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3 Email List Building Techniques You Need To Use in 2017

Posted By Guest Blogger 13th of April 2017 Blog Promotion 0 Comments

3 Email List Building Techniques You Need To Use in 2017This is a guest contribution from Jawad Khan.

If you’re serious about blogging, I’m sure you’re already building an email list (or planning to do so)

Since you’re a Problogger reader, I’m also assuming your knowledge and expertise in blogging is significantly higher than most newbies.

So you’re well-aware that “Get Free Email Updates”, that beautiful sign up form in your blog’s side-bar, isn’t an attractive incentive for potential subscribers anymore, right?

No one wants to subscribe to another email list just to pile up more junk in their email inbox.

Don’t get me wrong.

Email is still the best way to build a relationship with your audience and turn them into paying clients.

Studies suggest that 66% of online consumers in the US aged over 15 made a purchase as a direct result of marketing emails.

3 Email List Building Techniques You Need To Use in 2017

Source: Quicksprout

Another study suggests that 54% of online buyers that abandon a shopping cart, but are reminded again via email, will complete the purchase. According to a recently published report by email Monday, email marketing has an ROI of 3800% ($38 in return for every $1 spent)

Email marketing isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it has become more important for bloggers, marketers and eCommerce businesses.

But since everyone’s trying to squeeze email addresses out of their blog visitors, people have become more guarded about their contact information and only sahre it away when they see clear value in return.

This is why most marketers use lead magnets for list building.

But it’s 2017, so you need to be a bit more creative and find new ways to effectively deliver your lead magnet to your audience and persuade them to join your list.

Not sure how to do it?

Let me share 3 list building techniques that you’ll see many smart marketers use in the coming months.

1. Host a Virtual Summit to Steal Subscribers from Industry Influencers

You’ve read expert round-up posts, right?

Turn them into video content and you have yourself a high quality virtual summit.

Virtual summits have been around for a while but the concept really picked up in late 2015. Throughout the last year, I’ve seen hundreds of influencers in dozens of different industries participate in virtual summits, skyrocket their email lists and fill their pockets to the top.

It’s one of the fastest ways to not only build an email list but also to enhance your brand image and influence in your niche.

You might have seen banners like this one in your Facebook newsfeed in the last few months.

3 Email List Building Techniques You Need To Use in 2017

Here’s how it works

  • The summit host picks a very specific topic for the summit (e.g email list building or Amazon self-publishing, Shopify dropshipping etc.)
  • He decides the dates and the duration of the summit (usually 4-5 days)
  • The host gathers 15-20 experts on the topic and conducts video interviews (live or recorded) with each one of them
  • Every expert who is interviewed has the option to promote a paid offer or a lead magnet during or after the interview (a link to the offer is also published on the interview page)
  • All the experts promote the event to their own email subscribers. For example if a virtual summit has 10 experts with 1000 subscribers each, it is promoted to 10,000 people. This creates a pool of potential subscribers for all the participants.
  • The host gets all the subscribers that opt-in to watch the event live.
  • Once the live event is over, the host can sell the recorded event as a paid product or a lead magnet.

Sounds simple, right?

Hosting a high-quality virtual summit can be expensive and technically challenging.

Which is why only the top influencers in most industries are currently using it for email list building.

But no one’s stopping the lesser known bloggers from doing it.

If you can’t get A-list experts to join your event, look for the second-tier experts who have a loyal following but are looking to expand their reach. You’ll find them in every industry.

If you don’t have a lot of money to spend, use free tools like Google Hangouts to record your interviews, use any WordPress landing page plugin to create landing pages for the event and get the job done.

In short, if you get it right, a virtual summit can literally give you thousands of subscribers overnight.

2. Use Facebook Live Videos To Build Your List in No Time

Facebook Live has spread like wildfire

Studies show that Facebook is getting more than 8 billion video views every day and users are spending 3x more time watching live videos as compared to the recorded ones.

3 Email List Building Techniques You Need To Use in 2017

Source: Facebook Video Statistics 2016

The top influencers and experts in almost every industry are using Facebook Live to get closer to their audience, engage with them more frequently, and strengthen their personal brand by answering the most burning questions of their followers.

Darren himself does regular “Ask Me Anything” sessions using Facebook Live.

3 Email List Building Techniques You Need To Use in 2017

As I said, the user-engagement level on Facebook Live is much greater than recorded content. And it’s always easier to persuade an engaged audience to take action. Which is why Facebook Live presents the prefect opportunity to route viewers to your email list.

How to do it?

Just ask them.

Really, that’s all it takes.

Create a free resource like an eBook or checklist, which is relevant to the topic of your live video, place it on a landing page to collect emails, and ask users to download it during your Facebook Live session.

