Most experienced WordPress marketers and website owners know the value of an accurate email marketing list made up of high-quality leads. But it might surprise you to learn that the efficacy of email marketing appears to be increasing by the year. According to a recent market study, e-commerce businesses had an average conversion rate from email of between 7% and 22%.
That’s a pretty high figure and shows the value of having an effective email marketing system. And, as third-party cookies continue to lose their importance as marketing tools, having a high-quality email list is only going to increase in importance. That’s why, in this guide, we’ll go beyond the basic techniques of how to use mailing lists on Plesk Obsidian and show you some more expert-level tools and processes for supercharging your email list.
1. Target for Keywords
Here’s the first technique – target your email capture for keywords in the same way you would with your other content. Take a look at the pages on your website that are actually capturing emails from potential leads. You’ll likely see that the majority of these are generated by a very small number of pages.
That was the case, for instance, in the experiment conducted by Hubspot. The study found that, like with a lot of websites, a large number of all HubSpot’s leads were generated by a surprisingly small number of the pages on the website.
That’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that you might eventually have a lot of pages to optimize. The good news is that, for now, you can focus on optimizing fewer pages to capture emails. So take a fresh look at the keywords that are generating traffic for that small set of pages and incorporate an email capture offer based on them.
2. No Pop-Ups
Another pro tip for ensuring email conversions might seem counterintuitive at first glance – don’t use pop-ups to capture email details. Or rather, use them sparingly. A pop-up might generate a few additional email captures, but it also increases your bounce rate, especially if it appears immediately after a visitor arrives on your website.
Instead, take a look at some of the more nuanced techniques that can be used to capture email addresses. Today, it’s possible to incorporate sign-up forms into almost any type of content, even videos and seminars. Doing that generally leads to higher conversion rate than the standard pop-up form.
3. Locked Content
Locked content is content that is only available after a user shares their email address or takes some other action that helps you out as a marketer. Today, it’s possible to link many types of content to user actions – it’s even possible to lock content until a visitor shares your page on social media.
Another potential benefit of locked content is the ability to attract more high-quality leads. Limiting who has access to your content ensures that only those legitimately interested in your products and services take that extra step, moving them towards becoming leads and ultimately conversions. In this way, locked content can dramatically improve the efficiency of your sales funnel.
4. Co-Marketing
Another way to improve your email sign-up rate is to apply some of the more advanced content strategies that you already have in place in your email capture system. Co-marketing is one of these techniques, and one that is particularly effective when marketing on a tight budget.
When it comes to building an email list, it’s likely that you can become one of two types of partners in a co-marketing agreement. If you are looking to generate a huge email list in a short period of time, it might be possible to work with another company that has experience in doing this. In exchange, you can provide them with a valuable asset or expertise that you have built up. Trading tools, information, and techniques in this way can be a great way to expand your marketing efforts more generally.
5. Reduce Deception
Finally, don’t fall into the number one trap that drives customers to unsubscribe from marketing email lists – not sending them the kind of content they thought they would receive.
We get it – it can be tempting to assume that your email contacts want to hear about all the exciting new products and services that your company offers.
But the most effective email capture campaigns are those that offer a specific tool or guide in exchange for sharing an email address. And at this point, you shouldn’t assume that you’ve tricked your customer into sharing their details.
Instead, you should always make it clear what people will receive in exchange for signing up to your email marketing list. Then stick to this promise. If you set someone’s expectations for what they’re going to receive from you, they’ll be much more receptive in the future. Simple things like having a double opt-in system is a great first step, because it gives someone the option to remove themself from your list if they didn’t mean to sign up.
Going further, it can also be worth looking into easy ways to deploy security strategies, especially if your audience is tech-savvy. With identity theft running rampant, an extra level of security for email subscribers indicates that you take the privacy of their data seriously. Cultivating a sense of mutual trust should reduce unsubscribe rates.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, building a high-quality email list is one of the most important marketing tips for businesses at the moment. That’s only going to increase as third-party cookies continue their journey towards deprecation. And while it’s possible to go further than the tips on this list – not least by looking into mail server management techniques – they form a good basis for marketers to take their email capture systems to the next level.
Meet the Author: Jeff Baerwalde
When not scavenging for new and interesting WordPress topics to write about, Jeff hangs out in comic book shops. Sometimes he also consults as an environmental evangelist for his company, Earth One.
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