How To Get More Email Subscribers

Step #1. Optimize your ‘window’ traffic

Your home page will almost always be one of the highest visited pages on your website.

No joke, but even if someone finds you from another page first, they’ll often check out the home page to learn more about you.

You’ve probably done this yourself multiple times and not even thought about it.

The thing is, most websites don’t have a call to action on their home page, so they miss out on a whole bunch of leads.

It’s kind of like being in a shopping mall, and your home page is the window display. The audience can see what you’re offering but the doors are locked, so they can’t come in.

Madness right?

Now, some websites do have a call to action.

However, even these usually get it wrong.

For example

As you can see on this website here, they have a CTA to sign up for their newsletter. The idea being that they will then send you articles and tutorials

The issue of course is that people don’t care about your future guides because they have no idea what these will be.

Even if they love your stuff so far, there’s no concrete incentive between what they’re struggling with now and what you’ll send them in the future.

That’s why this kind of generic newsletter offer usually converts at around 1-2% of the people who see it. 

Again, it’s better than no offer. 

However, an easy way to improve this is to instead offer something that solves a problem. Usually an immediate first step that the coldest of your audience struggles with.

For example

In this case, the site teaches you about link building and SEO. People visiting there for the first time are probably just now learning about the topic.

So a guide on how to get your first 10 backlinks in the next 60 minutes would convert way higher. Probably 10-15% or more.

Simple right?

(Apologies for the low quality mock up designs, but you get the idea).

Step #2. Add more value

The next thing you need to add are lead magnets.

These are content bonuses that you offer your audience in exchange for their email. Kind of like what we just did on the homepage, but for different pain points that the audience struggles with.

These can be PDFs, checklists, etc.

For example

If we use that SEO site again as our inspiration, then we could map out the major pain points our audience has and make those offers.

We already have the first 10 backlinks offer, so some others could be:

• How to measure your SEO results so you know that its working
• How to get more powerful links
• How to do cold email outreach that works
• How to get guest post links
• Etc

Basically, common things that you know your audience wants.

Then you can simply offer this in the sidebar of your blog, in a header bar, or in exit intent popups so that if people are about to leave, you might still capture the email when these appear.

Just don’t add them to weird scrolling ones that appear half way through reading something. Especially if it makes you jump all the way back up to the top of the page to click off of it, then you have to scroll back down to where you originally were.

These suck, and pissing off your audience is a great way to lose them, not convert them.

Speaking of conversion rates, you’re looking at around 5% with these. However, you can get them higher if the popup shows up on pages that have a similar overlap, because the audience is more likely to be interested in them.

For example

Let’s say that you had a guide on backlink methods:

Then a lead magnet pops up on how to email better so that people give you links:

This would definitely convert better than a bonus on how to measure results. Just because it has a better overlap between what the audience is doing at that time.

Makes sense right?

The added beauty of these lead magnets is you can have relatively low content on your site and still convert, and they’re fairly evergreen so you make them once and that’s it.

However, if you are doing content marketing then you need to use this next method because it blows everything else out of the water.

Step #3. Give them what they want, when they want it

I invented this method a few years back as a combination of a few different techniques and it works insanely well.

No joke, but my lowest conversion rate with this method is 15% and my highest is 83% and no that’s not a typo. 

83 out of 100 people who saw it, opted in.

If you have content on your website and you get traffic, then you could use this method and nothing else and hit 10,000 email subscribers easily. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the case study I shared earlier only used these 3 methods.

Anyways, let’s get into this one.

I call it the Hyper Specific Offer, and here’s how it works:

The key thing to understand with getting people to optin, is that the more that someone wants what you offer them, the higher the optin rate will be.

We’ve seen that to some extent with these other methods. They convert but not super high, unless we can be more specific to what they want at that moment in time.

• The home page works better with a specific first step instead
• While lead magnets work better when they pop up on pages that are similar to the page the audience is on
• Etc

Hyper specific offers are the exact thing your audience wants, exactly when they want it.

All they are is a lead magnet, but their unique in that they are:

• Created for just one specific article on your blog
• And they are designed in such a way that they help the audience with the most immediate action that they want to take

Why do this?

Well, think about it for a second. The only people who are reading your articles are those who are interested in the topic already. That makes these readers warm leads.

However, by the time they finish reading, they’re usually even more interested in that topic and want to take action.

The problem of course is that most content doesn’t give these readers an action to take.

We just treat articles as a way to get traffic, which is crazy.

Why?

Because you just warmed someone up and now they want to do something, but you left them hanging. 

So what do they do? They get all excited, google the topic, and then land on another blog.

Bye Felicia!…

But what if you gave them the exact ‘hyper specific’ action that they want to take? Well then it would convert like you wouldn’t believe.

For example

I was chatting to a student of mine today, and he has an article around how to sort your credit issues. 

The article walks you through the main steps, and one of the first roadblocks is calling up and setting up debt payments and negotiating a better rate.

The thing is, his article doesn’t actually cover how to do this. It’s just a step in the rest of the larger guide. 

