If you have a website, you probably already know how important traffic is. You work on SEO, publish content, share posts on social media, and try to get through the door.
But, here is the problem: most website visitors are not going to come back.
They might read the article, find the answer that they are looking for, and then leave. They might even browse your products, look at the services you offer, or look at the blog for a few minutes before they disappear. Even if they love what you have published, there is no guarantee that they are going to remember to visit again. That is where the email list comes in.
Unlike social media followers or search traffic, an email list gives you a direct way to stay in touch with people who have already shown an interest in what you do. You can send useful content, share new articles, promote products or services, and build a relationship with readers over time.
The good news is that you don’t need a huge audience to start either. A smaller list of genuinely interested subscribers can be far more valuable than thousands of random contacts. So, how do you actually grow an email list from your website? Let’s have a look at the important steps.
Why Your Website Should Build an Email List
Before worrying about forms, lead magnets, pop ups, or email platforms, it’s worth understanding why an email list is so valuable in the first place. Website traffic is largely outside of your control. Google can change the algorithm it uses. Social platforms can change what they show followers. Advertising costs can go up or down. All of this shows that a platform you come to rely on today might not deliver the same results this time next year.
But, an email list gives you something that you have more control over. It gives you a direct communication channel with people who have opted to hear from you.
Think of it this way. Imagine you publish a new blog post. Instead of hoping that your followers stumble across it or see it by chance, or even that Google sends people to it, you can email your subscribers and let them know that you have posted.
This also applies if you run an online shop, agency, membership site, service business, or similar. Your email list can become a place where you nurture potential customers, instead of spending all of that energy trying to find new ones.
We also want to point out here that the goal is not to collect as many email addresses as you can. A list of 10,000 people who don’t open your emails, aren’t interested in what you’re saying, or don’t remember even signing up for emails are not helpful to you. However, a smaller list of 1,000 people who are engaged and genuinely have interest in your content is going to be much more valuable to you. Quality should be first, quantity can come second.
Define the Right Audience for Your Email List
It’s tempting to put an email signup form on your website and to write something with it that is super generic. This tends to go something like ‘Subscribe to our newsletter!’
Now, technically there is nothing wrong with that. But, it doesn’t really give visitors much reason to give you their email address, does it? So, before creating your signup strategy, you need to think about who you actually want on your list.
If you’re a food blogger, your ideal subscriber might be someone looking for quick family recipes. If you run a photography business on the other hand, you might want aspiring photographers rather than those who want a wedding photographer. A marketing consultant might want business owners who are actively trying to generate more leads.
The point that we are trying to make here is that the more clearly you understand your audience the easier it becomes to offer them something that they are going to care about. So, you should ask yourself these questions:
- What problem is my audience trying to solve?
- What information do they regularly look for?
- What would save them time?
- What would make their life easier?
- What would they exchange an email address to receive?
- What kind of emails would they actually want from you?
The last question is one of the most important. You should not promise one thing just to get someone onto your list, then bombard them with something completely different. If your website promises practical blogging advice, and your emails are then suddenly nothing but sales pitches being thrown at them, they are going to unsubscribe.
Your sign up offer and your future emails need to make sense together, else you’re going to lose people.
Create a Valuable Lead Magnet
One of the most effective ways to encourage website visitors to subscribe is to offer them something useful in return. This is usually known as a lead magnet.
A lead magnet doesn’t have to be a long e-book though, and in fact shorter resources can often work better as long as they are solving a very specific problem. So, depending on what your audience is looking for, you could offer:
- A cheat sheet
- A printable
- A worksheet
- A downloadable guide
- A template
- A checklist
- A discount or special offer
- A free consultation or assessment
- A mini course
Or something else completely. But, more than anything else, you have to offer them something that they will find valuable.
Do not create a lead magnet just because every marketing article that exists says that you need to have one. You should create something that your audience is going to actually find useful. You don’t want it to be vague either. You want to go in with the specifics to attract the attention that you want.
For example, if your website is about blogging, you might want to offer a checklist on publishing content with a catchy name, rather than just ‘blogging tips’.
It’s also a good idea to make your lead magnet immediately accessible. Someone shouldn’t have to complete six steps and wait three days before they are able to receive the thing that they signed up for. Deliver it promptly, and then ensure that you follow up with useful emails moving forward.
