Today is the one year birthday of the Tactics Time chess tactics email newsletter! See founder Tim Brennan’s tale of how his email list grew from three subscribers to 700. It was one year ago today that I sent out my very first e-mail newsletter. I use AWeber to send my e-mails, and I highly [...]

What do you get when you combine great food with a great email campaign? Why, you get Fork Restaurant here in Philly! We interviewed Ellen Yin, owner of Fork, to learn more about why they use an email campaign, how they use it and how it has affected their business. Fork And Email Marketing Fork [...]

Helping small businesses grow is our mission. We strive to provide the right tools for people to be able to successfully market their business online. So we love it when we hear about customer successes. Take Dustin Maher, for example. He started his fitness business in Madison, Wisconsin and is now known on a national [...]

If you’ve been doing email marketing for over a week, you’ve probably heard all about split testing: why you should, easy split tests you can implement today, split testing your web forms and calls to action, and so on. If people liked email as much as they like cats, “test it!” would be our “I [...]

Just two years after the launch of Social Media Examiner, founder Michael Stelzner has plenty to be proud of. He runs one of the world’s top business blogs, with an email list of more than 124,000 and growing, plus over 450,000 visitors per day. He also recently published his latest book, Launch: How to Quickly [...]

A little while back we interviewed an AWesome customer of ours, Keith at the Wine School of Philadelphia, to spotlight his business and talk about how he uses AWeber. Well, it didn’t take us long to find another AWesome customer to spotlight — SEER Interactive. How SEER’s Adam And Mark Use AWeber SEER Interactive is [...]

We like to think our customers are pretty cool. We talk to you everyday over the phone, through live chat and in emails. You leave comments on the blog, post to our Facebook wall and converse with us through Twitter. Introducing Keith Wallace, CEO and Founder of The Wine School Of Philadelphia So we went [...]

“91% of email users subscribed to a company’s mailing list and then later decided they no longer wanted to be on that list,” an ExactTarget report stated. That’s bad news. The same report also showed that 42% of subscribers say they’re more likely to buy from a company after they’ve signed up for the company’s [...]

This is a guest post by Benny Lewis of Fluent In 3 Months. We were talking about how he builds his list and keeps subscribers’ attention from email to email, and he offered to share some of his email marketing methods with you.

Take it away, Benny! -Justin Premick

My name is Benny Lewis, and I don’t have much experience in Internet marketing. I actually blog about rapid language learning.

But a year ago I started an email newsletter for my blog and have been getting an excellent return out of it.

How do I do it? I inject some personality into it, and I use people’s curiosity to get them on my list and keep them reading!

Satisfying People’s Curiosity as a List-Building Technique

For example, every couple of months I get a surge of sign-ups (usually about five times my normal rate) when I offer something much more valuable than a free e-book (which I do anyway); satisfying their curiosity!

You see, every few months I move to a new country and learn a new language. But the thing is, I keep the next language and destination a secret and only reveal it in advance to those in the email list. When I state on Twitter, Facebook and on the blog that I’m about to announce my new mission in the email list, so many new people jump on board!

The best thing is that the announcement is part of the email itself (not an attachment, or link) so this gets them used to the idea of appreciating opening and reading the email itself. This means that I have an incredibly low unsubscribe rate; especially as I make sure each weekly email is worthwhile content.

Ensuring Long Term Higher Open Rates

The problem with this of course is that it was only giving me the >higher open rates in bursts every few months, and then they would start going down again. While people constantly give me feedback that they love the content of the emails (which are unique and not simple links to blog posts), I still wanted to engage their curiosity over several emails, making sure those already in the list would be motivated to read some more.

So I found a fun way to do that! Instead of giving them the answer at once, I dropped clues in each email. This helped not only with open rates, but with engagement. I got more replies from readers than I knew what to do with!

For example, here’s the dramatic change of almost 11% in open-rates when I revealed just the destination of a recent language learning “mission”:

Click to see full size

Here are the contents of that email above with the big clue:

But of course, this didn’t actually reveal the answer of which language it was! (In a previous clue, I said that I needed to go to this destination in particular, so it wasn’t about distant-learning). People were emailing me with guesses all over the place, especially building on previous confusing but interesting clues.