However, because it’s such an integral thing, the vast majority of people reading this will see that it’s an early action they need to take, and want to do it – but have no idea how to.

So if he offered a bonus that shows them how to do this, then it will smash the current optin rate, because this bonus ties into the immediate thing that the reader wants to do next.

Simple right?

But for an article with a few thousand readers per year, this is a HUGE volume of leads who are also super warm, and highly interested in what you’re selling.

The bonuses are not that hard to make either, they can be a short checklist or PDF, or some kind of screen grab or selfie video depending on the industry. Honestly, the smaller and more actionable the better.

But the trust and authority you build from this method is fantastic, simply because you’re just adding more value to your audience.

The only issue with this method is:

• You need to be doing content marketing for it to work, as the offers connect with the content
• There are a few steps involved to set it up
• You need to figure out what the audience wants. Although you can use AI prompts to figure this out
• And you need to design the bonus and call to action image to get them to click

I have a mini training program on it that teaches you all this step by step if you want to check it out.

Honestly, if you’re doing content marketing or plan on using it to scale up in the future, then this method can help you convert far more of your audience than you thought possible.

Not only that, but it can make other channels more effective also.

For example

I used to run paid traffic to one of my articles a few years back, simply so I could get more readers to the guide.

However, I didn’t want to just eat the ad cost.

So I added a hyper specific offer to the article. It converted so well that it was costing me around 0.20 cents per lead, in an industry where $5-7 dollars per lead is considered a good price.

Better still? 

For every $1 I spent, I would eventually make $22 back promoting offers etc via email.

It’s honestly insane how well this works. Even for low traffic blogs.

You can try it out and throw it on the 3 top traffic pages on your site and test it out in under an hour or two.

However, there are a few other methods we can use to collect optins so let’s get into those also.

Step #4. Create the ideal customer

As you know, not everyone who visits your site is ready to become a customer right away. In fact, they only make up a small percentage of your audience.

That’s why we usually use content and email marketing to help move them along. However, you can also use mini-courses to do this and collect the email.

Basically you create a course on a topic. Normally around the major steps your audience has to take to achieve something. 

This adds a lot of value and authority, but it can also help you turn them into the ideal customer in the future.

For example

Let’s say you’re a mortgage advisor and you help people get into their first home. You make a commission when they use you to get a mortgage.

The issue of course is that first home buying is confusing, and there’s a lot of questions and steps you need to do first.

So, by creating a course on this, as well as how to get past each step, you’ll not only get the optin but you’ll help move them towards becoming a customer and getting a mortgage with you.

Smart right?

You can even use these to replace the homepage optin, assuming the first lessons covers that initial first problem that the audience has.

However, these do take time to make and not every industry can apply these. It’s usually service or education type companies. That’s why I don’t recommend them for everyone, nor do I recommend making them early on when there are other easier options.

If you have the option though and you’ve done everything else, it can be an easy long term win, because you’ll be making customers months later that you wouldn’t have before.

Not only that but it’s evergreen and you can pretty much set it and forget it.

Step #5. Make that money

These last 2 methods are mainly for companies that provide a service or sell a digital product.

The only issue with them is they’re not that scalable. However, they can make sales from the people who optin.

The first option is to offer an audit or consultation for free, in exchange for their email address.

During the call, you help analyze issues that align with the services you provide, showcasing your skills and expertise.

I’ll be honest, very few of your audience will ever optin for these. Normally around 2-5%. 

It’s not really an email capture method as such, although it will collect some leads.

It’s more of a sales technique. The people on the call see the things you can do, and then are more likely to buy right there and then.

Handy right?

The issue with this method is that it’s not scalable. You take the call with a single client at a time, and you need to be there live for the call.

Another similar method with more scaling is to run a webinar.

Basically where you teach a workshop of some kind for 30 minutes to help showcase your expertise and help people get past a problem.

It’s almost like a group zoom call.

You won’t get huge conversion rates on these, but the people who do are very close to buying and just have final questions. The beauty of these is you can do 1 to many, and speak to multiple people at once, but you will have to do them live if you want them to convert.

Optin rate for these used to be sky high but it’s dropped off in recent years because people can’t be arsed to wait x number of days to turn up and watch live. They want it now, not tomorrow or next week. 

That and the fact that they might wait only to watch a pre-recorded sales pitch kind of stings.

However, if you do run them live, add value, and answer questions, then you can make a lot of sales from those leads that turn up.

You just wont get a huge volume of leads with either of these methods.

It’s time to get more email subscribers!

Like I said earlier though, you can pretty much just use the first 3 methods in this article and scale to 10k subs easily – simply because you’re making all traffic to your site more likely to convert.

The key of course is to get them set up, so check out the link below to learn how to make those hyper specific offers.

Then it’s just rinse and repeat:

• Do the easy stuff with the home page and lead magnets
• Write more content
• Add Hyper Specific Offers
• Rank those pages and drive traffic to them
• Get leads
• Make sales

Simple!

It’s just a matter of putting in the work, but once you do? It’ll blow up your business like you wouldn’t believe.