Add High-Converting Signup Forms to Your Website
Once you have something worth subscribing for, you then need to make it easy for visitors to find. A single signup form buried at the bottom of your homepage isn’t going to be enough. Instead, you need to think about where someone naturally pauses when they are browning your website. For example, your signup form could appear in these places:
- In the website header
- Within blog post
- On your home page
- On relevant resource pages
- On your about page
- In the footer
- In the sidebar
- On dedicated landing pages
- At the end of articles
But, what this does not mean is that every single page needs five signup forms on it. It’s about being present in the right places, not littering your website with them so often that people are getting annoyed.
For example, if someone is reading an article about beginner photography, then they might be particularly interested in a checklist about photography. A relevant signup form at the bottom of this article is likely to perform much better than a generic newsletter in the footer.
It’s also important to note that you should keep the form as simple as possible. The more information that you ask for, the more friction that you’re going to create with the user. In a lot of cases, the email address and the first name are going to be enough.
When trying to entice people to sign up, your copy matters, as well as the form. So, instead of something basic like ‘sign up to our newsletter’, you want to opt for something like ‘get one practical photography tip every Monday’ or something. Then you need to explain what they are getting, and how often they are getting it. Keep in mind that people don’t really want another newsletter that they can ignore, they would far rather have something useful.
Use Pop-Ups Without Ruining User Experience
Pop-ups have a reputation for being one of the most annoying things online. To be honest with you, some of them deserve this as they really can be annoying.
You have probably experienced the kind where you land on a website and before you’ve even read the headline, a giant box covers the entire screen asking for your email address. Do not do this.
However, a well timed pop-up can work, instead of an aggressive one that is going to drive visitors away.
Consider using a delay so that visitors have time to read the page before being interrupted in their scrolling. You can also use exit-intent technology, where the signup appears when someone looks to be leaving the page.
You can also consider using a small slide-in or banner rather than something that covers the full screen. Full screen takeovers are a bit much. But no matter what you choose, the goal is to make the offer relevant on the pop-up.
What we mean by this is that if someone is reading an article about growing tomatoes, a pop-up offering a gardening planting calendar will make sense. One that just says ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ is going to be far less appealing. People want helpful things, not things they don’t care about.
When using pop-ups, you should make sure that the close button is obvious to them. The goal is not to trap visitors into subscribing, but to give interested visitors a convenient opportunity to do this if they want to. When going through all of this, make sure that they work well on mobile too. A signup form that takes over the entire screen or is difficult to close creates a frustrating experience, not a positive one.
Create Dedicated Landing Pages for Subscribers
Sometimes a signup form needs more room than just a small box on a blog post, though. That’s where a dedicated landing page can help. A landing page has one main purpose – to persuade the visitor into taking a particular action.
If you’re promoting a substantial lead magnet, create a page explaining exactly what it is, who it is for, and what the visitor will get by signing up. An idea for the structure might look something like this:
Headline – a quick punchy headline to get interest
Supporting Copy – a brief explanation of what the lead magnet is
What You’ll Get – a short bullet list of what is included
Form – email address and first name
Button – something short and catchy to get them to click it
There is no need to cover every possible benefit that your website offers. Keep the landing page focused on the one thing that you are asking your visitors to do. Dedicated landing pages are also useful when promoting your email list outside of your website. You can link to them from social media profiles, guest posts, podcasts, YouTube descriptions, online communities, and a number of other online marketing channels.
Give Visitors a Reason to Subscribe
This is perhaps the most important point in the entire process. People need a reason to give you their email address. Your website visitor is already thinking about the value exchange. You’re asking for something personal – a place in their inbox. What are you giving them in return?
‘Sign up for updates’ is not enough. Instead, you need to tell visitors what they are going to receive. You want to go for something more descriptive, and you need to make sure that whatever you do ends up opting for explaining the benefit within the copy.
You can also make the ongoing newsletter itself a reason to subscribe. You don’t always need an elaborate lead magnet if your regular content is genuinely useful. You could consider giving subscribers one or more of the following options:
- New articles because they are published anywhere else
- Behind the scenes content
- Weekly recommendations
- Industry news
- Tutorials
- Exclusive tips
- Subscriber only discounts
- Early access to products or events
Your email list should feel like a worthwhile club that people want to join, not just a marketing database that they are a part of. You need to make your list appealing, and if you don’t, nobody is going to want to subscribe.
