Get Your Newsletter Noticed! How to Increase (And Keep) Online Newsletter Subscribers

“Join My Mailing List!”  It’s the battle cry of the online marketer looking to stay in touch with current and prospective customers.  But how do you make your newsletter stand out and get noticed?  How do you use what you have to get – and keep, newsletter subscribers?

In short, how do you build and grow a mailing list? 

Here are 5 surefire ways to help increase newsletter subscribers while making sure you keep current readers “in the know” about your products without overwhelming them with information.

1. Keep your newsletter short and to-the-point.  Gone are the days of long, scrolling e-mails packed with information.  Your readers probably get dozens – even hundreds – of emails every day.  Don’t think that because you have something important to say that your message will even get read, let alone noticed!   Keep it brief and easy to “scan” from the moment it’s opened.

For more information on how to write a short, easy-to-understand e-mail, check out the People Don’t Scroll – Email article by 37signals.

2. Make it easy to opt-in.  U.S. Email marketing regulations (known ironically as the CAN-SPAM act), state that you must offer visitors a way to join and then verify their information – a process known as a double opt-in.  There are many email list management services that will do this automatically, such as aWeber at http://freeinfo.aweber.com . 

3.  State your offer up-front.  The “join my mailing list” plea will go unanswered – unless you give your visitors something they can’t find anywhere else on your web page and would be interested in getting.  For example, a coupon, a free “how to” guide, and a pre-launch product release notification are just a few of the ways your customers will want to stay “in the know” about what you have to offer.

4. Tell your visitors how their information will be used – No one likes to give up their name and email address when they’re not sure what will happen to it.  Help calm their uncertainty by offering a sample newsletter, or tell them how often they should expect to receive communication from you.  This will help them feel at ease about giving you personal information.

5. Write a compelling subject line – And by compelling, I don’t mean something that would deceive a customer. Writing “URGENT” when it isn’t is a prime example of this.  Unless you know that the subscriber’s child has just landed in the hospital, avoid the urgency and scare tactics – they’ll annoy and confuse more than they’ll lead to sales.

The easiest way to craft a subject line that gets read, is to write in such a way that interests your reader or appeals to their curiosity.  Avoid using words like free, money, and so on – these are words commonly used by spammers and are triggered by mail filters to end up in the trash before the reader ever sees them. 

For more information and examples on high-converting subject lines, check out MailChimp’s study of the Best and Worst email subject lines

If you keep these tips in mind when writing your newsletters, you are virtually guaranteed to get new subscribers while keeping your current readers interested and hungry for more.  For more information on adding an opt-in newsletter to your own site, why not request your free web design quote from iElectrify?  There’s no cost and nothing to sign up for.

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