Having been around for a while, one thing that I have found is that collecting email list subscribers is essential to long term success with your blog. However, its funny to see people building a list and not doing anything with it. Most people I talk to think of their list as a sales tool. Although it can be great for that, you can get a lot more out of your email list subscribers.
Today, I want to cover a few ways that you can get more website traffic out of your email list subscribers, which you may not have thought about.
Get More Website Traffic Instantly
I recently did a post on my blog about how to get more website traffic from your email list subscribers using Aweber's blog broadcast option. The more I think about it, the more I am amazed that people don't use it. Your list of subscribers are people who want to hear what you have to say, yet I rarely see people emailing their list to notify them of new content on their blogs.
In the post, I go through a quick way to automate notifications to your subscribers if you are using Aweber to build your email list. Use it to start getting your list back onto your website, building more trust and encouraging them to open your emails and click the links inside.
Viral Traffic Flooding Your Site
If you want something to go viral, you need to let people who are interested in it find out quickly. One of the best ways to do that is to share it with people in your list, and allow them to share it with their friends.
If you have been blogging for a while, you probably don't have much trouble writing about your niche. Choose a problem that people in your niche have, and write up a 3-5 page report on it. Perhaps include a few links to guest posts you have done, or to posts on your own blog, and throw in a recommended product to help solve the problem (either one of your own or an affiliate program, if you have one.) When you send this report out, give your readers permission to share this report with their friends.
Most people who have enough interest in your blog to follow your list probably also have friends that are interested in the same topic. By giving your subscribers something valuable to share with their friends, eventually you'll end up getting new subscribers and gain even more website traffic.
I have used this method myself when releasing a new opt-in, promoting a product launch, or randomly just to get new people coming to my site. You can use a free report, an audio recording, a video, or just about anything else for that matter.
Promoting on social media will bring in more website traffic
More and more, social media is becoming one of the best ways to promote your site. If I am interested in your list, I would probably like to get to know you a bit better through social media as well.
When you set up your autoresponder sequence, set up an invitation to join you on various social sites so that they can follow you around the web. You don't have to invite them to every single one, but at the least you should include your facebook fan page and Twitter profiles, so that they can follow you there.
If you are a regular contributor to any of the popular blogs within your niche, you may take the time to invite them to check out some of your guest posts as well. Always keep in mind, your email list subscribers WANT to know what you are doing and saying, otherwise they wouldn't be on your list. Let them know where you are and what you are doing.
Allow Social Sharing
In the old days, allowing people to share the emails with a friend would help to build your list. Unfortunately, unless you really kicked out some amazing emails, this was hard to really get rolling. Now though, with social sharing options available, it is much easier to get people to share your emails than ever before.
I always set my broadcast messages to allow my followers to share them via facebook, twitter, and other social outlets. This way, people on your list can send it out to their friends. Its funny, but things that weren't worth emailing to their friends often get a huge following on Facebook or Twitter.
Allow your emails to be shared so that more people will see what you have to say. Often, this will bring new subscribers into the mix, as well as getting more and more people interested in what you have to say.
All this works as long as you follow the first rule of relationship marketing: high quality content is the key to your success. If you take the time to put together really engaging content, that your readers can't wait to share, then send it to your email list, you will get more website traffic, and spend a lot less time working on it.
Share your favorite tip for getting more website traffic
How do you get more website traffic from your email list? Are you trying to get them back to your site? Share your experiences with getting more website traffic in the comments!
Hey Sanji,
Thanks for your comments. Most people think of their email list as just a marketing tool. When I started, I just had a few subscribers too. the thing is, you dont need a huge list.
One thing you might do is offer your list that you do have a referral bonus, maybe a free report or something for so many referrals. set up a squeeze page with a referral field added to the web form, then offer an incentive for referrals. That will help you get your subscribers sharing your list for you, which can help you build your list a little faster.
Hey! I haven’t started building a subscribers’ list yet. However, I was thinking about this only as a tool to build relationship with existing readers. It was mind opening to consider also the traffic building perspective. Thanks, Alison
Absolutely correct! Email list subscribers are indeed the best way to increase your traffic. Not only just that, you get a constant flock that keeps checking out your blog and hence, at the worst times, help in maintaining statistics.
Hey Alison,
Glad this could be helpful. These are all tips that can help you to build that relationship with your list. If you think about running your list like you do your blog, by sharing loads of value and helping them with their problems, everything that you do will help strengthen that relationship as you go.
Email marketing still works the best form all the traffic sources..because you control it and the people on your list are always there top click through.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
email subscribers are really important..
and aweber is best tool to make it work.
Hi James,
I’m working in my newsletter and these tips come very handy. Incredible how many people forget autoresponders and you see an update from a almost lost subscription – this have no value to inspire trust and connect with your readers, less ….then traffic.
Ileane has already two assets that improve email subscriptions & traffic too, doing properly: podcast and videos 🙂
Cheers,
Gera
Not just money, but the traffic is also in the list. Every time I send out a newsletter I can see a spike in my blog the next day. Even though the main subject of the newsletter is not about the post I published, I still have people clicking through links from the sidebar.
