If you are blogging, building an email list is as basic as breathing.
An email list can help you
- Grow your traffic
- Boost your online brand
- Increase your revenue and
- Build relationships with your audience
Almost everyone wants to build a huge email list of subscribers. After all, more email subscribers means more click through rates and more money, right?
Not everyone will be able to build a huge email list that makes money. You may never know what list building mistakes you are making while growing your email list.
Here are 8 mistakes majority of the people make while building their email lists. Find out what mistakes you are making among them and avoid them to build a huge list who are hungry to buy what you offer.
Are you ready to discover? Let’s get started.
Are You Making These 8 List Building Mistakes?
#1. Not Offering Any Incentive
I still see a lot of people who are building an email list just use random words like “Sign up to my list”, “Join our newsletter” etc.
If you are not offering something for free or not giving any strong reason for your website visitors, they won’t subscribe to your email list.
Offer any free incentive like eBook, video, Infographics or anything that is easy to create and distribute to your readers. It can really help you in converting normal website visitors into email subscribers.
On my own blog at BloggersPassion, I used to get around 5 to 6 subscribers a day (when I wasn’t offering any free incentive to my subscribers). But once I started giving away a free eBook on making money blogging, my email opt-in rate skyrocketed (with more than 200% email opt-in rate per day!).
That’s the importance of offering incentives to your subscribers. They quickly help you boost your email list without increasing your website traffic.
#2. Lack of Social Proof
People follow those who have a huge following. It's a general tendency to follow the crowd!
Social proof is the currency online. If an expert is recommending you or your blog (even though if you are a beginner), your sales or email opt-in rates will skyrocket. That's the power of social influence.
Just imagine for a second, you landed on a blog, skimming through a blog post and suddenly there comes a popup which shows “Join over 100,000 marketers”, would you join?
I bet, you will (if you find their content interesting). The reason you'll join their list is because of the big number you see on their email list. That's how social proof works online.
So make sure to add social proof to the copy of your opt-in forms. Ask for an expert to say something about you or take testimonials about your freebies or content from your own readers and feature it. It can definitely help you boost your blog’s social proof.
#3. Popups are not Conversion Killers!
Most people hate popups. How do I know? Okay, let me be blunt. Even I hate them.
But let me tell you one thing. Popups give you more signups than any other source!
When I started using exit-intent popup (which shows a popup when a visitor just about to abandon your blog) by LeadPages, my email subscription rates really went high. I still get majority of my email subscribers from that popup alone.
Popups really work like a charm.
Almost every top blogger uses them once in awhile. Because they know how essential they are to grow their email list or website sales.
If you are not using popups on your blog yet, you better should consider using them immediately.
Popups are conversion boosters, they quickly help you increase your email subscription rates no matter how much traffic your blog gets. Check this tutorial from Ms. Ileane on How to Set Up Lead Pages with Lead Boxes that Popup
#4. Not Understanding What Your Goal is With Your Blog
Do you know your target audience? Do you know what your audience truly wants?
Do you know what to do with your email list? Do you know how to monetize your blog’s traffic?
Without properly understanding what your goal is with your blog, no one can help you in building a profitable blog.
If you are building an email list just because everyone else building, you are making a huge mistake. If you don’t know your top priorities and things to do with your email list, you can never make any sales out of it.
That’s the harsh truth. So it’s better to spend quality time in knowing your blogging goals and find out your audience needs and wants. That way you can better serve them to build a successful blog in the long run.
#5. No Landing Pages? You're Kidding Me!
Landing pages are golden. They help you quickly increase your email opt-in rates because they focus only on one call to action i.e to increase your email signups.
Don’t use any sidebars or footer section while creating landing pages. Landing pages are meant to focus only one goal. That’s how you can help your audience to easily decide whether you are worth their time or not.
So start using landing pages if you want to build a huge email list that grows without increasing your blog traffic. Here's an example of a great landing page.
#6. Displaying Opt-in Forms in Only One or Two Locations
I know most people are doing this mistake. They show their email opt-in forms at one or two places and they expect to grow their email list rapidly.
It’s impossible to grow a huge list without increasing the exposure to your email opt-in forms. The more you use the more email subscribers you get.
Here are few great places to add email opt-in forms on your blog.
Sidebar: Sidebar is one of the most visible places on any blog. So make the most out of it by showing an email opt-in form with a freebie to boost your email list.
Feature box: Derek Halpern introduced feature box to grow an email list. They quickly became popular and almost every top blogger is now using them. You can use this tool to create a feature box on your blogs.
Headerbar: Apps like Hellobar and SumoMe can help you show a header bar on your blog. It can’t be ignored by your website visitors. It always shows up at the top of your blog and by using an email opt-in form there can quickly boost your signup rates. Many blog themes come with the built in message bar at the top.