Also add the landing page link as a pinned comment on your video, and to the video description so that viewers can download it even when you’re not live.

Amy Porterfield used this exact strategy to get hundreds of subscribers to her email list.

Facebook Live videos currently enjoy additional organic reach, so this is the best time to use it to build your email list.

3. Include Laser-Focused Content Upgrades in Your Guest Posts To Open Floodgates of Subscribers

Guest blogging is one of my favorite ways to drive traffic and find subscribers.

In the last 3 years, I’ve written over 500 guest posts on some of the most widely followed marketing and SEO blogs on the web, generating thousands of email subscribers.

But many bloggers struggle to generate any traction from their guest posts.

Do you know why?

Because they rely on the good old author bio links to send them subscribers. Many others simply link to their homepage and hope people would subscribe to their list.

That’s not how it works.

Bloggers that generate hundreds of subscribers from every guest post do 2 things really well.

  • They write super quality guest posts with lots of actionable insights
  • They create laser-focused content upgrades used within the body content. Most editors have no problem allowing this as long as the post offers real value to the readers.

Not sure what a content upgrade is?

It’s a post specific lead magnet that offers something additional to the readers of a blog post.

Brian Dean (Backlinko) increased his sign up rate by 785% by adding a content upgrade to this post.

Insane!

Bryan Harris shared this detailed case study of how one blogger generated thousands of email signups to his blog by combining content upgrades with guest blogging

They work in all niches.

For example, if you’ve written a blog post “7 Healthy and Safe Weight-Loss Tips for First Time Moms” you could create a checklist on “23 Healthy Foods You Should Eat While Losing Weight” and use it as a content upgrade.

Content upgrades work so well because, unlike generic lead magnets, they are targeted towards an engaged reader who is already interested in the topic.

They’re so effective for lead generation that many leading email marketing tools now have separate features to create content upgrades and add them to your blog posts.

SumoMe, for example, introduced a new two-step pop-up for content upgrades that has been tested to increase signups by 200-300% in some cases.

But when you’re guest blogging, you don’t have access to the tools used by the host blog. So you should simply link to the landing page of your content upgrade from where users can opt-in and subscribe to your list.

Wrapping Up

Email list building is more important for bloggers than ever before. It is the only channel that gives you direct and uninterrupted access to your reader’s inbox, and allows you to focus on long-term relationship building.

The tips I’ve shared in this post are already being used by some of the best marketers on the web. Making them a part of your list building strategy will surely help you attract more relevant and engaged subscribers.

What list building techniques are you applying to your blog right now?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Jawad Khan is a content marketing consultant and a freelance blogger for hire. Follow him on his blog Writing My Destiny, Twitter, and Google+.

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This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. This is awesome.

    I’ve actually tried Live like videos, and the technique does actually work. I can vouch for it!

  2. Hi,

    It was an amazing piece of information.

    Thanks for keeping us in loop.

    ~Ashvin

  3. Content upgrades is my favorite strategy out of the 3 I’ve discussed in this post because theyre easy to set up and work really well

    What’s yours and why?

  4. Wow! Amazing article and really very helpful information for people like me who has just started their blogging business. Am sure this content would help me a lot. Now am looking forward to contribute more and more content at guest posting websites and would also try to make the best videos and info-graphics describing my content.

    Thank-you so much dude.

  5. Hi Jawad,

    These are definitely some great tips for those of us who just started building our email list. I actually have just started guest posting so these tips will definitely help me improve.

    I never thought of adding content upgrades to a guest post. I do it for my own blog posts, but definitely need to consider it for my guest posts as well.

    I’ve seen so many people talking about Facebook Live. I have yet to do that, don’t want to spread myself too thin.

    I think I’ll focus on guest posting for awhile and use some of the techniques you shared.

    I hope you have a great day :)

    Susan

  6. Hey Jawad,

    These 3 are absolutely sounds fantastic way to build email list. Facebook Live is really great medium to get closer to audience. Today, In online marketing everything depends upon how you grow healthy relationship with mass. It is the main thing which is going to help to thrive your business to next level. Eventually, thanks for sharing your worthy thought with us.

    With best wishes,

    Amar kumar

  7. The tips here are quite great. I will try them.
    However, I might the facebook video hard to do. Not everyone likes to be in front of a camera.

    • Great tips buddy.

      Both webinars and content upgrades work like a charm to grow email subscribers really quickly.

      But make sure to do webinars with influencers instead of doing with random people. It’s all about the quality that you provide with your webinars.

      Also make sure to focus on your top 10 pages and use content upgrades for each one of them if you want to quickly capture more emails.

      Keep rocking.

