5 Tips to Build An Email List on WordPress

Email marketing works and is here to stay. Just ask any marketer with impressive email marketing success stories in 2021. Along with organic and paid search, email marketing was among their top three marketing strategies. 

That makes sense. 

Email marketing consistently generates a 4,200% Return on Investment (ROI).

Many surveys also predict that more companies will increase their email marketing budgets in 2022. For most of them, the goal is to leapfrog to the top of their sales and marketing targets.

But you know this already. Building a quality email list is the first step to nurturing relationships and driving revenue through email marketing.

This snackable guide will introduce you to some fresh email marketing tips you can use right away to build an email list on WordPress, regardless of your skill level.

1. Use Twitter Threads to Add Followers to Your Email List

Twitter Threads provide a means to establish rapport by sharing insights in more than 280 characters.

For email list building specifically, Threads work like sales pages by illustrating your authority on a topic one tweet at a time, followed by a call to action. Sahil Bloom and Sweaty Startup founder Nick Hubert present two examples to learn from. 

Sahil shares what he learns along the way, such as productivity hacks like in this tweet. 

In this thread, he shares productivity hacks and transforms several tweets into mini-chapters, each with its own subheading.

His last two tweets summarize the entire series, including a call to join his email newsletter. In fact, he has enough room to wave social proof by asking you to join the 75,000+ others who enjoy his newsletter. 

Others, like Nick, use Threads to invite followers to follow their business journey and join their podcasts by email. 

Similarly, you can use Threads to build rapport, establish credibility, or give a sneak peek into what your followers will receive if they join your list.      

2. Add a Countdown Timer to Your Exit-Intent Popups

An exit-intent popup offers an easy and quick way to keep visitors from leaving your WordPress website prematurely. Yet, exit popups get a bad rap for compromising user experience. Yes, everyone hates popups. Still, not all popups are equally displeasing.

A countdown timer in exit popups could make them less aggravating. Begin by disarming visitors’ ability to dismiss popups when they click outside the popup, click “X”, or tap “close”.

Taking a page from YouTube Ads’ book, the countdown shows viewers that they have a few seconds to decide whether they want to stay or go. The wait will be worth the visitors’ time if you offer a deal they won’t refuse. 

Here’s an example of a Venture Harbour offer in a popup to take some inspiration from:

G2 also found out that most people dislike pop-ups because they are everywhere, pop up too soon, and are always there. However, the respondents also said they would appreciate a popup more if it included: 

• A discount
• Interesting content
• A chance to win something
• Exclusive offers

Here is an example of a conversion-optimized popup OptinMonster made that knocks the “discount factor” out of the park.

 Bonus tip: Use interactive popup forms to make exit-intent popups less boring. 

3. Ask Chatbot Users to Add their Email Address to Get Personalized Advice

This is one of the hottest trends in email marketing in 2022 used to build a list of warm leads. If you didn’t know, chatbots are online chat applications that provide assistance through text instead of interacting with a live human representative. This approach resonates exceptionally well with younger audiences.

Some fresh ways to use chatbots to grow your email list on WordPress include:

• Request emails whenever you are closed, including holidays, weekends, and after-hours. The key is to follow up with the prospects to establish ongoing relationships.
• If your visitors are in other time zones, you can use this method to collect their emails during your after-hours. Then, follow up with them during their working hours to build a lasting relationship. 
• For future follow-ups, be sure to double-verify each email address that you collect this way.
• Ask visitors for their names and email addresses if they just want to chat directly with an agent. Include the option to receive a detailed email they can read on their schedule.   

You can use this last tip to keep potential customers who ask urgent questions or cannot find satisfactory answers in your FAQ section. 

4. Request Valid Email Addresses to Unlock Access to Explainer Content

Many news websites ask readers for their email addresses to access more than a few stories or view older stories. Others lock premium content so only subscribers or members can see it. 

These days, websites like TechTarget only allow readers to read more than one full post if they subscribe to their email list. A Gmail account won’t work either. It only accepts company email addresses. 

Not only is a business email address ideal for B2B campaigns, but it is also more likely to be delivered, opened, and clicked than a personal email address.

Most WordPress page builders enable you to do this too. But how?

Your target audience will appreciate valuable content that addresses the topics they struggle with, want to find alternatives to, or find inspiration from. The following are a few examples of fresh content you can offer to subscribers: 

• The results of a business experiment accompanied by illustrations
• In less than 500 words, describe a trend relevant to your audience
• Analyze how a trend from another industry may affect your audience
• Send out your time-saving hacks as videos, such as how to solve WordPress problems step by step
• Share the Editor’s Picks on your site or popular content from other industry-relevant websites, blogs, forums, webinars, podcasts, etc.
• Tell your industry’s success stories in response to questions from your target audience(s).

Because you can produce that kind of content weekly, monthly, or quarterly makes this a brilliant method for keeping your mailing list engaged and reducing unsubscribes.

5. Diversify Your Email Series to Boost Engagement and Retainment

Many brands use the same email template for too long; an image, headline, body, and call-to-action. Readers become bored when they know what to expect from you, even when the copy is interesting. 

Is there anything you can do about that? Try these ideas to become less predictable and more exciting. 

• Add interactive items in your emails to improve engagement. Think: interactive carousels, product slideshows, animated CTAs, and email signatures that include an interactive image, Instagram gallery, or clickable YouTube video.

• Diversify your email content to include video, GIFs, audio, and illustration elements in different emails, or combine the content types in one email. Take a look at this example email by Pangaia, which Really Good Emails named “Email GIF of the Week“:

• Surprise your subscribers with customer appreciation messages.
• Change up the length of every email to break up past patterns.
• Explore HTML and plain-text emails to find your audience’s sweet spot.
• Don’t assume everyone knows where to click to access your offer. Instead, make everything clickable.
• Keep your subscribers in the loop with interesting details about side projects you’re working on with your team or on your own.
• Include gamification elements like leaderboards and scorecards in your emails when appropriate. Take a look at how Grammarly does it:

The trick is to consistently employ one or more of these strategies with each email you send out in your campaign or series.

Conclusion 

By building an email list on WordPress, you can use the world’s premier content management system to grow your brand online. Automation, personalization, and user-generated content have been among the ways to promote your brand via email in recent years. 

By practicing the tips in this post, you can attract, convert, and keep more ideal subscribers looking forward to your next email notification.

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