Footer: Majority of the bloggers still use footer section on their blogs. And most blogs footer section are filled with 3 columns. Why not use an email opt-in form at least in one of such places?
High traffic pages: Open your Google Analytics account and find out the top 10 pages that send you most search traffic. Start using email opt-in forms at the beginning and ending of them to grow your email list.
End of each blog post: If a visitor is reading your blog’s content for the first time and if he makes it to the end of your blog post and finds an email opt-in form, he would gladly consider subscribing to your list for more relevant information. So don’t miss a chance to show email opt-in forms at the the end of your blog posts.
#7. Asking For Too Many Details
No one likes to fill too many details to get into an email list. It doesn’t matter how much value you they find it!
There’s no reason for you to ask for personal details, phone number or full name while building your email list.
If you are starting from scratch, just ask their email address and that’s it! Let your website visitors to easily sign up for your email list without much burden. That’s how you can increase your email sign ups.
When you are building an email list from scratch, you don't want anything other than the email of your website visitors. No one really bothers about entering too many details to sign up for an email list. So make sure to keep it really simple.
Don’t fake: Another important thing to consider while building a list is don’t use invalid credentials just to grow your email subscribers. I see few new bloggers using “Join 15,000+ email subscribers” when they don’t have even 100 subscribers.
How can I say that they don’t have so many subscribers? Well, there are so many website traffic checker tools out there that will help you easily estimate the traffic of any site. If a new blog is not getting even 500 visits a day, how can one build such a massive list?
So don’t try to fake until you make it. It doesn’t work and gives you a bad impression on your site in the long run.
#8. Sending too Many Emails or Not Sending at All
About 4 years ago when I first started building my email list, I made a big mistake of not sending any emails to my subscribers. I thought my subscribers might ignore my emails or unsubscribe from my list if I send emails. I know how foolish I was.
Whether you believe it or not, most beginners who are building an email list from scratch make this mistake. They don’t plan sending any emails to their subscribers. They just think about growing the email list and that’s it.
They forget about the importance of email broadcasts and scheduling weekly emails. See, you don’t have to send 1 email per day. Even sending 1 email per week is enough to educate your subscribers about the products or services you promote.
Just make sure you are not sending too many promotional emails or your subscribers might get irritated and simply unsubscribe from your email list.
Likewise, sending too many emails (more than twice a week) to your subscribers is the surefire way to increase your unsubscribe rates. Most people don’t like getting too many emails every week from the same blog. They might think you are manipulating them by sending too many promotional emails and they just unsubscribe.
So be careful while creating an email autoresponder series to broadcast emails to your subscribers.
As a rule of thumb, sending 3 to 4 emails per month (2 to 3 educational emails which are informative and 1 to 2 promotional emails to increase your sales) is a good start.
Final Thoughts About List Building Mistakes to Avoid
Building and growing an email list takes a lot of time and money.
Everyone makes mistakes while growing their list. Just make sure to correct your list building mistakes as soon as possible to avoid wasting too much money and time.
Make sure to analyze the tactics used by the top bloggers in your field to grow their email list. That will give you a better idea on how to grow your audience without irritating them too much.
So what are your thoughts about building an email list? What are the other list building mistakes you made while growing your list? Share your views in the comments.
Thanks Anil,
For sharing this valuable knowledge with us. Is there any free plugins to use for wordpress site to collect emails and send automated mails?
Hi Harmeet,
MailChimp is a free email autoresponder service which lets you send emails to your subscribers (up to 2000 sub) for free. They also have a couple of free WP plugins that can help you easily collect emails from your audience.
Hi Anil!
You are spot on with all of these tips for better email marketing – except the last one (number eight).
Sending emails every day and even more than once a day – has been proven to work great, actually!
Think about it, to how many Newsletters is your new Lead most likely to be subscribed to?
The average new online marketer and blogger – and just your average person looking to make money online – is probably receiving emails from many Lists!
If you send one or two emails per week, chances are most of your emails will end up at the BOTTOM of their inbox. And perhaps, by the time they get to it, they will be ready to Log Off their Inbox.
So, not emailing often can actually result in very low conversions. Of course, if you have a HUGE List, you wouldn’t really notice this. But, I highly recommend you to try this – you can be very surprised at how much you can boost up your email conversion rates by emailing more than once per day.
I have actually learned this insight from the most successful people online. In particular, I have learned a lot about email marketing from one of my cool mentors; Michelangelo Lopez. He always uses the Groupon business model. LOL 😀
People do not really care getting many emails from you – as long as you are sharing 80% value and only pitching 20%. This, of course, is the 80/20 rule. It is not true that “people get irritated” if you send them “too many emails”. I totally disagree with you there, my friend.
