Owning a mailing list is one of the best ways to keep people engaged with your brand or business. You may already be familiar with basic newsletter sign-up strategies and practices, such as implementing CTAs on key landing pages, offering an incentive to motivate users to sign up, or simply having a highly visible sign-up form on your website. 

However, motivating customers to sign up for yet another newsletter can be difficult. It now requires more unique, creative strategies that go beyond the common advice of how to grow a mailing list in order to increase subscriber counts, improve engagement rates, and foster higher-quality leads.

In this article, we’re going to give you practical strategies on strategic placement and newsletter sign-up incentives to help you skyrocket your mailing list subscriber count.

Optimizing Your Website for Maximum Conversions 

Building an email list is an essential part of any business. It contributes to your brand and business growth and can make a significant impact on the long-term success of your business. In 2023, revenue from the email marketing market was valued at $8.3 billion and is set to increase exponentially over the next decade, indicating the value of email marketing for any business. 

Visibility from channels like SEO and social media is decreasing, but email engagement rates remain strong. In fact, 89% of B2B marketers maintained or increased their spend on email marketing, with more than 70% reporting an improvement in performance because of this. With these numbers in mind, it makes sense to pursue email marketing as a way to maximize your conversions. 

Here’s an example from Dunelm, offering a prize draw as an incentive:

Example of a Sign-Up bar from Dunelm

However, the key to successful email campaigns is continuous testing and optimization (such as with A/B testing) as even small changes can lead to significant improvements in signup rates. FooConvert will be a valuable plugin with which you will be able to implement testing on WordPress websites since it comes with a range of customizable Gutenberg CTA blocks that can be modified based on the engagement they receive on your site.

Strategic Placement: Where to Showcase Your Newsletter 

The location of your email sign-up form can make a difference. Some locations are naturally more effective than others, and this placement can influence both the likelihood of a successful sign-up and the type of user that signs up. 

For example, placing an email sign-up box above the fold on the homepage (like the example from POLO below) makes it immediately visible to all visitors, which will potentially have a bigger reach. However, with these types of placement, the CTA must engage the user and succinctly make the case as to why they should sign up. 

Polo’s homepage sign-up popup

Email sign-up forms placed at the end of content, however, are only likely to be seen by engaged users who have read the full article. This might decrease the overall visibility of the CTA and consequently, the number of sign-ups that you get. However, it can improve the quality of those sign-ups (and your overall conversion rate from your email campaigns) by attracting users who are more likely to be interested in your product or service.

You can also showcase your newsletter sign-up forms with triggered popups, which capture users after they’ve been on the page for a set amount of time, or before they leave a page. You can then frame your popup accordingly, for example, as a ‘last chance’ to convert leaving visitors.

Creating Compelling CTAs with FooPlugins Solutions 

FooConvert is particularly useful, as it will allow users to create compelling CTAs, triggered popups, exit-intent blocks, and more. These can be used across your WordPress site on any page or post, allowing you to target specific users in specific scenarios. 

Alternatively, FooBar is a notification bar plugin that allows WordPress site owners to create compelling, eye-catching announcements, such as CTAs and sign-up forms. These can be placed on the top, bottom, or sides of your page, or inline (like the one below), for the ideal placement. It’s straightforward to set up, and you can easily customize your sign-up form designs with extensive settings and real-time previews.

Irresistible Incentives: Enticing Readers to Subscribe 

While placement is a significant consideration, there are a number of other strategies that you can leverage to draw attention to your newsletter offering and motivate users to sign up. Below are several suggestions:

  • Lead magnets: You can create a lead magnet, such as an eBook or industry data report, to provide value to users and encourage more sign-ups for your newsletter. Lead magnets are enticing, as they offer customers something for free, and can be tailored to your audience, per page, with dynamic incentives (for example, promoting a resource that’s related to a blog post a visitor is reading).
  • Limited-time access: Instilling a sense of urgency, or using FOMO, is known to skyrocket conversion rates for CTAs. One way to do this is to use FooBar’s countdown bar to offer temporary access to premium content or tools, for example, encouraging quick sign-ups from site visitors. 
countdown bar
  • Community access: You can provide entry to groups, forums, or online communities in exchange for email information, where subscribers can network with like-minded people or gain access to industry experts, for example.
  • Social proof: Testimonials and reviews are a powerful form of social proof, which can be a big driver of sign-ups. By featuring what people have said about your newsletter on your site, you can encourage more new sign-ups.

Cross-Platform Promotion: Expanding Your Reach 

A solid email list-building strategy shouldn’t rely on direct website sign-ups alone. It is also worthwhile to utilize cross-platform promotion to expand your reach. 

“To truly maximize your reach and grow your audience, it’s crucial to implement cross-platform promotion techniques. By leveraging multiple channels such as social media, content marketing, and strategic partnerships, you can tap into diverse audience segments and create multiple touchpoints for potential subscribers. This integrated approach not only accelerates list growth but also ensures you’re building a more engaged and varied subscriber base.” Tam Vincent from FooPlugins.

An example of this is sharing snippets or exclusive content from your newsletter on platforms like TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram. This, along with engaging CTAs, can help to bring sign-ups amongst people who might never otherwise visit your website (or read your content). Social media platforms also happen to be good places to post lead magnets, such as eBooks or reports.

You might also consider writing valuable guest content for popular sites in your industry or posting thought pieces on sites like Medium. This can encourage sign-ups if you also include a link to your newsletter sign-up page within your author bio, or the content itself.

Similarly, appearing on podcasts that tackle topics relevant to your expertise is a fantastic way to gain more exposure and build your list. If you’re featured on a podcast, you can mention your email list as a place where listeners can get bonus content or additional resources, and try to get a link to your email sign-up form included in the show notes.

Measure, Analyze, Optimize: Fine-Tuning Your Strategy 

Getting new sign-ups is always the goal, and you can employ any number of strategies to achieve this. However, effective newsletter growth also requires continuous measurement and optimization, and the way to measure and optimize the effectiveness of campaigns is through email analytics. 

Email analytic tools are often already available within your email platform, and they allow you to track performance and make data-driven decisions about what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change in your email marketing campaigns.

A good open rate is between 17% and 28%; if your open rate doesn’t meet these figures, it may be time to fine-tune your content or see what changes need to be made to your mailing list audience (such as through email segmentation. If you’re looking to fine-tune your email content, you can carry out A/B tests on your sign-up forms, CTAs, and email content with different headlines, images, and copy to see what drives the most sign-ups.

Sign up example from River Island

Take Action: Implement These Tips with FooPlugins 

Incorporating newsletter tools into your marketing strategy is a must. But to make the most of this, you need to utilize creative sign-up strategies to grow your subscriber list. 

Your website should be optimized for newsletter sign-ups, with eye-catching placement and design for forms or CTAs. Aside from this, you can offer incentives such as lead magnets to increase interest in your newsletter. Leveraging social proof and promoting across platforms are other effective ways to spread the word about your newsletter. Once you have enough email sign-ups, fine-tune your strategy to deliver the most effective campaigns possible. 

FooPlugins can help with this. FooConvert will have tailor-made conversion blocks to boost your email sign-up conversion rate, while FooBar is the best way to ‘stick’ an email sign-up form to the top of a website page. With these tools, you can create a seamless user experience which, when combined with the other tips in this article, can massively boost newsletter sign-ups and encourage long-term growth. 

Start driving conversions now with FooConvert and FooBar!

The Best WordPress Notification Bar

FooBar is an easy-to-use WordPress notification bar plugin, draw attention, boost conversions and capture leads.