How I Grew My Email List Quickly to 125 Subscribers My First Week
If someone would have told me I grew my email list to 125 subscribers in my first week I would have laughed. I have hardly any skill in building websites or email marketing. So, you want to know how I grew my email list… read on!
To some who are gaining hundreds of subscribers a day, this may seem insignificant. However, I’m hoping to others that struggle with email marketing, that this will prove that anyone without knowledge of marketing can build an email list quickly.
If you’ve read any blogging advice online, you know email marketing is vital in 2021. Just look at what these 7 experts have to say in this article! Email marketing increases brand awareness, repeat readers and results in better conversions which drives revenue. Not sold? This article by WPBeginners highlights how their ’email list gets 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns.’
If you’re a blogger, you may find these 25 easy ‘request to join’ blogging group boards useful to start promoting your blog posts! You may also be interested in these 29 amazing Pinterest tips that will skyrocket your blog traffic! Remember to subscribe below to getting blogging tips and tricks every month.
How I Grew My Email List: Content
• Evidence I Really Did Grow My Email List By 125 Subscribers
• How I Grew My Email List
• Tip 1: Choose the right Email Marketing Service For YOU & Use It From The Start
– Why Did SendInBlue Give me Confidence To Push My Email Subscriber List?
– Why did this tip help me grow my email list to 125 subscribers in the first week?
• Tip 2: I Didn’t Use Sign-Up Pages, I Used Embedded Forms
• Tip 3: I Put My Email List Sign-Up Forms Everywhere on My Blog
• Tip 4: I Don’t Just Have One General Sign-Up List
• Tip 5: Offer Something Irresistible In Exchange For Their Email!
– My Etsy Email Sign-Up Example
– Other Sign-Up Ideas
• Tip 6: I Kept My Sign-Up Forms Short
• Tip 7: Don’t Just Promote Your Email Sign-Up on Your Blog
• Tip 8: I Reached Out to Influencers
• Tip 9: I Use the Word ‘Free’ On My Forms
• Bonus Tip: Have Pop-Up Sign-Up Forms
• How I grew my email list to 125 subscribers my first week: Final Thoughts
Evidence I Really Did Grow My Email List By 125 Subscribers
Pastime To Profit went live on the 15th February 2021. It was incredibly exciting launching a blog; I didn’t know what to expect. I was thrilled when I ended up gaining 1,185 views and 125 email subscribers the first week. These statistics cover the first 7 days from the 15th – 21st February:
As you can see, using SendInBlue’s search and segmentation feature, the results show that I gained 125 email subscribers between the dates specified.
How I Grew My Email List:
Tip 1: Choose The Right Email Marketing Service For YOU & Use It From The START
This one is important for how I grew my email list. You may be thinking: ‘I could choose any email list service and it wouldn’t affect how many people sign up’. Whilst that may be true, in my opinion SendInBlue offers something different to its users so I felt confident to start growing my list right from the start! Using some of the others, I wouldn’t have felt as confident or pushed the lists as hard.
There are an abundance of email marketing services available. You’ve likely heard of a good number by now, including those in this non-exhaustive list:
• SendInBlue
• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• MailerLite
• Get Response
Why Did SendInBlue Give Me Confidence To Push My Email Subscriber List?
Most marketing services eventually make you pay for the number of subscribers you get. If you reach a certain number, to get any more you HAVE to start paying a monthly fee.
However, what makes SendInBlue different is that you can have as many subscribers as you want for FREE using a FREE account. You could have up to 100,000 subscribers and still be paying nothing. But if you had this many subscribers with other service providers, you’d be paying big bucks per month.
Instead, with SendInBlue you pay for how many emails you send out. You can send out 300 emails per day… for free… forever. Whilst you can of course then pay to send out more emails (which works out much cheaper than other providers anyway), I liked that I can always use it for free whilst still growing my list.
I knew that in future if I ever needed a break from my blog, or if something went wrong, I could stop sending emails and therefore not pay anything in that time for having those subscribers.
I also knew I wanted to build my email list as fast as possible, but didn’t want to pay as soon as I hit a certain number. Instead, if I ever choose to send out more than 300 emails a day, I can choose a subscription plan that suits exactly what I want to pay. I have more flexibility as the list grows.
So why did this tip help me grow my email list to 125 subscribers in the first week?
