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Common Email List Mistakes
Are you struggling to grow your email list as a blogger?
Check out these common email list mistakes you might be making!
Note: If you don’t already have an email list for your blog, I highly recommend starting one. My email list lets me stay in touch with subscribers and earn a lot of my blogging income by promoting my own products and affiliate products.
I wrote a detailed step-by-step guide about how to start your own email list for beginners if you aren’t sure where to start!
I highly recommend ConvertKit as your email marketing provider, because it was designed specifically for professional bloggers. And they offer a FREE plan for up to 10,000 email subscribers, which is amazing.
Over the years, I have grown a large email list of engaged subscribers for my blog. But I have made plenty of mistakes along the way!
Here are some of my biggest mistakes, and what I learned from them. Hopefully, these tips will help you avoid making the same mistakes that I did!
1. Only having one place to opt in
When I very first started my email list, I put one single opt-in box on the homepage of my blog where people could subscribe, and that was it.
I was confused as to why no one was signing up for my super amazing opt-in incentive. Then another blogger pointed out that no one was even seeing it.
Most people find your blog through a particular post or page. They don’t necessarily land on your homepage or have any reason to go there. So if that’s where their only place to subscribe is, they will never even see it.
What to do instead: Have multiple places to opt-in on your blog. At the top of every page, in the sidebar, in the footer, within individual posts, a pop-up, etc.
Make sure that visitors to your blog don’t miss the opportunity to subscribe!
2. Not having a welcome series
So maybe you already have an opt-in incentive for your subscribers, and once they sign up, you use your email’s autoresponder to send it their way.
And then… total radio silence on your end.
I was guilty of that too in the beginning. Once I sent out the first email to my subscribers that contained the link to download their opt-in incentive, they wouldn’t hear from me again until I sent out my semi-random newsletters.
That made my subscribers “cold” AKA they wouldn’t open the emails I sent them… probably because they were wondering who I even was!
What to do instead: Set up a welcome sequence of 3-5 emails using your email provider’s autoresponder for after your subscribers receive their opt-in incentive.
Introduce yourself, explain what your blog is about and what your subscribers can expect from you, and provide some free value! This will ensure that your subscribers know who you are and start looking forward to opening your emails!
3. Having just one opt-in incentive
Most bloggers just have one opt-in incentive on their blog. One is better than none – but if you really want to grow your email list, you should have multiple!
Why? Here’s an example: I used to have just one opt-in incentive on my blog – a free email course about affiliate marketing. I got a pretty good amount of subscribers from it. But then one day I started getting a TON of traffic to a particular blog post about a topic totally unrelated to affiliate marketing.
A lot of people were coming to my blog, reading that one blog post, and then leaving without signing up for my email list, because they probably weren’t interested in a course on affiliate marketing.
What to do instead: I should have created a new opt-in incentive related directly to the topic of my popular blog post in order to get some new subscribers from my huge spike in traffic on that one blog post.
Having multiple opt-in incentives helps you “cast a wider net” and get more subscribers than having just one. You don’t need to create a new opt-in incentive for every single blog post, but it’s good to have at least a couple on your more popular posts or posts in different categories. I now have four total.
ConvertKit makes it super easy to set up multiple opt-ins and track how well they’re performing, which is one of the main reasons I use them.
4. Not having an end goal for my list
Once people subscribe to your list, what are you going to send them? Where are you leading your subscribers?! A lot of bloggers struggle to answer this question and just send random emails that don’t have much of a purpose.
For me, I would like for my subscribers to eventually buy my ebook — but the emails I sent my subscribers in my welcome sequence weren’t really pointing them in that direction, and I wasn’t giving them a clear path of action.
What to do instead: Have an end goal for your email list. Do you want your subscribers to join your Facebook group? Buy a product you’re an affiliate for? Buy your own product? Become a client for a service you provide?
Whatever you want your subscribers to do, make sure to work it into your welcome sequence and create a clear, defined path of action for them.
5. Not sending a regular newsletter
I admit that I’m still guilty of this mistake, but I’m trying to work on it!
A little earlier in this blog post, I talked about having “cold” subscribers. That’s definitely not what you want. You want subscribers who are super excited to see you pop up in their inbox. Subscribers who look forward to seeing you there every week because your newsletters are just that awesome!
But maybe you’re like me, and you sometimes draw a total blank when it comes to what to send your subscribers every week.
What to do instead: Force yourself to stick to a weekly newsletter! People wouldn’t have signed up for your email list if they didn’t want to hear from you.
You can send your subscribers exclusive mini blog posts, “behind-the-scenes” type emails, freebies, or let them know when a sale/promotion is happening.
Once you start building a regular relationship with your subscribers, you will have a lot more success with things like email marketing and product launches!
Fixing Your Email List Mistakes
These are the most common email list mistakes that bloggers make.
The good thing is that even if you’re making some of these email list mistakes, most of them are an easy fix. You can make some small tweaks and see a huge difference in email subscriber growth, email open rates, and sales!
Looking for more email list tips? Check out the following posts…