There are a ton of ways to get people to sign up for your email marketing offers. I’ve put together a list for you to read, so you know all of the ways you can be growing your list.
- Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
- Tradeshows – Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
- Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
- Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
- Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it’s opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.
- Host your own event – Art galleries, software companies (one here has a party every quarter and invites the neighboring businesses), retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) can all host an event and request attendees to sign up.
- Offer a birthday club where you give something special to people who sign up.
- Incentivize your employees – Give them $ for collecting VALID email addresses.
- Giving something for free like a PDF? Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it.
- Referrals – Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you’ll give them a discount.
- Bouncebacks – Get them back! – Send a postcard or call them asking for their updated email address.
- Trade newsletter space with a neighboring business, include a link for their opt-in form and ask them to include yours in their newsletter.
- SEO – Make sure you optimize your site for your keywords. You need to be at the top of the natural search when people are looking for your products or services.
- Giveaways – Send people something physical and ask for their email address as well as their postal address.
- Do you have a postal list without emails? Send them a direct mail offer they can only get if they sign up to your email list.
- nclude opt-in forms on every page on your site.
- Popup windows – When someone attempts to leave your site, pop up a window and ask for the email address.
- Include a forward-to-a-friend link in your emails just in case your recipient wants to forward your content to someone they think will find it interesting.
- Include a forward-to-a-friend on every page of your site.
- Offer a community – Use Ning as your easy-to-set-up community and have your visitors interact and sign up for your newsletter.
- Offer “Email only” discounts and don’t use those offers anywhere but email.
- Telemarketing – If you’ve got people on the phone, don’t hang up until you ask if you can add them to your newsletter.
- Put a fishbowl on your counter and do a weekly prize giveaway of your product – then announce it to your newsletter. Add everyone who put their card in on to your newsletter list.
- Include an opt-in form inside your emails for those people who get your email forwarded to them.
- Tradeshows – Collect business cards and scan them into a spreadsheet. Make sure you ask permission to send email to them, then mark the card.
- Use Facebook – Host your own group and invite people to it, then post new links often. From time to time, post a link to sign up for your newsletter.
- Use Facebook – Post the hosted link from your newsletter into Linked Items to spread the word.
- Use Facebook – Include an opt-in form on your Facebook Fan page.
- Use Twitter – Twitter the hosted link of your email campaign every time you launch.
If you’ve got any additional ideas, let’s hear them!