7 Important Reasons Why You NEED An Email List For Your Blog
Have you wondered why you need an email list for your blog or business? Perhaps you’ve considered setting one up but you don’t know how to create an email list for your blog?
In this post I’ll go through what an email list is, reasons you might need one and how to create landing pages or forms that make people want to sign up to your newsletter.
What Is An Email List
You’ve probably seen examples of promotional material that businesses send to their subscribers. Often if you buy something from a website, you are automatically added to their email list. Therefore unless you’re completely off grid you’re likely to have received something similar in your inbox in the past.
An email list is a list of email addresses and other personal information that people submit to businesses with the understanding that the business will send them regular emails. Businesses small and large, use these email lists to send a newsletter, promotional material or sell their products or services.
If you’re a new blogger, you might be overwhelmed with everything you need to know. That’s why I wrote a post what you need to know before starting a blog, with 14 useful tips to help you get started.
I know when I first got started blogging, I didn’t think that email list was that important. I had no intention of selling products or services and due to this I didn’t see how it was going to help me.
The thing is email marketing is huge!
It is estimated that 332 billion emails are sent and received every single day around the world! Isn’t that crazy!
7 Reasons Why You Need An Email List For Your Blog
Now that you know what an email list is, you should probably know why email marketing is important and what it can do for you.
Remember, even if you don’t have anything specific to sell, I would still recommend starting to build an email list because these things take time and then you’re ready in the future if you have a new project or something exciting to share.
Next I’ll go through the reasons why you might need an email list for your blog.
1. Your Email List Belongs To You
Do you already use social media to promote your blog or website? You might not have considered that if anything happens to these platforms, then you could potentially lose a lot of views to your blog. Particularly if the majority of your traffic is from one of these sources.
When you think about it, an email list is completely yours! By all means continue to use Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter to drive traffic to your blog but consider growing yourself an email list that you can send targeted campaigns to, depending on your niche and your subscribers interests.
2. Subscribers To Your List Are More Likely To Be Active
If somebody has taken the time to fill in a form or subscribe to your list in another way, they are more likely to be interested in your business and what you have to offer.
I think this is important to remember, I know that if I’m signed up to a newsletter and they link to something that sounds interesting, that would definitely encourage me to head back to their website and read the blog post.
I’ll talk more about creating an email list for your blog in the next section, however having a clear call-to-action on your emails will help you get subscribers back onto your website.
3. It Helps You Connect With Your Audience
What’s great about an email list is that people who sign up to your list and remain signed up to your list, are generally people that know that being on your list is going to be useful for them.
It takes a bit of effort to sign up to an email list and provide your details so you know that your subscribers really do care about what you have to say. Aslong as you continue to provide value and connect with your subscribers, you will see so many benefits to having an email list alongside your blog.
People can easily reply to your email (aslong as you’ve provided your email address), ask questions and even answer your questions too.
In the blogging world, it’s a much more personal way of connecting with your readers, especially if they’re around the world and on different timezones to you.
4. You Can Sell Your Products, Courses Or Services
This might be a bit obvious but of course you can sell your products, courses or services through your email list. Even if you don’t have a lot of views to your blog yet, you might be surprised at how many people still sign up to your newsletter.
So many bloggers are putting a lot of effort into building an email list. If you have products or a course to sell for example, you might not even need a big list in order to convert these subscribers into customers.
In general, too many sales emails are going to put people off. However, if you share industry relevant news, some personal stories and the occasional promotional email (targeted to the right audience) – you’re going to see a lot of sales for your business.
5. It Encourages People To Go Back To Your Blog
I don’t know about you but over the years I’ve looked at sooo many blogs! Often and particularly if I’m looking for an answer to a question, I find the blog and then leave and never think about it again.
That-being-said if you give a potential subscriber enough of a reason to sign up to your blog. Whether that’s a useful freebie, an offer of discounts or even just well written engaging content – then they’re going to want to sign up to your newsletter.
Once they’re on your email list, it’s much easier for you to include links to blog posts that you think they might find interesting and that sends them back to your blog to read more.
It’s worth noting that it pays to know what sort of content your subscribers are interested in, once you have an email list set up. You can do this by segmenting your list based on their interests. You can also do this by keeping an eye on your analytics either Google Analytics for your blog posts or the links that people click on within your emails.
6. You Can Notify Your Subscribers About Discounts And Announcements
This is a great idea if you have things to sell, sending your subscribers an exclusive discount will mean they’re more likely to buy from you to make use of this discount. In some email providers, you can even include a countdown which can be quite effective in encouraging your subscribers to make a purchase.
If you have a new product released, having an email list is a great way of encouraging your readers back to your website to have a look at your new product. Generating a bit of buzz before you announce the new product launch, can also be a great way of getting your subscribers excited about what you’re offering!
Even if you don’t have anything you can sell, you can also use your email list to make any announcements for big business changes. You can use it as a way to share regular news about your business and any of the projects that you are currently working on.
7. You Can Get More Personal
If you’re used to social media, you might feel a bit worried about getting personal in emails. As I’ve said before, people that sign up to your newsletter are interested in what you have to say and it definitely helps you build that connection further by getting more personal in your emails.
