6 Ways to Get More Email Subscribers from Your WordPress Blog

By Shelby McGuigan September 12, 2017

This is a guest post written by Syed Balkhi, CEO at OptinMonster. OptinMonster builds software that grows your business by converting abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

Are you tired of low conversion rates from your email pop up forms and landing pages? Are you looking for effective new ways to grow your email list and build sign up forms on your WordPress blog?

According to The Radicati Group, over 3.7 billion people around the world use email. So, why does your email list still only have a few hundred subscribers?

It may be that you haven’t implemented the right strategies to get subscribers to hit the subscribe button. And if this is the case, your website can get flooded with thousands of visitors per day, but still fail to convert those visitors into subscribers.

But there are quite a few proven strategies you can try to get more subscribers from your WordPress blog. In this post, we’ve collected six of our favorites. Keep reading to learn about them and turn your site into an email conversion machine.

1. Run a giveaway contest

Giving away free ebooks for subscribers is an effective way to convert visitors into subscribers. But, people may respond better when there’s a sense of competition involved like a contest or giveaway.

Kissmetrics featured a case study where a freelance writer and programmer was able to increase his email list by 3,418 percent in less than two weeks by using a giveaway.

That’s why running giveaways can do wonders to grow your email list. It could be something as simple as giving away an Amazon gift card or a free subscription to an online service.

Rafflecopter makes it easy to run giveaway competitions on your WordPress blog since you can easily embed a Rafflecopter entry form on your blog. Then, site visitors enter your contest by submitting their email address.

Here’s an example of a Rafflecopter giveaway in action:

Remember when running giveaways on your blog to let subscribers know what they can expect to receive from you when they enter their email address.

2. Embed opt-in forms inside your blog posts

Instead of driving your visitors to a landing page to convert them into subscribers, try embedding your opt-in forms right inside your blog posts.

Readers are likely to notice these opt-in forms since they’re already reading the content on the page. This is also the ideal time to promote your lead magnet, like a free ebook or exclusive offer!

Here’s an example of how Michelle MacConnell uses a sign up form within her blog post:

WPForms is a great form-building plugin you can use to embed a form in a blog post. It’s a WordPress plugin that comes with an easy to use drag-and-drop editor for designing beautiful opt-in forms, and it also easily integrates with AWeber for collecting emails.

3. Offer content upgrades

A content upgrade is a bonus piece of content you can offer to compliment and delve deeper into the information in your blog post.

For example, if you’re an online marketing consultant, you could write a blog post about the most effective channels to market your business.

Within the blog post, you could promote a content upgrade download of a checklist for setting up your first ad in Facebook. To get the content upgrade, visitors just need to sign up through your opt-in form.

You can also turn a blog post into a short ebook or an MP3 audio file, and use it as a content upgrade in the post. This works because visitors don’t always have time to read lengthy blog posts, so they prefer to save great posts for later or even listen to them while they’re on the road.

This gives you the perfect opportunity to not only get more subscribers, but get more visitors to actually gain value from your blog post.

Beacon is a free tool you can use to instantly turn your blog posts into ebooks. It also has the capability to use a text-to-speech engine to convert your text into audio files to offer as a content upgrade.

4. Split test your opt-in forms

One simple way to get more subscribers is to improve your pop-up forms’ conversion rates through split testing. This will help you find the most successful variation.

You can find out what works best by conducting A/B split tests of your email opt-in forms and pop-up messages. With these tests, you can try changing the colors, copy, images and more to figure out which opt-in form works the best for your audience.

Another test you can try is showing your pop-up message later in the experience instead of showing it as soon as the page loads. This gives visitors more time to realize the value of subscribing to your blog.

Clickz managed to grow their email conversion rate by 30 percent after a very simple A/B split test. (And you can too!)

Here’s an example from the OptinMonster website of a split test on a call-to-action button:

To conduct your A/B split tests, you can use an email opt-in plugin like OptinMonster, which allows you to test variations of your opt-in forms in many different ways.

5. Use a fixed widget in your sidebar

Another simple way to increase your sign up form conversions is to add an opt-in form to your WordPress website sidebar. But often, the widgets on your sidebar disappear when a user scrolls down on a blog post.

A simple solution to make sure users see the opt-in form at all times is to create a fixed widget that sticks to the top of your page no matter how far a user scrolls down.

Check out this example of a sticky sign up form widget from a Kissmetrics blog post:

You can turn any ordinary widget into a fixed or sticky widget with the Q2W3 WordPress plugin. Once installed, this plugin will show a small checkbox in all your widgets to let you choose whether to make it stick or not. 

6. Team up with other bloggers

Networking with other bloggers can also be a great way to grow your email list. You can collaborate with other established bloggers in your niche and form mutually beneficial partnerships to help grow each others’ blogs.

Before reaching out, make sure to think about what value you can give them and their audience.

For example, if you’re successfully building a loyal audience on a particular social media platform, you can offer to promote your partner’s blog to your own audience. In exchange, you can ask for a mention in their newsletter.

It’s a win-win scenario since you’ll both get in front of new audiences. And many bloggers are responsive to opportunities like this if you explain how it’ll benefit them or their audience. All you have to do is ask.

Use these tips to get more email subscribers

You can implement these strategies today on your WordPress blog and grow your email list more quickly and effectively. With help from the right tools, plugins and incentives, you’ll be building your audience in no time.

Want to learn more about email list growth? Craft the perfect sign up form and lead magnet to convert visitors into subscribers with the free Email List Growth Blueprint video course.