Double Your Blog Newsletter Readers: Build a Subscribe Page

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

Double Your Blog Newsletter Readers This is post #2 of 4 in a series on how we doubled the number of people on our blog newsletter. You can read the first post here.

In Part 1 of our discussion of blog newsletters I suggested you “think of your blog posts like sales letters for your blog, with each new subscriber as a successful conversion.”

Today, let’s continue that discussion, and highlight another tactic that is an especially easy “win” for anyone with some Internet or email marketing experience.

Blog Newsletter Grower #2: Create a Dedicated Subscribe Page

If your blog’s posts are like little sales letters for your blog, your blog’s subscribe page is even more of one.

Your blog does have a subscribe page, right?

You’ll notice that many successful bloggers do, and with good reason – it gives you a great opportunity to “sell” people on the value of your blog.

How Will People Get To This Page?

Some people will get there from another post or page of your blog (provided you give them the opportunity).

Link to your subscribe page from near the signup form in your sidebar. That way, people who aren’t sure if they want to subscribe can see why they should before taking the plunge.

Others will get there from links in:

Guest posts you write for other blogs
Comments you leave on other blogs
Your blog newsletter itself (we’ll talk more about this in a later post)

Also, if you’re not going to put a subscribe form at the end of a post, put a byline with a link to your subscribe page. This can be an effective alternative to the embedded form, and it’s far subtler.

Why Bother?

<obvious>Well, because you can get a lot of subscribers that way.</obvious>

All kidding aside, here’s a stat to chew on:

Our own subscribe page is responsible for over 30% of our active web subscribers.

Could you justify throwing away 30% of your subscribers? I sure can’t. But if we didn’t have our subscribe page, we could be doing exactly that.

If you’re swayed less by statistics and more by what other successful bloggers are doing, check out these subscribe page examples from popular blogs:

Problogger
DoshDosh
Copyblogger - Brian actually has 2 subscribe pages (the first offers RSS & email, and the other is dedicated specifically to email)
Chris Garrett - Chris throws in a freebie for subscribing… a good Internet marketing strategy that not enough bloggers use.
Tim Ferriss - I like Tim’s use of a list to sell you on subscribing. We do something similar at the moment on our own subscribe page, but he’s much more concise.

While not all these guys use AWeber to deliver their blog newsletters (although they should ), they clearly know a thing or two about building successful communities.

Next Up: A Simple Way to Get More People TO Your Subscribe Page

The 3rd post in this series will discuss a tactic you can use to drive people to your subscribe page – without doing any SEO or running any advertising campaigns!

If you’re not already subscribed to our blog newsletter, you can get signed up below. That way, when the next post comes out, you’ll be the first to know!

Until then, your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to create your own subscribe page and get it linked up on your blog. The next tactic is far more effective if you have a subscribe page in place, so get started on yours today!

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Tags: blog newsletters, rss to email

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10 Responses

Codrut Turcanu
August 6th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

hey, I’d like to get in that list too.. I have my two blogs loaded with opt-in forms and a dedicated sign-up page.. lol

P.S. A pop-up on exit would turn another 5% of visitors into leads
Paula
August 6th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

These are great ideas. I like your previous post regarding placing the opt-in form right in the post itself. I will definitely be trying that one.
Rod
August 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

I really like the idea of a subscribe page. Also the idea in a comment above about using a float in pop up is also good. SelfMadeChick.com uses a box on every page that convinces people to subscribe before each post.
Double Your Blog Newsletter Readers: Encourage Sharing! - Email Marketing Tips by AWeber
August 11th, 2008 at 9:49 am

[…] This is the 3rd of 4 posts on how we doubled our blog newsletter subscribers. Be sure to read the other ones on putting signup forms in posts and creating a subscribe page. […]
Bunmi Moore
August 12th, 2008 at 9:11 am

I new to all this stuff. Quick question. Can I create a subscribe page using aweber templates or is that not part of what this system does?
Justin Premick
August 12th, 2008 at 9:37 am

Bunmi,

You’ll create a subscribe page using your blog/website editing software, and then place the AWeber signup form on it.
chris
August 18th, 2008 at 8:30 am

I have a pop-in plus a right-side box for newsletter registration. After reading this post, I figured, what the heck. I made a subscribe page and then put a link to it at the bottom of all my main body content. While it’s not viewed a lot, the conversion rate is over 60%.
Double Your Blog Newsletter Readers: Expand Beyond Your Blog - Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips by AWeber
August 18th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

[…] Creating a dedicated blog subscribe page […]
Ron McDanel
August 18th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

I have had the same experience as chris - over 50% of the visitors to the subscribe page end up signing up. The page is a great place for us to "sell" our FREE buzz marketing course.

Better yet is the number of clients that I get after 5 or 6 free courses.
Guy
August 19th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

I like the subscribe page idea, but I don’t think it goes far enough.

While I don’t care to join the pop-up crowd I do use Aweber’s in-line form in a creative way on my SEO & Beyond blog located at…
===> http://ViralMarketing4u.com

Before people get to any actual article they go through header information which includes a request for them to sign up for my newsletter. So that it doesn’t look to sales pitchy I also include Aweber’s latest blog post script as well as a couple of other items that will likely draw attention to that area of the blog.

I also don’t put this on the right side where people are used to seeing sales type information.

So any time any one visits any page of my blog they are encouraged to sign up while being given valuable content to draw attention to the sign up form.

This is a new blog, so the jury is out as to if this is a good approach or not. However, if one subscribe page is a good idea for a blog then it should follow that every page encouraging subscribers would be great.

We will see.