On this episode of More Clients TV, we're looking at a question I get asked a lot: how do I get more email subscribers?

It's a really important topic if you want to succeed online and most people are really missing a lot of tricks and could get a lot more email subscribers. So I'm going to give you a bunch of tips on this video.

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Video Transcript

Hi – it's Ian here.

On this episode of More Clients TV, we're looking at a question I get asked a lot: how do I get more email subscribers?

It's a really important topic if you want to succeed online and most people are really missing a lot of tricks and could get a lot more email subscribers. So I'm going to give you a bunch of tips on that after the swoosh.

Hi – welcome back.

I'm going to talk about some specific tactics for getting more email subscribers from your website. But first I think it's important to take a step back and think strategically about email signups.

Firstly, it's really important that you get the right signups. I would be easy to get a ton of email signups by offering free money for signing up – but obviously, you'd end up with the wrong people signing up – they wouldn't be your ideal clients.

Now that's a ridiculous example – but on a lesser scale, it's what people do every day. They have a lead magnet that's valuable to their market generally – but it isn't focused on the priority area that you want to work with your ideal clients on. As a result, you can get lots of email signups – but without many turning into paying clients because they don't actually want your main service.

So the first step before trying to get more email signups is to make sure whatever you do it's attracting the right people.

The second strategic angle is to realise that no matter what tweaks you make to get more emails signups to your website, your forms, your copy – THE most important factor is simply how attractive your offer is.

If you offer your ideal clients something of amazing value to sign up then you'll get a lot of signups and a lot of buzz generated. You don't need fancy forms or clever copy.

So, for example, my wife Kathy runs an online summit twice a year for people who work in the Early Years. Each summit has between fifteen and twenty-five experts being interviewed by Kathy on a really important topic – and the interviews are all free for a week during the summit. So over a two month signup period, we get about ten thousand people signing up to every summit.

Now it's not because we have the world's best website or we pay a fortune for Facebook advertising or we're doing anything clever really. We get the basics right – but the most important thing is that the summit itself that they sign up for is an amazing event that they get for free so they're more than happy to sign up and spread the word.

So make sure you're offering something amazing – and make sure it's targeted at your ideal clients.

Now once you've got those fundamentals in place you can start optimising to get more signups.

And the first thing to look for is to make sure it's easy to sign up.

When you go to some websites you have to scroll to the bottom of the page or really search to find a signup form. But on websites that prioritise email signups, you'll find the signup button is front and centre on the home page.

Next, you make sure that there are plenty of secondary places to sign up once people are navigating around your site.

So make sure they can sign up easily after reading a blog post. Make sure there's a signup form on your “About” page that tells them this is the best way they can get value from your site. Make sure you're using something like a scroll mat or welcome mat or an exit intent popup that gives people the opportunity to sign up without being too annoying. And ideally, make sure when they have signed up you don't show them the same forms again and again.

Make sure you describe the value they'll get from signing up too. Too many sites still have a “sign up for my newsletter” button that says nothing about what you'll actually get when you sign up. We're all subscribed to far too many newsletters these days – no one wants to sign up for another one unless they can see the value they'll be getting. So tell them what they'll get from your lead magnet – and what they'll get from your regular emails. I call mine “client winning tips” for example rather than a newsletter so it's clear what the value is.

Then, if you have the opportunity to direct traffic to where you want it. So, for example, if you're running Facebook or Google Ads, or you have a link to your website in your social media profiles or in a byline of a guest article you've written for someone else or if you appear as a guest on a podcast and you get the chance to send people to your site – don't send them to your home page.

Create a dedicated landing page with the sole purpose of getting them to sign up for your emails. Minimum navigation, entire focus of the page on telling them about the value they'll get by signing up and having a simple signup button or form.

Your home page will typically have a signup rate of five or ten per cent if you're lucky but a dedicated landing page can get a signup rate of forty or fifty per cent. So whenever you can, send people to dedicated landing pages.

Next, take a look at the pages on your website that get the most visitors already. And look to see if there's anything specific you can do to get more signups on those pages. If it's a long article, could you put the contents into a PDF for people to sign up for and download? Or could you create a lead magnet specific to the topic of the article? If you get a lot of web traffic to that one page it can be well worth the investment.

Finally, if you have the technical skills – look at split testing the copy and the design on your key landing pages, your home page and on any forms that get a lot of visits. You and your site and your clients are different to everyone else so there's only so far that generic advice and best practices can get you. The thing that will get you the next level of improvement and more signups is testing different options to identify what works best for you.

That's it for today – see you on the next more clients marketing tip!