5 Opt-In Incentive Ideas to Help Grow Your Email List
So we’ve all heard it before…”growing your email list is crucial to your success as a business owner.” But what are even the benefits of growing an email list anyway? Well for starters, it helps you to connect more directly with your audience. Think about how busy things are on social media (especially with the algorithms). Having an email list will help you get your messages directly into your audience’s inbox, instead of having to cut through the noise on news feeds.
Email also has a higher conversion than social media. Think about it…how many times do you usually have to see someone’s product/service before you decide to make a purchase? Probably a LOT. You’re usually not going to buy right away after seeing them only on social media for the first time. So by using your email list, you’re able to show off your expertise to your audience (and future customers) to build trust with them, which will result in more future purchases.
With benefits like these, I know you’re really ready to grow that email list now! However, doing so must be done with a strategy. You have to offer people something of value in return for their email addresses. You can’t just generically ask them to sign up to your email list or to sign up for a newsletter, without an incentive.
So that’s where the word of the day comes in…”opt-in incentives.” An opt-in incentive is something helpful or valuable that you can offer to your audience in exchange for their first name and email address. Your new subscriber gets some helpful free info or other incentive and you now get to contact them directly in their inbox! It’s a win win for all!
There are several different options for what you could offer for this and I overview five of them below. You can offer these in various places on your website, like in the banner on the homepage, in your footer, in the sidebar, as a pop up, and even within your blog posts. You want to make sure they’re visible on your website for the best results.
Offer access to a resource library
If you’re a content creator who’s sharing content that helps your audience achieve a certain goal, you’re bound to have a ton of free guides and PDFs that you can compile into a resource library. A resource library is a central place for you to house all that info in one place. This could be a password-protected page on your website or a private Google Drive folder that only those with the password or special link can access. People love this because they feel like they’re getting a ton of exclusive content for FREE!
Offer a discount on a first purchase
If your business sells products, your incentive could be a discount code on the first purchase. Typically, for ecommerce stores, people don’t make a purchase right away, when they first land on your website. So this is why it’s crucial to capture their contact information right away, so you can keep in touch with them via email until they are ready to buy.
Create a multi-day challenge or course
People love a transformation. This is why multi-day challenges and courses with a big promise are so appealing. You promise a certain end result and break it down into 3-5 steps for a 3-5 day email challenge or course.
Offer a free guide on specific topic
If you want to keep it simple and stick to a guide on a specific topic that’s a few pages long, you can create a free guide on an area that your audience often has questions about or that you think would appeal to them. A free guide is really easy to create in Microsoft Word. You just type it up and save it as a PDF. If you want to get fancy, use a tool like Canva to create a banner image to pop into the header of the document. Or you could just pop your logo into the header to make it branded.
Provide a free training
People love saving time when it comes to learning a new skill. Anything you can do to cut down on someone’s learning curve is super valuable! You can offer free training for any skill that would be valuable to your audience. This could be done via an exclusive video, audio recording, or a how-to guide. Just make sure they feel like they can really move forward with the new skill after they finish the training.
That’s it! You’re now ready to hit the ground running with an opt-in incentive that will captivate your audience. Remember, these help make the first impression of your products or services with your audience, so be sure to make them count to see the best results down the line.