People get A LOT of emails every day, anyways. So, it is nothing new to them – to get many emails. And actually, everyone is very used to getting a lot of emails daily. Especially people in this industry.
How many emails do you get every single day, Anil? – And you probably have multiple emails too. If you get many emails daily, and you are very okay with it, what can make you think that people who are trying to make money online would not be okay with it?
Again, do not disregard all of the OTHER Newsletters and Lists they are subscribed to.
It is not that people can “get irritated” because you email them too often – what they can very irritated with is being sold with every single email they get from you!
It is perfectly fine to play and test – with how frequently you are sending out emails to your list.
Also, why would you want to keep a subscriber who deep inside does not want to be in your list anymore???
When you email every day and you just lead with real value (applying the 80/20 rule) – the ones who will Unsubscribe are the one who you WANT to Unsubscribe Anyways. This is actually a great way to WEED OUT the TIRE-KICKERS.
The people who will remain in your list – even when you send emails daily and even 3 times per day – are the people who will definitely BUY from you.
Why keep dead weight in your Auto-responder? – Especially, if you are brand new online and perhaps have a limited budget to invest in the necessary tool – you know that email auto-responders charge per number of subscribers.
So, wouldn’t it be a smart idea to MAKE SURE you weed out the tire-kickers / the people who will never buy from you (at all) regardless of what email marketing strategy you implement???
I think we need to really stress this issue for the newbies out there. Because you do not want to be paying extra because you now have an email list of 2,000 people and half of the half are only serious people who are more likely to buy from you. Right?!!
Besides emailing every single day, what you should also do, is take one or two breaks a month. Meaning that you will email your list every single day for like 2 weeks and then all of a sudden stop emailing them for 4 – 5 days. Then get back on the schedule again.
This simple tactic will make people wonder “what happened to you” – since they got used to seeing your emails daily. Doing this will even become a bit entertaining to your leads. Come on, you can’t be a boring email marketer, right! 😀
I do not believe in settling for just One Tip – when it comes to How Often You Should Email Your List. Because, at the end of the day, what works best for YOU will depend on many factors (your personality, your way of connecting with your leads, your niche, the way you captured the leads, etc).
Just my 2cents! …or maybe it was way more than 2cents! hahaha .. I’m just a very passionate blogger! 😉
Overall, you laid out very valuable tips on email marketing, Anil!
Keep up the great work!
Have a wonderful weekend! ..
Cheers! 😀
I think sending emails every single day is NOT advisable for anyone unless you are into a news/entertainment niche.
Sending 1 email per week is working well for me. Not only sending less frequent mails can help you build bonding with your subscribers but they least irritate them. After all, no one likes to get daily updates from you unless you are updating 1 post every single day.
It’s been a while since I got a massive insightful comment on guest post 😉 Keep rocking and thanks for stopping by.
I too hate pop ups that is why I never tried any popup on my blogs. But recently I tried ThriveLeads on one of my blogs and conversions are mind blowing. I am going to use it on my all blogs soon.
About tip #6 don’t you think it will kill the user experience if we add email subscription at all possible places? Let me know your views.
Thanks a lot for sharing these mistake about building email lists.
Hi Brandon,
We all hate popups. But they convert like crazy. If you want to skyrocket your leads, you should definitely give them a try once.
Placing email optin forms allover your blog’s design is an aggressive way to collect emails. Yes, you will irritate your audience but if your overall end goal is to get more conversions, that’s what you should do. Moreover, people won’t mind it if your content is good enough!
Hi Anil,
I think #4 is one mistake that cost many beginners either not to build an email list at all, or ended up building a non-responsive email subscribers.
If you don’t know your typical ideal audience, you’re definitely attracting the wrong audience to your email list.
Like I have read on many top blogs about the effectiveness of pop ups, though I never tried it on any of my blogs and like you, I hate them and think is not part of a good users experience.
I might consider experimenting with it on my blog someday…thanks Anil for sharing.
I am growing my email list, one individual at time, and then the next “person” in line… 😉 Have you subscribed to Lyceum Bulletin yet? A new issue will be published soon… 🙂
#1 concerns me. I don’t do it on purpose to avoid higher than necessary unsubs. I’m interested to find out how your unsub stats were affected (if at all) after you incentivized the opt-in.
I do agree with #8 and only send once weekly. That said, I do understand where Freddy is coming from about mailing daily. That’s coming back around to knowing your audience. If you’re growing a list of people that need a lot of hand holding to get started, then sure, daily tips would be welcomed by some. For me, my audience already is online so IMO, daily would be a killer.
Robbie
Knowing your IDEAL reader is the key to blogging success.
Popups are really conversion boosters. Yes, they are irritating but you can give a try to exit-intent technology just like I do on my blog. The popup appear only when someone exists your blog.