I think a newsletter just acts as a reminder (for some) and motivator for others to come to your blog.
Hi James,
I have yet to build an email list and got a bit of a nudge after reading this post. Your explanation and theory was most helpful.
Aweber sounds really interesting. Would you recommend using it as a starting point for building lists?
I’m off to read your post to learn more about traffic and email lists.
Hey Kathy, Aweber is the way to go. I have used other services and none of them compare to Aweber.
James,
Do you have any suggestions when writing about topics that people are not prone to sharing? I am a financial consultant and write about topics related to money and debt. Unfortunately I find it sometimes difficult to get consumers to share the fact that they were reading an article about getting out of debt. Any thoughts?
Hey Damon, thanks for your comment.
Really, I have never had that kind of problem. the niches I am in are usually pretty easy to get people sharing information.
I can understand the problem though. They would probably need to be helping someone else with the same problem to be willing to share it, and that is one problem most people don’t want to admit they have, especially to their friends.
Great post, thanks James. Social media and a subscribers list are two most valuable elements in building traffic.
Sounds interesting James. I’m not sure though if it applies in our industry. But I’ll definitely look into the possibility. Thanks for the information.
It can work in a variety of businesses that never realize it, although I won’t say it would work for every niche. Also, this blog is mainly about blogging, and the tips are geared towards bloggers, with regularly updated content.
Looking at your site, I see you have a newsletter list. You could take the report idea, and write up a short report on the most common remodeling problems people face, or maybe the top 10 types of remodels you are asked to do. Include a link to your site within the report and share it with your list, as well as on file sharing sites, allowing people to pass it around.
Hy thanks for taking time to write about the most confusing topic for every one now days, i agree with you that email list is the most important thing to bring traffic. social media plays a vital role in implementing all that
Good Tips, James. I’m definitely one of those folks who should be doing more with my list. I do use blog broadcasting through Aweber, but haven’t enabled the sharing options yet.
On social media the main entity that can support you is your idea. In blogging idea is might and main. Novice contents are because of good ideas and post readers are because of unique and research based contents.
Email subscriber are very essential for blogging but only those subscribers can benefit you that read each of your mail.
Every blogger is for aiming more website traffic and we need this social media and email list there is no doubt about that. Whether email list is much more important in building website traffic but social media is the one responsible in implementing it. We must take care both of the them, this tools are the life and blood of website promotion.Knowing more about this two could be an advantage.
Emailing marketing is one of the most powerful means of connecting and building relationships with whoever has subscribed to your list, and I must say that this is a very powerful traffic generating and money making strategy.
The good way to get traffic from email list is.. don’t automate the process like in aweber automatically send post to subscribers, Just give personal touch-up to particular post you are going to send mail then seen the traffic.
I always visit mails with personal touch-up content instead of rss feed in mails.
Hey Arun, thanks for your comments.
Although, I agree to a point, you should use some personalization, and you should never fully automate anything, some automation is helpful. I always automate my blog updates and have a follow up sequence with usefull articles to help my readers. I generally like to give a lot of free valuable tips. But, I also send out non autmated messages regularly as well, giving out fresh stuff, often in answer to emails and questions that I get from my readers.
I just sending weekly email promote to my subscribers, that’s way to increase traffic and sale.
A hope Evan Williams also has. In the I provided a basic strategy you can use to help grow your following and drive some website traffic with Lists..Now for the fun stuff. .Lets say you blog about parenthood or youre a retailer that sells products for new and expecting parents.
Thanks for the cool tips James. I think a post about the services aweber provides and how we can benefit from them would be perfect for all the novices like me.
Though I am not having huge email subscribers, I get decent amount of traffic from them 🙂
It’s true that subscriber can be fixed visitors of blogs and websites it is complete depend on us that how we manage them with something new in every email. So spice up your emails with some useful posts and articles. 🙂
You can get a big increase in traffic if you use your email subscribers in a way that they will promote your content by themselves using social media cause it will help your posts to go viral
I get good traffic from email subscribers. Those that want the latest updates on new golf clubs are usually loyal customerss.
Another great post from James!
“In the old days, allowing people to share the emails with a friend would help to build your list. Unfortunately, unless you really kicked out some amazing emails, this was hard to really get rolling. ”
Are you saying that “forward this mail to at least 15 people or something horrible will happen to you” doesn’t work anymore?
We must take care both of the them, this tools are the life and blood of website promotion.Knowing more about this two could be an advantage.
I started using the email strategy about a month ago, and wish I had of done it sooner.
I just kind of assumed that people who wanted to check out my stuff would come by when they were ready, but you forget that everyone’s busy and they’re not going to remember to check out your site for new stuff unless you let them know it’s available.
So pretty much the first thing I do now after publishing a post, is send out email notifications to let people know there’s something new to check out.
Hi James,
Just stumbled upon this post of yours. You always have something new to share about generating more traffic. Thank you for these tips.
One important thing about social sharing, it is quintessential to install social media widgets in each page to make ‘sharing’ possibly easy.
You can get traffic from social media as well. If you build your social profiles well, it can serve as your email list as well.
It is really good to interact with your email list, even if they are two or one thousand of them.