3 Actionable Tips to Increase Email Newsletter Subscribers

Engaging content keeps your new readers on your site the first time, but it’s up to you to keep them coming back for more. One of the best ways? Encourage them to subscribe to your content.

You might think you need to do something drastic to gain subscriptions, but small changes can have big impact. This is especially true if you’re just starting your site or are new to growing a subscriber base.

Let’s take a look at how you can earn more subscribers with three small but effective changes to your site.

1. Add a visible subscription widget

Before you can gain subscribers, you need to make visitors aware that they can subscribe in the first place. You can’t expect anyone to sign up if you don’t ask!

Subscription tools are built in to Jetpack, so this is as simple as adding the right widget in the right place: add a Subscriptions widget to your sidebar (or other widget-ready area of your theme), and you’ll be good to go.

The best location for this widget is beside or at the bottom of your content, on your blog posts or pages. This way, when a visitor is reading something they enjoy, it’s easy for them to notice the Subscriptions box and opt-in for more content in their inbox.

You might also want to edit the visibility settings of your Subscriptions widget so it displays only on posts. This way, you aren’t asking for subscriptions until after visitors have read some of your content. It’s much easier to convince someone to subscribe if they already know what you can offer them!

2. Tell subscribers what they’ll get

Speaking of being convincing, here’s another tip to boost your signups: tell potential subscribers exactly what you’ll be sending them.

Sure, you can ask visitors to subscribe to your blog. But doesn’t it sound better to ask them to subscribe for amazing tips, recipes, guides, or videos?

Subscribers want to know what you’ll be giving them in exchange for their email address. Will they get new content every week? Will they learn they things they can’t learn anywhere else?

If you don’t want to try to fit all of this information into a widget, you can put it on a separate “subscriptions” page instead. The

shortcode will help you do this in just a few minutes — learn how to customize it here.

3. Ask for the subscription

At the end of your posts, you’re probably already be asking readers for comments, feedback, or even to buy your products.

This is known as a call to action. If you’re not already using calls to action, they are extremely powerful… and sometimes they’re just as simple as asking for what you want.

With this in mind, our third tip is this: ask for your visitors to subscribe. Point out that they can subscribe to your content, and explain how they can subscribe — whether that’s in a widget, on a separate page, or elsewhere.

One of the easiest ways to start doing this is by modifying an existing call to action you might already be using: “leave a comment.” Jetpack allows your readers to subscribe to a single post’s comments or your site from a convenient spot beneath the comment form:

Consider asking commenters to check the Notify me of new posts via email option. They’ll be opted-in just like anyone signing up via the Subscriptions widget or shortcode — and they’ll still be able to post their comments, of course.

You might be surprised by how many subscriptions you get simply by asking for them!

With a few small changes, you’ll gain more followers

You may think it’s the big changes that net you a big following, but sometimes it’s the exact opposite.

By making potential subscribers aware of how they can follow you, why they should subscribe to your content, and asking them to take action, you can increase your following substantially.

What do you think of these tips? Have you found any small tweaks of your own that have increased your following? We’d love to hear them!

---