things simple and having one offer per page and make your call to action easy to find and noticeable.

Trust me, you want, no, NEED to make your CTA stand out. Let me explain what happens if you don’t,

See the “Blowout Deal”? Where on earth would you click to check it out? The image? There’s no button, not an invitation to check it out… it’s just. there. To navigate to the product page, you have to click the text, which isn’t even dressed up like a link.

See my point yet, hiding your CTA in an ocean of clutter is a death wish for conversions.

I’ll tell you how to avoid this kind of turn offs.

• Start by using contrasting colors to make your CTA obvious.
• Make CTAs buttons Big to draw more attention.
• Hyperlinks should come in a contrasting color – but be careful about deviating from the tried and tested blue shade we’ve all come to know and understand.
  
• Refrain from using muted colors like gray for your CTA buttons.
• Match your CTA button to stand out and avoid putting distracting materials around it.

4| Too Much Text

One of the most important factors of a successful landing page is its simplicity. This is one of the easiest mistakes to fall for, as well, as it’s difficult not to want to add more awesome selling points of your business or product.  So how can more reasons to buy actually hurt your conversion rates?

Well, it’s because nobody’s reading them. Too much text on page is confusing, and visitors might not understand the point your page is making and what it is offering, and if visitors cannot determine the point of the page they will leave, and your page has approximately 5 seconds to capture visitors attention, or else they would run screaming to the back button.

The best way to tackle this and still put everything you want on your page is by utilizing bullet points, along with BOLD to set off text and draw the eye, avoid making multiple paragraphs and don’t forget to highlight important points of product or services and put images to draw more attention.

5| Using No or Stock Pictures/Videos

Having too much text on the opt-in pages of your website is not helpful for your visitors. Keep in mind that the landing page should get the user’s attention and make him/she understand the basic features of your product/service. The rule “less is more” applies in this situation. Present to the user the most important aspects of your product/service and provide him a way to read more details if he wants. Use clever graphics/visuals to pass hidden messages and don’t forget that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Everything on your Opt-in page should define something and serve a purpose. Stock images do not serve the meaningful purpose. It’s kinda obvious, and visitors will instantly notice the fake tasteless vibe that it give off. Seen these people

I thought so.

Stock images/videos are doing nothing but devaluing your brand, wasting landing page real estate, and possibly even annoying your user. Men in suits shaking hands? Multiracial workers smiling? Chick with a headset? They’re all out to get you. Stock images/videos are like Hitmen with a contract to kill your conversions. Cheesy stock photos hurt your credibility and show the world you’re… ignorant.

The people over at Telerik’ has done a good job with their wording and media placement. They have used custom high-quality images and videos and placed them to give off a scent of authenticity.

Ok, I’ll tell you some crucial points that you should keep in mind when you are posting medias on your page. Your images/videos should communicate  your content, they must be appealing to the eyes and flows easily with your page. Make sure to make your medias stand out without contrasting too intensely and be evocative to encourage engagement with your visitor and use abstract but appealing mix of colors, words, and shapes.

6| Glitches in Technology

To keep your conversions high, you need to make sure your technology is working right. When people click the subscribe button, you don’t want them getting this:

Like that’s a trust-builder!

7| Landing pages take too long to load

40% of consumers abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load and 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to visit that site again.

Fix this by cutting off the clutter, Get rid of unnecessary text and graphics, and test pages on different devices and optimize loading times.

8| There is No testing done to see what is working

According to HubSpot, companies with 40+ landing pages get 12 times more lead than those with 5 or less and according to ION Interactive, Dell, now with well over 1000 landing pages, has seen conversion increase as high as 300% when testing landing pages against web pages.

Test a few landing pages and track their results, anything that is not increasing the conversion rate should be changed and it is salient to test market ideas, page layout, and wording to determine what changes will get the conversion. Having several versions of landing pages available and seeing which pages are getting the most click-throughs with A/B Split tests is also very important. Never stop testing and tweaking.

9| Lacking Credibility

Without credibility your visitors have, by default, no reason to trust you. Generic Endorsements are a key aspect. 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores.

Related articles: how to create optin page, ways to make landing pages, create emotionally engaging landing pages, landing page conversion

The post 9 Proven Reasons Why Your Opt-in Page isn’t Converting! appeared first on OmniKick.