Category: List Building Tools

In today’s digital age, an email list remains one of the most valuable assets for online businesses, freelancers, and online influencers. Why? Because email provides a direct line of communication to your audience. Blogging, on the other hand, establishes credibility, provides value, and attracts organic traffic. When combined, these two elements can work wonders for growing your online presence, business, and profits.

In this post I want to give you a few effective ways to start utilizing a blog to build an email list.

Let’s dive in!

Strategy #1: Content Upgrades

A content upgrade is a piece of additional content closely related to the topic of your blog post. For example, if you have a blog post about “10 Yoga Poses for Back Pain,” you might offer a downloadable PDF with illustrations of each pose as a content upgrade. To access this upgrade, readers would need to provide their email addresses.

Strategy #2: Pop-ups and Slide-ins

While some readers find them annoying, pop-ups and slide-ins can be highly effective if used correctly. The key is in timing and design. Instead of bombarding your visitor as soon as they land on your page, allow them some time (30 seconds to a minute) to engage with your content before showing the pop-up. Ensure your message is concise and offers genuine value.

Strategy #3: End-of-Post Sign-up Forms

After a reader finishes your post, it’s a perfect opportunity to introduce them to your email list. Including a sign-up form at the end of your post with a compelling CTA (Call to Action) can lead to significant conversions.

Strategy #4: Content Locking

This technique involves ‘locking’ a portion of your content, making it accessible only to those who subscribe. For instance, you could have an in-depth guide where the first part is free, but the concluding part is locked until the user provides their email.

Side Note: Thrive Leads will allow you to easily implement all FOUR of the above strategies easily. You’ll see examples of these four strategies all over my blog. Want to implement these strategies for yourself? Grab Thrive Leads and get started today!

Strategy #5: Exclusive Access or Discounts

If you sell products or services, you can entice readers to subscribe to your email list by offering exclusive discounts or early access to new offerings. This technique can be especially powerful for eCommerce businesses or service providers.

Strategy #6: Engaging Stories and Newsletters

Sometimes, the promise of interesting content can be enough. Tease readers with the type of content they can expect in your newsletters – behind-the-scenes peeks, personal stories, or exclusive insights.

Strategy #7: Leverage Social Proof

Showing testimonials or showcasing the number of existing subscribers (“Join 10,000+ subscribers!”) can provide the necessary social proof to make someone feel comfortable about signing up.

Strategy #8: Host Webinars and Online Workshops

Promote exclusive webinars, courses, or workshops on your blog. To gain access, visitors need to sign up, thus growing your email list. Plus, these events position you as an authority in your niche.

Strategy #9: Engage in Collaborations

Guest posting on other blogs or hosting guest authors on your platform can introduce new audiences to your content. Always include a link back to your blog with a compelling reason for these new readers to subscribe to your email list.

Okay… 9 strategies! That should keep you busy for awhile. 😉

Here’s the bottom line… When it comes to building an email list through a blog, the opportunities are abundant. The key is to consistently offer value, be genuine, and utilize multiple strategies. I just gave you 9 of them, so you have plenty to work with. Remember, your email list is more than just numbers… it represents a community of people interested in what you have to say, so treat it with care and respect.

So, you’ve got your blog all setup and ready to go. It’s packed full of killer content, and you’ve got a great content marketing strategy to fuel it all.

Did you forget something though?

Are you using your blog to build your list?

No?

*Screams in horror*

If you’re not building your list with your blog you’re doing this all wrong!

Yes your blog is great for getting traffic and you can send all that traffic anywhere you want within your posts, but you work hard for it, so why not get that traffic onto your email list so you can email them whenever you want instead of hoping they find you in the future when you publish more great content.

And with technology now this is super simple to do!

I use a plugin called Thrive Leads. If you look around this blog you will see a couple of places where I tell you to get on my list and there is an option form.

ALL of those were created with Thrive Leads and it took about 10-15 minutes to create each of them and get them on my site and it took ZERO coding knowledge.

Thrive Leads allows you to put an optin form in front of your people in MANY different ways and for many different lead magnets and optin offers.

The three I recommend you start out with are…

1. Optin Form In Your Sidebar

Here is a screen shot right from my blog showing you my sidebar optin form that I created with Thrive Leads. You just create the form, and use the widget to make it show up and there are settings you can use to make it show when and where you want. VERY customizable.

2. Popup Optin Form

Here is a screenshot of my popup. You might have seen this when you came to my site. 😉

3. In content Optin Form

In content optin forms are my favorite type of optin forms that Thrive Leads allows me to create. There are a ton of templates, AND I can create as many as I want to use on different blog posts and pages. If you have multiple lead magnets you’re going to fall in love with this function. This is one I created to get people on a simple “updates list”.

Here’s what I love about Thrive Leads…

1. It’s super duper simple to use.

2. There is a ton of training that is short and to the point and will get you up and running fast.

The very first time I used Thrive Leads it took me a minute to get the hand of the editor that creates the optin forms, but within 15 minutes I was quickly creating really great looking optin forms for my blog and soon after I got them live I started seeing all that traffic coming to my blog getting on my list. 🙂

So, if you’re not using your blog to build your list, go grab Thrive Leads, and take an hour today and get those optin forms on your blog.

You can get Thrive Leads at http://www.WPForSellers.com/ThriveLeads

You’re wasting traffic if you’re not doing this!

Questions or comments on using Thrive Leads? Leave them in the comments below…