Promote Your Email List Across Your Website
Once you have decided what your sign up offer is going to be, don’t hide it. Your website probably has more opportunities to promote your email list than you realise.
So, start with your most visited pages. If your analytics show three blog posts receive the majority of your traffic, then those pages need to have your particular attention. Try your best to look for natural opportunities within the content. For example, if you’re writing about how to start a blog and you’ve created a downloading blogging checklist, introduce it where it makes sense. This is much more natural than interrupting the reader with an unrelated signup box.
Your About page can also be quite effective. Someone who takes the time to read about you or your business is already showing a higher level of interest, so use this to your advantage.
Your homepage is another obvious opportunity, but don’t assume that every visitor comes to your website through your home page, because they don’t. Blog posts and search pages are often where they are going to drop in, so keep that in mind.
You can also include an email invitation in your website navigation, and relevant resource pages. Just remember that repetition is not the same thing as effectiveness. A visitor should not feel as though they are being asked for their email every 30 seconds, because this will just make them feel badgered.
Follow Email Marketing and Privacy Best Practices
Growing an email list isn’t just about getting more subscribers. You need to collect and manage those addresses that you get responsibly. Make it clear what people are signing up for.
If you’re going to send weekly marketing emails, don’t make the signup language vague. You need to make sure that you are telling people what they are going to receive, and how often they are going to receive it (roughly).
Depending on where your subscribers live and how you operate, privacy and electronic marketing laws may also apply to your list. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act sets requirements for commercial email, while Canada’s CASL has its own rules around consent and electronic messages. Businesses collecting data from people in other regions may have additional obligations, including under privacy laws such as the GDPR.
If you’re unsure what applies to your business, get appropriate legal advice rather than relying on a generic website template design. Professional help is necessary, so it’s not something we recommend avoiding if you’re unsure about anything regarding privacy.
There are also some basic practices that are good for both compliance and trust:
- Don’t buy email lists
- Don’t add people to marketing lists simply because they contacted your business for another reason
- Give subscribers a clear way to unsubscribe
- Respect the unsubscribe request if it comes in
It’s also going to be worth using a reputable email marketing platform that provides tools for managing subscriptions, consent, email delivery, and unsubscribes. Your list is an asset, but it’s also made up of real people, and you need to treat it that way.
Track Signup Rates and Improve Your Strategy
You won’t know what is working unless you measure it. You should start by looking at your signup conversion rate which is the percentage of visitors who subscribe after seeing a particular signup opportunity.
For example, if 1,000 people visit a page and 30 sign up, your conversion rate would be 3%. The number alone does not tell you everything that you need to know, but it does give you a good starting point which is useful.
Track which signup forms perform the best. You might find that your homepage converts at 1%, while a specific blog post converts at 6% because the lead magnet is directly related to that topic. This is very useful information, and will help you move forward.
You can then experiment with different:
- Headlines
- Button text
- Lead magnet
- Form placement
- Pop-up timing
- Offers
- Images
- Amount of copy
Don’t change everything all at once though. If you test one major element at a time, you’ll have a better idea of what actually makes a difference.
It’s then also a good idea to look beyond the initial signup. Are new subscribers opening your emails? Are they clicking the links? Are they eventually becoming customers? Are they unsubscribing after receiving the first few messages?
A signup form that generates hundreds of low quality subscribers isn’t necessarily better than one that produces fewer, highly engaged readers.
Turn Website Visitors Into Long-Term Readers
Growing an email list from your website does not require anything too difficult, or a massive market budget. It starts with something much simpler – giving the right people a good reason to stay in touch.
Understand who you are trying to reach. Create something that is genuinely useful to them. Put relevant signup forms where visitors are actually able to see them, and make the experience straightforward. Respect the privacy of those who do sign up, and make sure that you are always paying attention to what the numbers are telling you.
More importantly than anything else, do not think of your email list as a collection of addresses. It’s a group of people who have given you their permission to appear in their inbox. Treat your subscribers well, send them things that are worth opening, and ensure that you give them a reason to stick around. Over time, this list can become one of the most dependable assets that your website has, helping you bring readers back, and generate leads.
