How to grow your newsletter subscriber list

We all want our mailing list to be full of avid readers who are interested in what we have to say and what we have to promote. So how do we attract the right readers? How do we get the people who are reading our posts to sign up to our newsletter?

First of all remember this relies on getting traffic to our blog in the first place (but that is a whole different issue).

Secondly think about your reader and what they want

• Write good content on a regular basis geared to that reader.
• Ask permission to send content to people’s emails. This could be an opt-in form on your blog. Try different places and if the sidebar opt-in does not work try one at the top of your page or on your about page etc.
• Promote your newsletter through your social networks i.e. twitter, facebook etc.
• Use a Facebook newsletter signup.
• Offer a free item for people who subscribe to your list - it could be a free guide, resource, or template that solves a problem that your readers might have.
• Place a postscript at the bottom of your most popular posts that invites people to sign up to your newsletter if they enjoyed your post. 
• Hold a contest or a giveaway that people join in by leaving their email.
• Provide a series of articles or videos and ask for an email address after the first post to unlock the rest.
• Try different approaches and test which works best.
• If you use a great email marketing product like Aweber (my favourite) you get to easily see what emails are working best as well as access to hundreds of opt in forms,  email automation and autoresponder follow ups. You can start a free trial of Aweber with access to every feature by clicking my affiliate link. (you know I only recommend products I use and love)

We'd love to hear what has worked well for you in growing your email list, so please let us know in the comment section.

On this same topic of emails you might also like to read What should I send in my emails? which offers ideas for WHAT to write.