Picking the right email service for me, and knowing I wouldn’t have to pay until I was ready, filled me with confidence to really PUSH my mailing list FROM THE FIRST DAY. I’m not worried about having to pay at a certain number of subscribers, I can purely focus on building that list as fast as possible.
It sounds simple, but you NEED to have an email list from day 1!
Tip 2: I Don't Use Sign-Up Pages, I Use Embedded Forms
What does this mean? Lots of bloggers in their content link to a sign-up page. This requires readers to physically click this link and then also fill in their details.
Instead of this, I use on-page sign-up forms. These forms can be embedded into the text of a page so readers can fill in their details there and then. An example of an embedded sign-up form is this:
See how you’re reading the blog and the sign-up form is simply integrated without you having to click anywhere else. This greatly increases sign-ups! WordPress made creating forms and embedding them so easy using the SendInBlue plugin. You create a simple sign-up form, get given a shortcode and simply paste this into the text in your article. This allowed me to very easily and quickly add many sign-up forms throughout my website:
This is not just a spon for SendInBlue, it is just what I use so I just want to show you my process. Other email services offer this too so pick one that’s right for you!
Tip 3: I Put My Email List Sign-Up Forms Everywhere on My Blog
In my opinion, this is one of the best tips for how I grew my email list to 125 in my first week blogging! I have a sign-up form on my homepage, my most popular individual niche pages, as well as the top and bottom of most blog posts.
I have a sign-up box on the top of every individual niche page:
I have a sign-up box on the top and bottom of most of my blog articles:
The image below shows how I add a sign-up form to most final sub-section paragraphs in my blog posts. I usually have the start of the title of my blog post followed with final thoughts to round of the article:
As you can see, I went all in promoting my email list. This is so important because simply having it in a number of places reminds people that signing up is an option. If your email sign-up is only on one or two pages, you are missing opportunities!
Tip 4: I Don’t Just Have One General Sign-Up List
If you click around Pastime to Profit, you’ll notice that I have 4 main niche areas:
• Social Media Tips
• Etsy Advice
• Blogging Tips
• Making & Saving Money
Whilst there are crossovers between these topics, some people may just purely be interested in one individual topic. For example, a reader may come along with an interest in social media tips but have zero interest in the other 3 options.
By creating separate mailing sign-up forms which link specifically to one type of content, it allows users to choose which information they receive.
I’ve been on so many blogs where I have an interest in a particular topic they discuss, however, to sign-up you need to sign-up to their entire mailing list. Therefore, I haven’t signed up.
Again, sorry to push SendInBlue as I’m sure other providers also do this, these are just who I’ve used. SendInBlue makes creating separate mailing lists SO easy. I can access my full contact list with every subscriber, but can also access individual lists for those who signed up for specific content:
Each of those lists have different subscribers interested in different content. I only have 1 subscriber that has signed up to the entire site currently (legend!)… but over 150 (scratch that… it’s now over 200) unique, different users in these lists altogether. (Remember, people can join multiple lists so the ones above aren’t all necessarily unique readers). WordPress even has a specific SendInBlue plugin that allows you to easily create different forms which link specifically to different lists.
Tip 5: Offer Something Irresistible In Exchange For Their Email!
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to offer something for every single different sign-up box. For example, I have general topic sign-up lists like this one:
If you join this list, you’ll get monthly emails with blogging content that you may find useful or interesting. However, if you join the list below, you’ll get access to 25 easy ‘request to join’ Pinterest group boards for bloggers:
By signing up here, you are getting something in return that you may want. I put together this list of blogging group boards that have the ‘request to join’ function because having to contact board owners through email or messaging can be time-consuming and inefficient. With the ‘request to join’ function, you can get into these blogging group boards so much faster to start promoting your work.
See how this list may be useful to bloggers and encourage them to sign-up?
My Etsy Email Sign-Up Example
Pastime to Profit is about people taking their hobby and turning it into their hustle to make money. This is why I have an entire niche page with articles dedicated to Etsy.
I have also created an Etsy Instagram account. It specifically promotes the work of the Etsy sellers through shoutouts. To streamline this process, the Etsy user can now come onto Pastime to Profit from Instagram, sign-up for a shoutout with their email and then receive a shoutout promoting their store.