Monetizing That Curiosity Without Unsubscribes or Spam Complaints

I put a lot of work into my emails; almost as much as into the blog itself! And there aren’t any sales pitches at all in my typical weekly broadcasts. But I do of course need to make this worth my while financially, so I take advantage of the peak open rate, and since the sales pitch is so rare, I actually get no complaints about it.

When I finally revealed the answer, I knew that a lot of people would be reading that email so it was a perfect time to announce an update to my Language Hacking Guide and a temporary price reduction:

… I continued to describe some other additions to the guide and details about how to take advantage of the temporary discount. And then of course, I followed it up with what they had all been waiting for!

and I went on to describe my objectives with this language.

Even though the email started with a sales pitch, the replies were immensely positive as I had given them the final answer that had been worth waiting for. It was quite a surprise of course, after my usual preference for spoken languages!

But here is the best part: Because this was all part of a long-term strategy, the results of this email, which started with a detailed sales pitch, were 0% complaints (nobody marked it as spam) and 0.3% unsubscribes, which is actually what it tends to be for any typical email I send! Even though I gave them the answer they had been waiting for, they still stuck around.

And of course I got a huge surge of sales that week as I ran the special offer, the vast majority of which were coming from my email list.

While I can only engage in the curiosity of what my next language will be every few months, what I do now is give weekly mission updates that I never mention on the blog, to share my progress and struggles so that readers can relate to it in their own language learning challenge. I always follow it up with a weekly tip or a link to a very helpful website for language learners to make sure they get some real quality out of the email.

In this way I feel my personality is getting through and I am constantly satisfying readers’ curiosity about what is happening in my language learning mission. Because of this, readers know that they can always get something worthwhile when they open my emails.

How Can I Do This on My Email List?

I am subscribed to quite a lot of email lists, and I have to say that as a reader I don’t feel so much personal engagement in a lot of them. Competitions seem to be run on things you can win rather than simply testing people’s intelligence in a less superficial way. Sometimes “winning” doesn’t mean getting a free e-book, but satisfying their curiosity.

• If you run a competition, try to make it one that plays with their curiosity and make sure to say that the answer is within the email! Sending an email that simply links to an ebook or blog post makes the email itself less valuable. People should be opening an email for the content within the email if ever possible.
• If your company has any public announcements that readers would be curious about then tell them that subscribers to the email list will find out first! It makes them feel like part of a special club. I go as far as to call my newsletter a “league” (more precisely “The Language Hacking League”) that people sign up to, since I’m sharing things with them they wouldn’t be able to find out anywhere else.

This very week I have reached the climax of another announcement and price reduction promotion, which you’ll see a part of on my blog. Of course, if you are curious about what my next language will be in advance of it starting, you can still find out by joining the e-mail list and reading the welcome e-mail this week, and hearing about it in advance in upcoming missions.

Benny Lewis teaches people to learn languages quickly at Fluent in 3 Months.

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What would you do to increase your subscriber growth by 99%? What if it just required a quick addition to your website?

Michael McCarthy’s investor relations site QualityStocks has a large subscriber base with consistent growth, but Michael wanted to find ways to continue increasing those numbers. We talked with him about strategies aimed at increasing his subscriber growth, and after some testing and review, found just a small change can yield huge results.

This lesson can be applied to all email marketing campaigns. If you’re looking for an easy way to bring in more subscribers, read on to learn what Michael did and why.

How QualityStocks Built Its List

QualityStocks connects their email subscribers with companies that they evaluate and determine have huge potential to succeed in the short and long-term future. There is a form on the site where people can sign up to get daily updates:

They also have other pages on their site that talk about the mailing list and invite visitors to subscribe. The forms he’s using are called inline forms, as they are on the page itself. Michael does a great job explaining his mailing lists and what subscribers can expect, and this has created a great foundation for his campaign.

The Change That Increased Subscriber Growth

When you have a successful campaign with consistent growth, it makes it difficult to justify implementing any changes. However, some changes rarely disappoint, and can even lift a campaign to a higher level of success. Adding a pop-over or lightbox form is one of those changes, as other AWeber customers have discovered in the past.

Michael added a lightbox form on his site. His home page has a good section dedicated to information about the mailing list, so it was decided it would perform best on the “About Us” page, which gets a lot of visitors.

The “About Us” page contains important information about the company and what’s offered, but their invitation to join the mailing list is not as prominent as it is on some of their other pages. The lightbox now allows that invitation to stick out on the page, bringing in more subscribers:

Adding the form on that page was a good move; it caused a 158% increase in subscriber growth compared to the previous month without the lightobox:

This monthly new subscribers chart shows the six months before and after when the lightbox form was introduced. There is a temporary drop in new subscribers during the holiday months before rapid growth resumes.

In the six months since the lightbox form was added, Quality Stocks has seen a 99% increase in subscriber growth compared to the prior six months.

Other Changes to Increase Subscriber Growth

Already have a pop-over on your site? Make sure you’re utilizing these tips so you aren’t losing potential subscribers:

• Make sure your form is accessible- You can place your form “above the fold” which means that it will be in the upper half of your page. Your subscribers will be able to see it upon landing on your page, so they won’t need to scroll through your page to reach the sign up form.
• Put an inline form on every page- Visitors may click through to different pages on your website. You want to make sure that a form in on every page so that no matter where they are, they have the option to sign up to your mailing list.
• Utilize social media- Facebook has become a very popular social media platform and a great source for collecting subscribers. You can add a link to your web form on your Facebook page so visitors can become subscribers.

Add a Pop-over On Your Site

You can easily see what results you get by adding a pop-over form to your site, and you can always remove it if it’s not something you want to keep up on your site. Most find a pop-over is a great addition to their web site.

What have you done to increase subscriber growth? Do you think pop-up forms are effective on your site? Have you tried putting your pop-ups on different pages?

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What would you do to increase your subscriber growth by 99%? What if it just required a quick addition to your website?

Michael McCarthy’s investor relations site QualityStocks has a large subscriber base with consistent growth, but Michael wanted to find ways to continue increasing those numbers. We talked with him about strategies aimed at increasing his subscriber growth, and after some testing and review, found just a small change can yield huge results.

This lesson can be applied to all email marketing campaigns. If you’re looking for an easy way to bring in more subscribers, read on to learn what Michael did and why.

How QualityStocks Built Its List

QualityStocks connects their email subscribers with companies that they evaluate and determine have huge potential to succeed in the short and long-term future. There is a form on the site where people can sign up to get daily updates:

They also have other pages on their site that talk about the mailing list and invite visitors to subscribe. The forms he’s using are called inline forms, as they are on the page itself. Michael does a great job explaining his mailing lists and what subscribers can expect, and this has created a great foundation for his campaign.

The Change That Increased Subscriber Growth

When you have a successful campaign with consistent growth, it makes it difficult to justify implementing any changes. However, some changes rarely disappoint, and can even lift a campaign to a higher level of success. Adding a pop-over or lightbox form is one of those changes, as other AWeber customers have discovered in the past.

Michael added a lightbox form on his site. His home page has a good section dedicated to information about the mailing list, so it was decided it would perform best on the “About Us” page, which gets a lot of visitors.

The “About Us” page contains important information about the company and what’s offered, but their invitation to join the mailing list is not as prominent as it is on some of their other pages. The lightbox now allows that invitation to stick out on the page, bringing in more subscribers:

Adding the form on that page was a good move; it caused a 158% increase in subscriber growth compared to the previous month without the lightobox:

This monthly new subscribers chart shows the six months before and after when the lightbox form was introduced. There is a temporary drop in new subscribers during the holiday months before rapid growth resumes.

In the six months since the lightbox form was added, Quality Stocks has seen a 99% increase in subscriber growth compared to the prior six months.

Other Changes to Increase Subscriber Growth

Already have a pop-over on your site? Make sure you’re utilizing these tips so you aren’t losing potential subscribers:

• Make sure your form is accessible- You can place your form “above the fold” which means that it will be in the upper half of your page. Your subscribers will be able to see it upon landing on your page, so they won’t need to scroll through your page to reach the sign up form.
• Put an inline form on every page- Visitors may click through to different pages on your website. You want to make sure that a form in on every page so that no matter where they are, they have the option to sign up to your mailing list.
• Utilize social media- Facebook has become a very popular social media platform and a great source for collecting subscribers. You can add a link to your web form on your Facebook page so visitors can become subscribers.

Add a Pop-over On Your Site

You can easily see what results you get by adding a pop-over form to your site, and you can always remove it if it’s not something you want to keep up on your site. Most find a pop-over is a great addition to their web site.

What have you done to increase subscriber growth? Do you think pop-up forms are effective on your site? Have you tried putting your pop-ups on different pages?

Tweet This