#1. Grow your list with PPC ads
While growing an email list with PPC ads seems to be an obvious way for some, the reality is most marketers are not leveraging this tactic to its full potential.
Now you might be thinking– should you really need to spend money on advertising? Look at it this way: would you rather try all the recommended practices to grow your email list only to end up with zero results or spend a few bucks on advertising and grow your list rapidly?
Yes, as your email list is your biggest online asset, advertising for growing an email list is worth trying. Let’s take a look at an impressive case study of growing an email list with PPC ads and how they grew their ROI by 370%.
PPC advertising- examples and results
A1 Cleaning Services offers cleaning services in Singapore. As they’re new in the market, they need to spread the word out about their services in the local market. Similar to most other startups, their business had limited resources to spend on sales and marketing in order to address the above requirements.
So their lead generation strategy is primarily focused on PPC advertising. They capitalized on a few long tail keywords in their niche. In order to gain maximum response for the given budget, they ensured a high Quality Score for their ads.
On a weekly basis, they also tweaked the ad scheduling, keyword match criteria and ad copy click-through rates.
By the end of the campaign, the return on investment has peaked to 370%.
If you’re looking to grow your list with ads, below are few tips for you.
- AdWords is not the only choice: While AdWords is one of the best PPC advertising platforms that gives you highly targeted leads, Facebook is also worth trying where you can target potential leads with interest targeting.
- Only advertise if you can A/B test: If you’re not into testing, probably you shouldn’t advertise. When you’re spending a budget on ads and are not taking the campaign into its full potential, chances are you’re leaving lots of money on the table.
#2. Grow your email list by offering targeted resources – content upgrade
The problem with the opt-in forms placed in your blog’s sidebar is that they offer some generic products in return for an email such as ebooks, which are not unique from that of your competitors. Moreover, when your visitors are browsing your blog, they are more interested in reading your content than downloading a generic ebook behind a paywall.
In fact, as more and more publishers are placing opt-in forms in the sidebar, the general population of your website visitors automatically ignores them and focuses mainly on the main content area.
But what if you could offer the exact resource to download that your visitors are looking for at the moment? Of course, this strategy is going to help you to grow your email list.
Content upgrade is such an innovative hook that offers exactly what your visitors are looking for on your website.
There are two reasons why content upgrade outperforms other list building tactics in terms of conversion rate.
- Targeted content: It offers targeted content as an opt-in bribe.
- The opt-in form attracts lots of eyeballs: The content upgrade offer is usually placed in a highlighted text inside the content area of your blog. This helps to grab the attention of most of your visitors easily. When a prospect clicks on a link inside the highlighted text, it pops out a form, resulting in higher conversion rate.
Content upgrade – example and results
Brian Dean from Backlinko has found an increase in conversion rate by 785% in just a single day when he started growing his email list using content upgrade. If you’re looking to grow an email list with content upgrade, here are some actionable tips that might help you.
- Create a resource: Simply repurpose your most popular blog posts and transform them into PDF ebooks. Entice your visitors to download it by entering their email address.
- Install a content upgrade plugin: Install a content upgrade plugin to make the highlighted text inside your content area and to popup a form when a link is clicked.
- On-site tracking: Set up on-site tracking with Google Analytics goals and learn how this strategy is bringing in results.
So far we’ve discussed two ways to exponentially grow an email list overnight. In fact, growing an email list is not just enough if you’re looking to make decent revenue out of your email list. You need to focus on nurturing them throughout the customer life cycle.
The harsh reality is growing an email list is hard but nurturing it is even harder. Nurturing an email list primarily focuses on building a long lasting relationship with the leads in your list. So even after a prospect subscribes to your list, you’ll need to ensure that she is in a good relationship with you by sending useful emails. You can track the progress of nurturing by analyzing email open rates and engagement rate.
Now that you know what email nurturing is all about, let’s take a look at an example of how to grow and nurture your email list simultaneously.
Premium content library: example and results
The team at CopyBlogger didn’t believe in the traditional way of growing an email list by offering a generic opt-in bribe such as ebooks in return for an email address. They wanted to simultaneously grow and nurture their email list.
They also wanted to increase the actual as well as perceived value of the opt-in bribes they offer to their subscribers.
For that reason, they created a premium content library by repurposing their existing content and created lots of ebooks and an internet marketing course and made it accessible behind the paywall. So users need to log in to the library in order to access the content.
This strategy of creating a premium content library not only has helped them to grow their list by 400% but also generated $300,000 in sales in their first month.
Below are some actionable tips if you’re looking to create a premium content library for growing your list.
- Create a content library: Simply repurpose your existing content and transform them into a content library like ebooks.
- Set up a membership site: Use a free membership site plugin like Membership 2. Ensure that the content is accessible only to subscribers.
- Turn your homepage into a landing page: Entice more people to subscribe to your list, which will raise the sign-up rates.
Which one is your favorite email list growing strategy? Share your thoughts with us by dropping a line below.
Image: paper sheet with email list text on wooden background