This is just another method we use to gain email subscribers. See how we offer something quite irresistible (A shoutout to promote their store for FREE), and in return get email subscribers. We also offer FREE Etsy shop reviews. We review the sellers shop for SEO, photography and what not, and in exchange we get an email subscriber.
Other Sign-Up Ideas:
Try to think of something in your specific niche that would be irresistible for someone so they just had to sign-up. These could include:
• A list of useful tools
• Recipes (If you’re in this niche!)
• Workbook
• Printables
• PDF Guides
• Workbooks
• E-book
Another example of my sign-up forms (if you aren’t too bored of them… sorry if you are!) is on an article I’ve written on the importance of manual pinning on Pinterest. Manual pinning is still so important for a number of reasons, but it can get quite overwhelming to keep on track of things. Therefore, in this article, I offer my readers a free Pinterest manual pinning spreadsheet on Excel so they know where and when to pin which pins!
Tip 6: I Keep My Sign-Up Forms Short
All I ask for on the majority of my sign-up forms are the reader’s email and name. The only actual required field is email and they can fill in the name if they want to.
This allows the reader to very quickly enter a minimal amount of information leading to a fast sign-up. Having a sign-up form ask for lots of information can look like a lot of effort to the reader, making them not sign-up.
An exception to this, like my Etsy shoutout sign-up form, is when you genuinely need a lot of information. For example, this can be when you offer something in return for the sign-up.
Tip 7: Don’t Just Promote Your Email Sign-Up on Your Blog
As I’ve said in the point above, I also used an Etsy Instagram account to promote our Etsy sign-up forms. This has worked super well!
However, I have also used Facebook groups which have proven quite effective. I have joined a number of blogging groups on Facebook, primarily to learn from others. However, some of them allow you to promote your own content.
I promoted my small blog post for the 25 easy ‘request to join’ blogging group boards on Pinterest. From simply posting this link, I had 2 sign-ups to my blogging list from ONE Facebook post in the matter of minutes!
My overall advice is to utilize Instagram and Facebook in order to get more email subscribers. Don’t just put the sign-ups on your blog and hope for the best.
Tip 8: I Reached Out to Influencers
This one seemed INCREDIBLY daunting. When we think of the word influencer, we think thousands and thousands of followers. At least I did.
I reached out to a number of other Etsy promotion Instagram accounts. I explained that I’m a new blogger who discusses Etsy tips and tricks. The accounts ranged from 300 followers to 1000. I asked if there was any chance they could promote my blog as it may be useful to their users.
Luckily, some were super generous and shouted out my blog. These converted to more email subscribers who wanted to keep up to date with my Etsy content. Whoop!
We’ll all have different niches we talk about, but you could try to find people who have Instagram accounts in your niche.
Tip 9: I Use the Word ‘Free’ On My Forms
Everyone loves free stuff. Whilst it’s highly unlikely you have someone paying to join your email list, it’s not always clear to readers why exactly they are giving you their information.
If you add the word ‘free’ anywhere, it immediately makes the reader feel like they are not losing anything and might as well sign-up.
An example of this is for my Etsy shop review sign-up. The button at the bottom of this sign-up form says ‘Get my free Etsy shop review now!’. Another example of this is for my Etsy shop shoutout form and my 25 ‘request to join’ blogging group boards. Don’t worry, I’m not adding them here because I’m conscious this post looks like a massive ploy to get you to sign up to Pastime to Profit which is not my intention! Well, it is, but I really hope you’re getting benefit from this article too!
Bonus Tip: Have Pop-Up Sign-Up Forms
I want to be completely transparent and say that I have NOT used these yet. They did not contribute to how I grew my email list. But it is something I am definitely working on!
I’ve heard bloggers have amazing success with pop-ups that show up when readers have been on the post for a certain period of time. Having pop-ups when someone clicks away from the site can also be super beneficial.
How I Grew My Email List to 125 Subscribers My First Week: Final Thoughts
There you have it; I really hope I’ve helped show you how I grew my email list.
I do hope some of the advice or ideas that I have personally put to use can help you too! If you liked this article and you’re a blogger, you may also like this article that talks about 37 different types of blog posts to keep your content fresh and engaging. You may also be interested in learning tips for a Pinterest manual pinning strategy! Wishing you the very best in your blogging journey!
As mentioned in the article, I always put a sign-up form at the start and end of the content… so here goes: