List Building: How to Build an Email List

6 Steps to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand

Today I’m going to show you how to build your email list (FAST).

In fact:

The strategies in this post helped me grow my list from scratch… to 172,126 subscribers:

1. Use Content Upgrade Popups

Look:

Love ’em or hate ’em, popups work.

For example, a while back I decided to try using a popup. Here’s what the popup looks like:

That popup form may look simple, but it converts at an impressive 3.42%.

And it took my subscriber numbers from 35/day to 75/day.

In fact, that simple-looking popup added over 3600 new subscribers to my email list in 3 months.

Although I’m happy with those results, I’m excited to tell you that I’ve discovered a way to make popups even more powerful.

How?

By adding The Content Upgrade to the mix.

Never heard of the The Content Upgrade? No worries. This post will show you how I used The Content Upgrade to increase conversions by 785%.

As you saw in that post, page-specific offers convert WAY better than something generic (like “free updates”). For example:

In [my Google Ranking Factors post](/content/google-ranking-factors "Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List"/index.html), I give away a checklist that makes the information from that post much more actionable:

And then it hit me:

Why would I offer someone something VERY specific with The Content Upgrade…

…and then turn around and make a generic offer in my popup?

That doesn’t make any sense.

So I decided to create a page-specific popup that pitched my Google Ranking Factors checklist.

The result?

A 65% increase in conversions vs. the generic offer.

Imagine how many A/B tests you’d have to run to increase conversions by 65% (hint: a lot).

2. Hack Qualaroo To Build Your Email List Fast

Here’s one of the most creative list building strategies I’ve ever seen:

You may already be familiar with Qualaroo, a survey tool that asks live questions to visitors on your website.

While Qualaroo is great at surveying your site’s visitors, you may not know that you can ALSO hack this tool to build your email list.

In fact, The University of Alberta recently used this same hack to boost subscribers by more than 500%.

Here’s how they did it…and how you can do the same thing on your site.

The University was looking to increase conversions on their email updates page, which you can see here:

Instead of using Qualaroo to poll their visitors, they had the tool encourage people to sign up to their email newsletter:

Did it work?

In a word: YES!

This Qualaroo form pushed their signups from a sad 1-2/day… to a respectable 12-15/day without making any other changes to that page.

3. Optimize This Often-Ignored Page and Increase Your List By Up To 25%

I’ve got good news and bad news…

First, the bad news:

If you make people double opt-in to join your list, up to 25% of your subscribers may be falling through the cracks.

Now for some good news:

You can significantly boost your subscriber numbers by getting more of your opt-ins to actually confirm their email. How can you do that?

Optimize your confirmation page.

I’m happy to say that my confirmation page loses VERY few people. Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s the breakdown of the 3 reasons this page works better than most confirmation pages:

First, re-iterate the benefits of subscribing.

The second line on the page is:

Second, include a strong call to action that asks them to confirm right away.

Third, visually walk you through the exact steps you need to take in order to confirm your email.

4. Limit The Number of Options

Which sounds better to you?

Making millions from the stock market… or being lazy and eating Cheetos on your couch?

I know, it’s a silly question.

I only ask because those are the two options Timothy Sykes offers on his exit intent popup.

Although each Bounce Exchange popup has a unique design, they have one thing in common:

They make you feel like an idiot for not opting in.

For example, here’s a Bounce Exchange popup from MensHealth.com (note the “No thanks, I’m not looking to lose weight” option):

Bottom line:

Including a second option (even a silly one) will convert more people into email subscribers.

5. Use This Simple Trick to Solve The “Social Proof Paradox”

Here’s an example from one of my newsletter sign up pages:

You don’t need a 30,000-person email list to demonstrate social proof. A single testimonial is enough.

6. Use BuiltWith.com To Steal Your Competitor’s Best Conversion Tools

What’s the fastest way to find the best conversion tools for YOUR business?

That’s easy:

Use the same tools that your competitors use every day.

But how?

You could try to learn how to build an email list completely on your own… or you could look at a competitor site’s source code and try to piece things together yourself.

Or you can use this little-known tool called Built With that shows you the EXACT tools your competition uses to build their email list.

7. Use The LPF Technique to Turn More Blog Traffic Into Subscribers

What’s the #1 page you want someone to visit to when they come to your blog?

If your answer is, “one of my best blog posts”, you’re missing out on HUNDREDS of potential subscribers.

You want your visitors to go to pages designed to collect emails. In other words, landing pages.

8. Turn Your LinkedIn Group Into a List Building Fire Hose

There’s this group on LinkedIn called the Sports Industry Network:

If you run a LinkedIn group, you can easily do the same thing by going to Manage–>Temples–>Welcome Message:

9. Use These 8 Words to Dramatically Increase The Value Of Your Giveaway

Here are value terms you can use to make your giveaway more enticing:

10. Giveaway a Bonus For YouTube Videos

When it comes to marketing on YouTube, there’s one thing that almost everyone can agree on:

YouTube click through rates are HORRIBLE.

How can you get your YouTube viewers to click over to your site and sign up for your email list? Give something away!

11. Use “Readers” or “Visitors” to Generate Social Proof

You can feature your blog’s monthly visitors as social proof.

12. Pitch Your Email Newsletter to Twitter Followers

You may think that most of your Twitter followers are also on your email list… but you’d be wrong.

13. Surprise New Subscribers With a Free Bonus

Give your subscribers an unannounced bonus for signing up.

14. Use a Blog Post Teaser

You can leverage fear of loss to build your list.

15. Use Weird Call to Actions on Buttons

Whimsical phrases like “Sounds good!” and “Let’s do this!” stand out and put people at ease.

16. Turn Blog Comments Into Email Subscribers

When someone leaves a comment, they’re automatically added to my email list.

17. About Page=Squeeze Page

If you’re not using your about page to also collect emails, you’re leaving hundreds of email subscribers on the table.