~ Email Listing Creation - Possible with Your Blog
Subscription Software
Choose the best software that will allow you to automate the registration process for would-be subscribers. Once you have this up and running, visitors of your blog can automatically opt-in to your email list even without your physical supervision. As the settings for these programs are configurable, it’s up to you to choose whether approval of subscriptions would be automated or manual.
Offer and Link
Use an attention-catching image or decorative text when inviting people to join your email list. Be sure to place it in a prominent area of your homepage. As for other pages, just choose a spot where it’s highly visible and which you could maintain for your entire website.
As for the link, just keep it simple and remember to make regular checks in order to ensure that it’s always in good working order.
Call to Action
Since building your email list is your current goal, it’s best to end every blog entry you write with an invitation to join your email list. Your call to action for now should offer strong encouragement on joining your email list.
For an effective call to action, just keep your sentence short but powerful. Use action-packed words and if possible, try creating a sense of urgency with your words.
Deadlines
Speaking of urgency, one way of making people even more aware of the need to join your email list is by offering an incentive with it. This can be special discounts, membership privileges, or free ebooks and the likes. Whatever you end up offering, just remember to place a deadline on your promotion.
With the clock ticking, your blog readers are sure to experience just how necessary it is for them to avail of your offer.
Benefits
Besides those incentives you’ve mentioned, there must also be other benefits for a customer to enjoy once they do sign up for your email list. Explain to them what you hope to accomplish with your email list and how they’ll benefit from it at the same time.
Signing up with your email list, for instance, will allow them to receive regular updates about the latest additions to your blog. They may also be able to receive newsletters containing special members-only data.
Safety and Confidentiality
Another way to encourage people to sign up for your email list from your blog is by giving them the assurance they need when it comes to safety and confidentiality. Purchase and register for what you need in order to provide your customers as secure platform for the registration process. A secure platform is one that keeps customer data safe from getting hacked.
As for confidentiality, you should also give your solemn word not to share any information they submit with other parties.
Overall Improvement
Of course, the real clincher is your blog itself. If you consistently work on providing the best content for your blog, you’re giving them the best reason to sign up for your email list. If you don’t prove to them that there’s something to look forward to in your blog, they will never think there’s any reason for them to join your email list.
How to Find Email Groups to Promote Your Blog
Having a blog can be a great way for you to practice your writing and to allow others to find out more about you and to get to know you better. Moreover, in this day and age of Internet businesses, a blog can be a great way for you to make money.
In a system called affiliate marketing, you can get commissions whenever people click on ads that are posted on your site. In this way, you not only enjoy writing, you also get to make money from it. Of course, the only way that you can get money through this method is to get more visitors to your blog, and to have great content that everyone will want to avail of.
One way for you to get more visitors is to find an email group that you can use to promote your blog. An email group or mailing list is a great marketing vehicle: you can get in touch with a lot of people who have the same interests as yours, you can find a lot of people who may even have the same attitude as yours, and you can get the word out faster on a product or service that you like. In this same manner, you can get the word out much faster on your blog, and you may be able to spread the word if you know how to talk to people in your email group.
But how do you find the email groups? Here are a few tips that you may want to use as you search for a mailing list that will allow you to talk to a lot of people, keep in touch with people with whom you share interests, and have a lot of fun in promoting your blog!
- First, what are your interests?
Many email groups are built around common interests, be they movies, music, crafts, or even romance and love. List down all your interests. You can start with your hobbies, then your favorite songs, artists, movies, books, authors, and actors. You can use these interests as keywords when searching for email lists. Nearly all email list networks have a searchable database that you can use when looking for groups for you to be a member in. This way, you can be more sure to find people who have the same interests as yours.
- Second, what is your blog about?
Use keywords about your blog in order to find more email groups. For instance, if you have a blog about pets, you may want to look for email groups that talk about pets, feeding pets, grooming pets, veterinarian and vet visits, and just animals in general. You can be as specific as you like: there are whole mailing lists for proud owners of certain breeds of dogs, or for people who like a certain kind of reptile. You can also be as general as you like. However, you may have a harder time with large groups, as they can be filled with people who do not read carefully through all the posrs.
- Third, spread yourself evenly, but not too thin
The disadvantage with having too few mailing lists to be a member in is that you will also have fewer contacts in your network and a smaller range, as though you were putting all your eggs in one basket. The disadvantage with having too many mailing lists, however, is that they are much harder to manage on your part, and you could end up getting a lot of emails but not getting to respond quickly enough.
4 Ways to Promote Your Blog Using E-mail Listings
When it comes to survival in blogosphere, it's all about connections. All those links and good word thrown in by happy and loyal readers and visitors do wonders for promoting your blog and spiking its traffic. And then, there are those e-mail listings – e-mail addresses and names of people who just might be interested in becoming regular recipients of information and news from you. If you want to give your blog a fighting chance, here are 4 tips on how to promote your blog using e-mail listings:
Target, target, target.
If you have to start promoting your blog now, then start right. Carefully determine your 'market' – the type of readership you want to focus on and the type of visitors you want to bring in. This can vary greatly, depending on the main theme of your blog.
