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6 Ways to Convert Your Blog’s Abandoning Visitors into Subscribers

Tokyo, Shibuya Crossing

You have your blog up and running and your traffic is growing, but you still have a high bounce rate. You know the key to long-term growth is not just in building social media followings, but also in growing your email list.

So, what can you do to encourage your audience to make the leap from readers to subscribers?

 

1. Add Related Content to Your Posts

A really simple way to increase your page views and keep people engaged with your blog longer is to use the related content. Redirecting your readers to other pages and posts is very simple to do with or without using extra plugins. The first option is to add links to other related posts within your blog posts. Adding these links show your readers that you have a wealth of knowledge about that particular topic and helps to demonstrate that if they are interested in the topic, they should continue to get information from your blog.

Another option is to use a plugin like Related Content for WordPress or other similar plugins. These plugins add links to other related posts under your blog post. Be aware, however, that sometimes these plugins pull unrelated content, so just monitor which posts the plugin chooses and swap out ones that are less relevant for posts that will help address the issue your reader is trying to solve.

 

2. Make It easy to Sign up for Your Email List

Double opt-in helps prevent spammers from clogging up your email list, however, the extra steps to verify an email address can easily be overlooked by a new subscriber, especially if the confirmation email goes to the reader’s promotions folder. If you are not pushing the limits of your email service provider (meaning that you have some margin before you have to pay more for your email list), consider removing the double opt-in requirement and see how that affects your list growth. With most service providers, you can turn this service on and off as needed.

We recommend using MailerLite as email service provider. Read our review on this powerful and affordable email marketing platform here.

Also, consider whether it is important to you that your readers provide their first or last name when they sign up. Having their first name can make your emails feel more personable to them when they read them, but limiting the amount of information they need to provide upon signup may increase your conversions. There is code that you can put into your blog sign up forms that makes it simple for your readers to sign up.

Do you want your form to be displayed on multiple pages? Thankfully there are multi-page form plugins such as this one by Wpforms which will enable you to do just that.

 

3. Make Awesome Freebies

Asking someone to turn over their email address is becoming a bigger request and increasingly more people need a really exciting reason to hand over their address. Think about all of the emails you get in your inbox each day. At this point, would you hand over your email address to anyone who asked? Probably not.

You need to give your reader something really enticing to get them motivated to become a subscriber. What is your reader’s biggest pain point? What can you offer your reader that solves one of their problems? You want your reader to see whatever freebie you are offering and be happy to give their email address to you in exchange for the value you are offering in your opt-in freebie.

Offer something great in return for your visitor’s email adress. At Barn Images, we offer 50 high-resolution images to everyone who signs up to our newsletter.

 

4. Use Exit-Intent Pop-Ups

Once you’ve shared some of your juiciest posts with your readers and created an epic opt-in freebie, you need to actually ask your reader to sign up for your email list. Optinmonster’s exit-intent pop-up is a really effective way to do this. Unlike a pop-up that comes up as soon as you open a webpage (or very shortly thereafter), waiting to use an exit-intent pop-up means that you’ve already had the opportunity to share value with your reader and have given them a taste of the kind of content they will receive when they sign up for your email list. You can also check powerful and free list-building tools by Sumo, or use popup subscribe forms and landing pages integrated to MailerLite.

Exit popup form powered by MailerLite
Exit popup form on BarnImages.com offering 50 free images, powered by MailerLite

 

5. Use HelloBar or Smart Bar

HelloBar and Smart Bar by Sumo are colorful, free, and easy-to-use option for additional sign up opportunities. Unlike a pop-up that can be easily dismissed, a bar stays static across the type of your website on each page and reminds your reader of your freebie opt-in and encourages them to subscribe to your email list on each page that they choose to visit.

 

6. Add Sign up Options Within Blog Posts

Adding graphics to your blog post not only breaks up paragraphs of text, making it easier for the reader to absorb the information but is a perfect opportunity to encourage your readers to subscribe to your email list as well. If you have an opt-in freebie that corresponds to the topic of your blog post, create a graphic that encourages your reader to click to sign up to receive the freebie. You can create simple graphics in Canva, Adobe Photoshop, or other visual tools.

It should be the next logical step for your audience to move from reading your blog posts to subscribing to your email list. Trying out these small, but powerful steps to grow your email list will keep bringing your readers back over and over and help strengthen your relationship with them.

 

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