  8. Right read at the right time. I made my first serious content upgrade and posted using leadpages which took me an entire day in all. Keeping my fingers crossed!

  9. Hey,

    Thanks for sharing great tips for email marketing.

    Seeing your email list grow is one of the best thing for a blogger. And Ask me Anything is the best way to get all your doubts cleared by experts.

    Thanks again!

  10. That tip about the virtual summits, awesome. I didn’t think of that. Even just doing a joint webinar with someone would probably work! Need to get better at speaking in front of people (even if it is over the internet I struggle).

    Thanks for sharing,

    Chris

  11. Hey Jawad,

    Great and very informative post. Building an email list will surely help bloggers to promote products and get conversions. Your techniques will surely help newbie bloggers to increase their email lists.

  12. I have dove full bore into Facebook Live videos recently. I hadn’t thought of building my list through those videos. Awesome idea.

    I gave little attention and energy to building a list. Now I am all in. Because I see the ease through which you get in folks inboxes and also, help people by offering free and premium content, all because you sit in front of prying eyes.

    I appeared on Neil Patel’s blog a while back; he dissected my old email pop up form from like a year ago. An idea was sparked. Here we are; I added said form to my blog yesterday, where I will offer smart blogging tips, 1080 p videos of tropical paradises where i travel plus a bunch of eBook and audio book releases when they come out.

    I initially – oh hell, I was terrified – of using pop ups for years. Then I used em and saw smashing results. Then like a freaking idiot, I ceased using them and my list grew stale and stagnant. No more. I dove into the fear, am collecting emails at a better rate – at least I figure since yesterday – and in so doing I dove into another fear, that of figuring I’d annoy or turn off readers by doing something which just gives them an opportunity to receive my value more freely.

    I had to get a bit away from folks who decry pop ups. I nodded my head in agreement with them, feeding my fears. No more.

    Thanks Jawad. I will run with the Facebook Live video idea you shared. With my eye-popping 1080 p videos, successful blogging tips and good old eBook and audio book releases as enticements to boost those opt in rates, I see smooth sailing going forward. Really smooth sailing.

    Ryan

  13. Most of the time, inspiration is easy to find because most marketing content is publicly available. An email marketing strategy is part of your overall marketing strategy and business plan. It helps you market your products and services with the use of the email channel with the best chances for making a profit and reaching your goals.

  14. Content upgrade did surely work for me, and would advise any folk out there to give it a try also, I am a sure testimony to sumome, it increased my subscriptipn by 76% in just 1 week.

  15. Hey Jawad,

    Thanks for the great tips for email marketing.

    Having a list of emails of active & targeted users is key these days, it can seriously help us promote brand, products and even our posts which we want to share as much as audience as we can.

    So, thanks again for the tips Jawad.

  16. Great article this is very helpful for beginners who just started their blog.Email marketing is one of the best way to get recurring traffic to your blog and a great way to interact with your loyal subscribers.

    Thanks For These Tips Great Blog This Is My First Time

  17. These are some very powerful and doable ideas. Facebook Live is quite challenging. I’m quite a shy person and I’m still not ready for that.

    Thank you for sharing them.

    ~ Tiffany

  18. Hey,

    You’ve crafted a wonderful techniques for the bloggers this is one of the best way to get recurring traffic to blogs also will surely help bloggers to promote products and get conversions.

    Thanks again!

  19. Nice roundup for email list building. It the most important part for every business to generate email list and you’ve described everything simply.
    Thanks!

  20. Thank you,
    Actually I am new in blogging, don’t no anythink details about blogging.
    I want to set email notification techniue in my blog. This article helps me to find out the best email services.
    Thanks a lot. Keep writing.

  21. Hey Jawad,

    Thanks for the great tips for email marketing.

    Having a list of emails of active & targeted users is key these days, it can seriously help us promote brand, products and even our posts which we want to share as much as audience as we can.

    So, thanks again for the tips Jawad.

  22. Nice tips on email marketing. Really nice to know about effective use of the tool. Thanks

  23. Great article, specially second point “Use Facebook Live Videos To Build Your List in No Time” is more approachable, because facebook have large audience and we can easily target our niche audience through facebook.

    Beside these 03 I would like to add one more point for building large email list. The system called as Inbox Blueprint 2.0, it an automated software to create your email marketing campaign in a few clicks, this system allows you to set up your opt-in page and also generate a free report and avails auto-responder emails features.

    Hope this system will help you to for Building Email List.

  24. Email list building is still important in website marketing. This online marketing method gives us direct access to our target audience’s inbox and let us build a long-term relationship with them. People are becoming more careful in giving away their email and having an eye-catching sign up form is not enough to convince them to join your email list. So, being more creative in persuading your target audience is really important to grow your list.

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