Thanks for this informative article. Here are some thoughts on some of the comments so far:
1. To get the best results from your emails consider figuring out when during the day your audience is reading emails and time sending your emails accordingly so that the are at the top of their email lists. You can research and schedule your emails using an email system such a AWeber or mailchimp (there are several other similar ones). This way you wouldn’t have to write and send multiple emails a day to reach yhe majority of yoit audience. Some systems can even send ay different times for different audience segments.
2. I think that quality is as important as quantity for your emails. Also, when a reader signs on for your emails your welcome email should let them know what to expect from you in terms of the frequency, length and content. Your welcome email should be sent almost immediately.
3. It make sense to write your emails when you are at your best, edit them carefully later then send them at the most appropriate time for your audience using an email autoresponder system insread of having to do the posting manually.
Hey Anil,
I think #1 and #8 are the biggest killers to growing an email list.
Your visitors that come to your blog want to know why they should subscribe to your email. What more value can they get from you if they decide to give you their email address.
If you can give them a reason like an ebook download or a video course then all you’ll just get is traffic and no email or sales conversions.
And if you do get subscribers, you definitely want to keep building rapport and trust with them by emailing. I didn’t do this for a long time which is the main reasons why I didn’t get any sales, even though I was getting traffic.
Great post Anil! You have a great weekend!
That’s so true Sherman.
No one subscribes to a blog just because you are asking for them to subscribe.
They need to see the real value either in your content or in your offer (incetive). Otherwise it’s really hard to convince to turn normal website visitors to subscribers.
Thanks for stopping by.
Hey Anil,
I know I am still doing the mistake #1. Even though I did grow my list to a somewhat decent number, but with some incentivews, it will grow much faster. I have a service that I can offer based on my target audience, but need to work on it to finalise and polish it so that I can start offering it.
About th optin forms, what do you think about Welcome Mat? I know popups can be annoying sometimes, so I am yet to give it a try. I was thinking of trying the Welcome Mat once I start offering the service to the subscribers.
Hi Anil,
You’ve covered all the smart tips that are super important when building a list 🙂
However, I wish to comment on two things:
1. Pop ups are a BAD thing except when they actually show up on the point of exit…personally, I have stopped visiting a ton of sites because of this very reason, especially if there is no exit button – and so have many other bloggers!
Thanks for including this.
2. Second, placing my optin right under the header has worked magic for me in the past. This is because, everyone that lands on either a page or post sees it…often, in that position, optins of 500+ daily were pretty common.
However, for this to work, the optin has to be responsive and as you have previously stated, contain an incentive your audience cannot resist 🙂
You write in a brilliant fashion…do keep it up.
Always,
Akaahan Terungwa
Hi Anil Agarwal,
Recently I started collecting emails from the readers, till now yet selected any incentive to get more subscribers, this time I will use this technique to success.
Landing pages are looking nice to get subscribers but premium landing page services are too costly for me as of now because I don’t have that much traffic on my blog.
Thanks for sharing valuable information about building email list topic, see you soon on your blog.
I was trying to visit Ileane today but it was crashed for a moment, definitely great to see it back.
For these tips are just so great. Definitely great for everyone to learn from.
Hi, Anil
Thanks for your beautiful tip regarding email, as a new blogger m learning something great from your above article. please update with the latest.
Wonderful article with awesome ideas! Some of these seemed like I knew them all along but never noticed. Kudos for the post!
Hey, I was building my subscriber lists and found your tutorial very helpful.
This is really great advice. Thanks so much. I’m in the process of building my first email list ever. I’m starting with asking friends, family, colleagues, and other folks I have in my contacts to join. But it’s not always easy to know what to say and how to express the value in every email you send out. Even though I’ve been a writer for years, writing as a marketer is a whole new learning curve.
Hey Anil,
Thanks for sharing some popular as well as your personal mistakes to avoid when building an email list. It makes sense that anything that’s appealing, including incentives and sharing content for a specific purpose and type of person.
I appreciate the suggestions you added for once people become email subscribers, including email frequency and ratio of content to promotional emails.
It would be great to see a followup blog with mistakes people make with their email subscribers, i.e. sending dull emails with no personality, only talking about themselves, their products and blog, discussing topics that don’t really interest readers.
~Keri
Hi,
I think it would be wise to avoid too many questions, visitors don’t like to provide more information. Check where is your mail landing, that’s an important question-often these messages will diverted to promotional tab in Gmail. People often don’t mind promotional tab/mails, So first we design a well crafted newsletter which might land on their inbox. Its just my opinion, I noted your valuable points, Thank You for sharing.
When people making email list they will make some mistakes. These are the important steps need to consider while creating email lists.