How to convert more visitors into email subscribers

Are you struggling to build your subscriber list?

Is this the case despite focusing on the needs of your audience persona, asking the one question that will gain you a loyal following and placing email sign up forms in the best possible locations on your site?

Chances are that you are unknowingly making a mistake that is impairing your ability to grow your subscriber list.

Consider this –
Every time a reader comes across a link – you’re essentially inviting the person to leave the page they’re on and follow the link. So the more options you have for your visitors to leave or not become an email subscriber the lower the chances of you building a connection and relationship with them.

One of the most common ways that people get distracted is by offering up all sorts of options in your sidebar. Take a look at the heat map below from a user on this blog.

It is important to prioritize what’s visible in your sidebar and there is one thing that you have probably overlooked.

It’s those little buttons that convinces your reader not to enter their email address to get on your mailing list but instead to follow you on a social media platform instead.

What could possibly be wrong with this you ask?

You can’t control what people see or don’t see on social media.

Take for example the following scenario –
You have just written the best blog post in your life and then post it on Facebook sending the news out to your devoted 1800 fans…..trouble is only 121 of them will get to see it.

The same can happen on other social media platforms like Twitter for example only because a sixth of your audience was online when you sent out the tweet. Talk about missed opportunity.

Now sure, you can spend time trying to discover the best time to post on each social media platform. But if someone agrees to let you communicate with them via email it has a much greater chance of reaching them. They don’t have to be subject to the whims of whom Facebook chooses to notify. If they aren’t on email when your message goes out, the email will stay in their inbox till they get to it.

So get those social media buttons off the sidebar and give people only one way to get updates and subscribe – via email.

So should you ditch social media altogether? No

If your audience likes to hang out on a social media platform or two then promote your social media accounts through your email list. This way everyone who visits your blog or website and wants to connect with you can do as an email subscriber first and then move onto social media platforms if they wish to connect at yet another level.

Action tip to increase email subscribers:

So here is what you can do to get more email subscribers and stop loosing existing traffic that comes by your site. Get rid of your social media buttons in your sidebar.
At the very least test this out. You can move the widget with these buttons to the inactive area in your wordpress site or keep a file with the code on your computer or even place them in your website’s footer or at the end of a post.

So what are your thoughts?

Have you ditched your social media buttons? If you have never thought about doing it, I am sure you have an opinion and would love to hear it.
Leave a comment below and tell me whether you’re going to make changes to your blog and why.