Optimize Your Email Optins & Use This Email Formula to Build Your Best Audience

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It has been said by many o’ bloggers that the biggest mistake they made when creating their blog was not capturing emails sooner.

Creating a great email opt in should happen before you even launch your website. Don’t waste having your readers come to your website if you have nothing to capture them. Your subscribers will be the people that keep your blog making money.

How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Capture Your Audience PART 1

How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Capture Your Audience PART 2

Simple Branding: Easy to Follow Branding Guide  

1. Even if your readers come from a Pin on Pinterest, from another blog, or from Google, they will only come to read the information they are looking for and then leave if you don’t offer them something to keep them coming back. Only a small percentage of readers will come back on their own without reminders.
2. If you capture your readers emails they will be reminded regularly to come back to read more.
3. Through your emails and returning to your website, your audience builds a relationship with you and begins to trust your awesome content to help them succeed in life or to make their life better or easier.
4. Through your emails and when they revisit your website they are exposed more to your:
   
   • Ads (if you have them): Which can bring you more money
   • Affiliate links: Which they may choose to buy
   • Your products: Which they may choose to buy
5. You can advertise through your emails, offer discounts, etc
6. The more audience you build, the more they share and talk about your content. It’s all part of the circle of blog life.

[If you haven’t signed up for our free email course: From Start to Launch: A Free Email Blogging Course to Add Clarity to Your Business then I highly recommend that you do this to make sure you don’t miss any important information on how to start your blog well. It’s a ‘get to the point’ step-by-step guide that will ensure you are ready to launch your website.

So, how do you make sure that your audience is going to give you their email and go through the steps of confirming their subscription?

By giving them something incredibly useful, of course! You may feel like your giving away something that could make you money because it’s such great content, but that’s the point. You may not be asking for money, but you are asking for something in return for your give away: their email. And this is something that many people are just about as careful with giving away as they are their money because no one likes getting junk in their email.

So, what are some great ways to capture your readers?

Bloggers and other online entrepreneurs have used a variety of materials to engage their readers and encourage them to sign up for their emails. I’ve compiled a short list of ideas that you can use for yourself. Just remember that your giveaways need to ‘hurt’ a little when creating them. Give them great value and you will get the signups you desire.

More subscribers = More business = More income.

I don’t mean for this to sound sleazy, it’s not. While we would all love to be able to only have the intention to giveaway great content to our readers, at some point, this needs to be a business. And it’s not a business until it’s making money. Until it makes money, it’s only a hobby. We don’t want to use our readers, we want to respect them and this is why you give them something great. It’s a win-win for both you and your readers. They understand that you need to make money to keep your business/blog going; you understand that they need someone to help them, give them something useful, encourage/inspire them, etc.

Use this list to help you get started on your giveaways. Mix it up if you are going to create more than one giveaway for your blog/business.

• Create Downloadable content
  • Lists
  • Checklists
  • Formulas
  • eBooks
  • Courses
  • Guides
  • Email Series (12 Days of Christmas Giveaways)
• Quizzes
  • Personality quiz
  • Pop culture quiz
  • Humour
• Videos with specialized content
• Membership Access
  • To great content on your website that others won’t get
  • To a closed Facebook group that gets access to you
  • To a course
• Contests
  • Make sure your contest is relevant to you and your brand. You don’t want people signing up for the wrong reasons…it won’t help build the best audience who is interested in learning more from you. Instead make it relevant and grab those people itching to learn more from you.
• Group blogs
  • Perhaps you have a bunch of great blogs that you can combine and package nicely. This is a great giveaway, especially if you can make it look more appealing by creating it in a program like Canva where it looks more graphically pleasing.

Now that you have a good idea of what you could do as an offer, I want you to grab a piece of paper or use your computer to write a quick list (for about 15 minutes or so) that lists all the ideas you have for a good email opt in giveaway.

If you have more than one focus on your website (like ours, we have family travel, saving money for travel and blogging) then you can write ideas for each because you will need them. If I did an opt in for only travel, then those who came to my website for blogging likely wouldn’t care as much. So, creating one for each main topic of your website would be a great idea.

Don’t make your email opt in basic/vague:

For example: “Subscribe to gain access to more great content”

Instead give it a WOW factor like your Blog Titles:

For example: “Grab Your List of 72 Legitimate Ways to Save for Your Next Trip”: [Grab Your List Here!] (button)

OR

“Take our FREE Email Course: Instagram Worthy Beautiful Baking Treats” [Yes, Please!]

OR

“Take Our Ultimate Personality Quiz to Help You Finally Discover The Peace and Joy You Crave” [Quiz Me!]

Tip: You will also have more luck getting people to sign up if you have a great image to draw their attention. This is especially true for those opt ins that are more visually based (cooking, baking, art, crafts, etc)

Make sure that whatever title you give it and whatever you are promising your readers is something you can deliver on. They will not take kindly to unhelpful or spammy content.