If your business is on social media, it’s generally in the public domain, so getting personal is not so easy. Sure you can PM people and make connections that way, but it’s not the same.
When you have an email list, it’s like having your own fans, you can share your struggles (relevant to your niche)and ask them if they relate to what you have said.
If you’re curious about what a Virtual Assistant can do for you, you can read this Virtual Assistant case study where I help a client set up a blog and email marketing for her business.
How To Create An Email List For Your Blog
By now I’ve hopefully convinced you that you need an email list for your blog! Next I’ll go through the steps to take to start building your email list and growing your blogging business.
So you want to set up an email list, but where to start?
Choose An Email Provider
Firstly, I would recommend choosing an email service provider. You can get started on a lot of providers like Mailchimp and ConvertKit for free.
However, the one that I would recommend personally would be MailerLite because it’s free for up to 1000 subscribers, it’s super easy to use and you can create automations such as a welcome email sequence, all for free!
I recently changed my email provider from ConvertKit to MailerLite and I’m really impressed so far. It uses a drag and drop builder so you can either build your emails from scratch or use a template and adjust it to how you want everything to look. You can easily add your Logo, images and text – to create the perfect email for your business.
Create Your Forms Or Landing Page
If you have a WordPress website then creating and adding forms to your blog is really easy using the email providers Plugins. For example, I have added forms to my other website www.rainbowvegansrock.com using a shortcode in the widget builder.
You can do the same with Mailchimp and Convertkit, you just install their plugin onto your website and go to the settings to link your account to the plugin.
With all of the providers, you can create static forms where you can use your brand colours on, change the font etc; and you can change the information that you collect from the subscribers to exactly what you want i.e Name, Address, Location, Email.
It’s best to include a few different forms on your website, in a few different places. The top bar of your website is a popular place to put a form, you could also include one in the middle of a blog post, at the end of a blog post or in a side bar.
Pop-up forms are also great because the reader really can’t ignore it. Be careful with the timings of a pop-up form though. Make sure that the reader has had a good chance to look at your blog posts before you show the form, aim for at least 20 seconds and up to a minute if you have that option.
If you don’t have a WordPress site, or if you would prefer to have one page that you send people to collect their details – you could instead create a Landing page.
What I like about a landing page is that it’s so much easier to share on social media, you just create your landing page with all of the details and what subscribers have to gain from signing up to your mailing list. Then you just share that to your followers on social media.
In the content of the landing page, really sell it! But not in a salesy way.. 😁 I know, I’m contradicting myself.
It’s all about the wording though, take your time to make sure that you are writing with your reader in mind. Tell them the benefits of signing up to your mailing list, what they will gain and how you can help them.
Consider Including An Opt-In
Another useful way of getting people to sign up to your mailing list is to create a freebie (also known as an opt-in). You can create something very simple like a checklist, a short guide or even an email series.
With a checklist or a guide of some sort you can create this in Canva and save it as a PDF, this can be sent to your subscribers as soon as they sign up to your mailing list.
An email series can be also set up ahead of time, I would recommend being clear about how often you’ll be sending these emails. You don’t want readers to mark your email as spam because you’re sending them too often. You can have this series prewritten in the email provider and you can schedule them to be sent in order to your subscribers, a few times a week, weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
I personally wouldn’t recommend sending daily emails unless you know that your readers will appreciate it. For example if you are known for your funny content or for daily quotes – then a daily email would probably be ok, but keep it short and sweet.
An opt-in has been proven to be a great incentive for getting people to sign up to your email list.
Set Up A Welcome Email
You might have already included this if you are going for an email series as your opt-in. However, a welcome email is so important for your email list.
You need to include this information in the email:
- How often you’ll be sending your emails
- A brief description about what the reader can expect from your content
- An image of you if possible (this will help the reader feel that they are hearing from a real person)
- Social links or how they can get in touch with you
- Always include a footer with a way they can Unsubscribe (some email providers do this automatically for you)
Share To Social Media
No matter how you want to collect subscribers for your email list. Make sure you are notifying your existing followers on social media. You can share the URL of your forms or your landing page to collect subscribers, especially useful if you have quite an engaged audience on social media but not essential.
If you use Instagram a lot, you can use Linktree to add a link to a profile where you can add multiple links for people to click on. So mine used to include Website, Email, Monthly newsletter and YouTube channel. I now use Maelt.co which is the same service but they plant trees. Then you can have a dedicated post on Instagram talking about your newsletter and send people to your profile to click the link to subscribe. You can share this link in your stories too.
On Facebook and Twitter it’s much easier to share the link for your forms or landing page with a brief description of why people should sign up to your newsletter.
I’ve saved the best for last, Pinterest might be one of the best ways to obtain email subscribers. If you ensure that you have several different forms on your website, the traffic that you usually get from Pinterest will see your forms and subscribe if they want to hear from you.
You can also create specific Pinterest pins to drive traffic directly to your form or landing page, this works well if you are offering a freebie. If you create a few beautiful pins with details of your free checklist (or whatever you’re offering) and you’ll be surprised at how many people subscribe to your list from Pinterest.
I hope this post has helped you to understand why you need an email list for your blog. If you’ve already created an email list you might need some help with what to include specifically in your emails, get in touch with me to book a discovery call.
Damaris
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