Look at your main subject and the sub-topics you regularly write about. Who would want to read your blog on a regular basis? What kind of topics would they want to find in your blog? Once they find their way to your site, would they stick around and look at your other entries?
Would they participate in any polls, discussion boards and forums you might offer or at least leave a comment? Furthermore, would the people in your e-mail listings be willing to promote your blog to others or mention it on their own blogs? With a targeted e-mail listing, the answer to these questions is a resounding yes.
The point here is simple: the market for your blog is already out there. It's now up to you to let them know who and what you are and where they can find you. By focusing on promoting your blog to highly targeted e-mail listings, you can avoid marketing to that segment of blog visitors that: a) are totally uninterested in what your blog has to offer, b) are only partly interested and cannot be relied on to stay for long and c) have vague interests and may or may not be willing to participate or sign up for your promotions.
Offer relevance at all times
If you are unable to use relevance in your invitations, it will be like throwing thousands of invitations to a violin concerto in a gym full of wrestling fans. You probably could hit a few bull's eyes and some might be even willing to give your invite a try but the meager results will not compensate for the sheer effort and resources you will be using.
Avoid wasting your precious energy by ensuring that when you promote your blog using e-mail listings, it will be relevant enough for the recipients to respond positively to.
Be clear about your motives
The people who belong to your e-mail listings may be very familiar with the industry by now. When promoting your blog, make sure you state in clear terms what the blog is about, what subject(s) will be offered and how they can respond.
Don't hide behind vague terms or try to be mysterious. Remember that your e-mail list has plenty of other options out there, blogs that are willing to state their offerings in clear, understandable language.
Allow your e-mail listings the freedom to opt out
So maybe you've garnered some terrific responses from your initial foray into opt-in subscriptions with your e-mail listing to promote your blog. Does that mean risking a percentage of that number to unsubscribe by offering an opt-out option? Definitely.
Allowing new members obtained from your e-mail listings to opt-out is not only polite, it also shows professionalism on your part. Withholding the opportunity for subscribers to unsubscribe is considered rude and makes you seem desperate for readers.
If you choose this method of retaining your readers, you risk being ridiculed in the industry. If word gets around, you could risk losing even more potential leads for your e-mail listings. To gain respect and eventually, a loyal following for your blog, promote it with your visitors' interests in mind.
7 Ways to Treat Visitors from Your E-mail Groups to Keep Them Coming Back
E-mail groups can be a rich mine of prospects. It's only logical that you do everything you can to make sure that visitors coming in from that source are well taken care of so they come back to your blog or website again and again. After all, it probably took you a lot of time and effort to target your leads and tap your network of contacts in order to generate the listing from that e-mail group. Don’t let it go to waste. Here are 7 ways you can use to treat visitors that come from e-mail groups and make sure they come back again and again:
Have a working website
Nothing could be more frustrating and annoying to a visitor than attempting to get through to a website that hangs or simply freezes. If you want visitors coming from e-mail groups to stick around or come back, make sure your website or blog delivers.
Check your website for general operability and use. Do graphics take too long to load? Perhaps it's best to switch to an image with a lower resolution or change the images altogether. Are there dead links? It's probably time to do a periodic site repair. Is the site troublesome? Perhaps it's time to overhaul the whole site or switch to an account with your ISP that can accommodate your site's demands.
Make sure your site can handle the traffic
Traffic can be a problem, particularly if you're on a shared site or free blog. Ultimately, it all boils down to server and processor limitations, so it's a good idea to check if your server has the memory and processor capacity to handle a surge of traffic coming from your e-mail groups. Although blog platforms and most sites are optimized to handle any traffic surges, it's still best to check.
Know your visitors
Granted that e-mail groups are generally easier to 'read' and categorize than generic listings, it's still best to determine certain tendencies that each group has. To do this, you'll need to spend some time analyzing the figures and reports from your blog or website.
Check your most popular entries – those write ups that have generated a spike in traffic, read visitor comments, discussion threads and posts and check your stats regularly. If you receive e-mail messages from your e-mail groups, you might want to check their content for clues. Familiarizing yourself with your visitors will allow you to offer better content and service and approach them on a more personalized level.
Interact
Don’t make your visitors feel that they just landed on a deserted planet when they visit your website. Make sure that you reply to their inquiries, comments and messages. Go beyond the usual 'Thanks for your comment' or 'Come back for more info' posts. Read their messages and post replies that encourage more interaction.
Have a segregated group? Offer relevant content nevertheless
Relevant content is essential to ensuring that you treat your site's visitors well. Regardless of how diverse your e-mail groups are, it's essential that you still cater to their unique interests and needs. Check your content because this is how you'll win their hearts and loyalty.
Always offer a selection
Variety makes for an interesting blog or website. Even if your site has a theme, make sure you offer other content that may be directly or indirectly related to the main subject.
Practice politeness
Political correctness may be overrated for some but politeness is here to stay. Always treat visitors that come from e-mail groups with respect. Avoid writing insults or leering comments. Remember that people are entitled to their own opinions and their right to express themselves is protected by the law.
You may not agree with what they say but hey, it's a democracy. And that's exactly the reason why you enjoy the privilege of maintaining your own website in the first place. So lighten up and treat your visitors with respect. Who knows? You could even build a stronger e-mail group list in the process.
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