On a personal note: I have unsubscribed from emails because I felt that the opt in promised me something that didn’t deliver and then seemed more interested in selling me something then helping me. I get that sales need to happen at some point, but not from the get go and not in every email.

If you haven’t read my blog on “How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Capture Your Audience”, then it is important to read that now. It will help you with creating great content for some of the downloadable content giveaways.

Once your reader has signed up for your giveaway, this is the order your emails should come in:

1. Confirm subscription (double opt in), this is needed in some countries as by law you need to ask them to confirm their subscription. In this email, it should be short and sweet. Thank them for signing up, remind them why they signed up and that once they confirm their subscription they will gain instant access to the promised giveaway.
2. Follow it up immediately with your giveaway (or the first of your giveaway)
3. If you offered a course or content over time, then be sure to space them out appropriately (1-2 per week).
4. Once your giveaway has been sent, then you continue to follow up with your new content. Go back to older content as well if you feel it would be helpful.
5. Perhaps send them an email with your most popular posts and links to each

Do this line up for each of the main topics on your website.

With your email opt in devised and your email line up ready, you will want to be certain that the emails you craft keep your audience happy and excited to read more.

As promised I have also included an Email Formula below for you:

FORMULA:

(Remember that you will need to sign up for an email subscription service like Mailchimp or ConvertKit. They will have formulas within their system to input names. Where you see me adding something in [brackets], they will have a formula to input information. I have given a short list of options below the formula for you to get started)

Subject: WOW Title

Greeting: Hi [Name]!

First Paragraph:

• Offer a friendly greeting as though you are great friends catching up
• End the paragraph with an introductory sentence about what they will get from this email
• Maybe ‘Sneak Peek’ at an offer that is available in the email (use sparingly if it’s for sales). For example: Sneak Peek: Grab your discount promo code at the end of this email for my new membership area (Title) before it disappears

Main Body:

• Give a brief description of your newest blog and why they should be excited to read it (connect with the part of them that needs this information to make their life better or easier)
• Offer a ‘secret tip’ that only they receive because they have subscribed to your email
• If you have a picture you want to share with them, then this is a great place to put it
• Ask questions to help get input from your readers. They can comment or email those questions. If you get lots of the same question, then be sure to note that and write a post about it.
• Add some related blogs in this section where you can (either as a list or within your sentences as a link)
• Reminder about your newest blog (with link)

Conclusions:

• The greatest benefit of reading the blog, how it will help, etc
• A great tip I learned from my research into those I admire is to add in a link to ‘pin’ the post until you can read it later. Not everyone can read the post right away, but having them pin it, gives them another area to remind them to read it. It also is a way of sharing the post on Pinterest. Once they’ve pinned it, then it will show up more on others feeds. (You can add this to the Main Body instead if you like)
• Add your promo (if applicable)
• A moment of gratitude for your subscribers
• Closing line and signature

How do you set up an email?

There are many different places to go for your first email subscription service and they all have their great points. We have only had experience with two email subscription services: Mailchimp and ConvertKit. This is why we are focusing on them here. They are by no means the only option, but the ones we feel comfortable sharing.

1. Mailchimp: Excellent for beginners who don’t have to spend money until their subscribers are higher in number. It’s free to join and until you reach about 2000 subscribers, then you begin paying your monthly fee of anywhere from $20 to $200 depending on number of subscribers
2. Convertkit: Easier to use and simpler than Mailchimp’s ‘List’ format, but it starts out at a cost of $29/month and goes up to about $200/month.
   • However, after 25,000 subscribers, ConvertKit is cheaper than Mailchimp by about $50.

We had used Mailchimp in the past, but decided to go with Convertkit for a couple reasons. First, we noticed that all the ‘big’ guys we followed seemed to have and swear by ConvertKit. Second, we had every intention to grow our list past 25,000 as soon as possible. Even if this took a bit of time, we new that we wouldn’t want to have to later switch everything over to ConvertKit, so decided to just started with it. It was part of our go big or go home mentality; a determination in us to see this through and make a proper business out of it.

If you do plan to use ConvertKit, then it would be amazing if you followed one of our links above, because we are a part of their affiliate program and it will help us out a lot and will absolutely NOT cost you anything more to use it. We appreciate you and your business!

While there is far more you could learn about this topic, I think it’s best to start with the most important aspects, get yourself going and then improve with time and experience. These blogs are to help those struggling to get their feet into the water before they take that dive into the deep end. Get from Start to Launch is actually one of the hardest things for bloggers/online entrepreneurs. Many get stuck before they even truly get started and we wanted to give simple, step-by-step actions to make sure you are headed in the best direction: toward success.

Remember to sign up for our free email course: From Start to Launch: A Free Email Blogging Course to Add Clarity to Your Business. We’ve put it together to give you a great flow of information from start to finish. Each one with great information and step-by-step actions to help you truly make your blog a great business.