Start A Newsletter For A Website (Best Practices)

How to start an email list for your business

Hard questions like ‘Should I start a newsletter for a website?’ are often difficult and have no clear answer.

Do you place an email opt-in form at the beginning stages of building your website or wait until you have traffic?

Email marketing can be a great way to increase traffic to a website. No wonder it’s considered the best strategy to implement when it comes to growing online traffic.

A newsletter allows you to promote your business, keep in touch with old customers, stay current with industry trends and provide value to readers.

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Table of Contents

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach out to customers and prospects. It is a great way to build trust and establish a long-term relationship with them.

The goal is to get them to take some action, like buying your product or subscribing to your mailing list. The number one reason email marketing is an effective way for increasing traffic is that it’s personal and targeted.

Email campaigns are an integral part of any email strategy. They are the central hub that connects all your other marketing channels. They help you create a unified customer experience, while also providing new opportunities for engagement.

An email campaign can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. It can be a single email sent on a one-time basis, to an ongoing sequence of emails. Each message contributes in its own way toward achieving your desired goal.

When To Start A Newsletter On Your Website?

When starting an email list, the majority are conflicted because they don’t know when to implement a newsletter signup form.

You have 2 options which can help you answer this question:

Option 1: Add Your Newsletter Right From The Start

When you start a new website design project, it will initially look empty as there won’t be any content. This is because it takes time to create the content that your website visitors will see.

For example blogs, pictures, or videos. If you plan to place your signup form in the beginning stages it can look out of place.

This is the kind of content volume you only see when you upload articles to your blog every day or once a week. This is why someone who’s just started a blog might think it seems pointless to have a newsletter, but it’s not.

In the beginning, gaining visitors to your blog will take time. This is because you are a small fish in a huge ocean.

No matter what niche your blog is in, you will have a high volume of competition. Competing with the top bloggers who have been blogging for years is no easy task, possible but not easy.

This is why adding a newsletter right when you first create your blog is such a great tactical advantage. You should try to maintain the handful of readers you have while building your blog with good and interesting content. This is where the newsletter helps.

Having those few readers sign up for your newsletter means that they are possible recurring customers. Send them an email every time you post a new article and they would most likely read it.

This will make your subscribers feel like they are growing with you as your blog grows.

If you receive 15 readers a day or every other day, of those 15 readers, 10 sign-up for your newsletter. If you are consistent in posting content, then you could send those readers an email about a new article weekly. Within a month you could average 40 readers who signed up for your newsletter, totaling 480 readers within a year.

Adding an email opt-in form in the early stages of your website, give you plenty of opportunities.

This could be practicing writing good, quality content while learning the auto-responder tool you using. Automating your email list can teach you an array of time-saving tricks to respond to a high volume of emails.

Over time, as your traffic grows so will your email marketing list and skills.

Option 2: Add Your Newsletter When You Have Traffic

This option is more for those who want to take a more analytical approach.

Without Google, your website will get lost among the thousands of other websites available online. This is because everyone who has a website wants Google as their friend.

You might be thinking now, how do I do that? It’s simple however you will need more patience and a don’t give up attitude.

Google’s algorithm is always changing, what doesn’t change is the simple reason why everyone uses the internet – for information.

To succeed, it’s vital that your posts provide the best content possible to attract loyal readers. The more helpful your blog post is, the more likely Google will rank your page among the top results.

Google needs to see that you have created your blog to help answer or provide information that people need. Not having your newsletter sign-up form at the start will help you achieve this.

This option is slower as you have to rely on good-quality content to drive traffic and retain readers.

What you do gain though in this option is your blog’s reputation with Google. This helps you gain more readers because Google will push your articles to whoever is searching for that information.

You will feel discouraged in the beginning by not getting any traffic to your site for weeks or even months. This is where your patience will be tested. This is where that don’t give up attitude will work in your favor.

Once you’ve proven to Google that your blog is all about giving helpful information and not just promotional links or advertisements, you can start a newsletter for your business.

This is the right time because the volume of traffic you will be getting from googled search results will help you grow your email list 3x faster than in option 1.

Best Practices Of Email Campaigns To Generate Leads & Sales

No matter what option you go for, you need to take some steps to ensure that your email marketing is optimised.

You can do some things to start a newsletter for your business. Building an effective email marketing strategy that reaches your customers and informs them about your new products, services, and offers.

You can’t just send an email and hope for the best. Create a strategy that will help you get the most out of your emails.

Here are 8 ways to get your email marketing generating leads:

1) Headline: Have a compelling headline that describes your product, service or offer in a few words

2) Personalisation: Studies show that personalized emails are more likely to be opened, read, and responded to. Personalized emails are a must in email marketing.

Emails can have a different tone depending on the recipient, but they should always be friendly and warm. Personalisation could be anything from using the recipient’s first name in an email, to sending them a specific newsletter.

Research has found that the use of personalization leads to improved engagement, online and offline. This includes improved marketing effectiveness such as higher conversion rates, purchase intent, targeted marketing campaigns, and more effective persuasion strategies both online and offline.

3) Email Content: Email marketing is a great way to build relationships with your customers. Sending them relevant and helpful content will help you improve your reputation, increase customer loyalty, and boost the number of sales.

The first sentence should be short, catchy, and clear. Always be as concise as possible and your email should not exceed 300 words in length. If it does, make sure to have short sentences of no more than 20 words.

4) Promotions: Exclusive deals and promotions tailored for your email subscribers are a great way to stay in their inboxes. Tell them that this special offer is just for them because they have been loyal and supportive.

5) Autoresponder: You can make an autoresponder with follow-up messages at certain intervals to let prospects know about your products or services. These emails can be sent again if they weren’t opened first, allowing you to reach out to more leads and increase your sales.

6) Links And CTA: Include links to either your article or a product. Have a strong call-to-action (CTA) at the end of every email so recipients know what they should do next.

7) Visuals: Images and videos are a great way to engage with your audience. They will provide a visual representation of the message you trying to convey. Plus, visuals are often more memorable than plain text.

Images are good to illustrate what you are talking about in your email. This can be useful if you are trying to teach someone something or give them instructions on how to do something.

Images and videos are best when they are short and relevant. Your visuals should complement the message that is being sent.

8) Unsubscribe: Although this is something you don’t want, you must make it easy for people to unsubscribe to your emails. If you are sending too many emails or they are not interested in your content, your audience might want to unsubscribe. If this is the case, make sure the unsubscription process is as easy as possible.

Conclusion

So let’s recap: The best time to start a newsletter is all about your goals. If your goal is traffic then start now and use services like GetResponse or WP Mail SMTP Plugin.

Both options are great and whichever one you decide to choose, you will gain traffic, it’s just all about when you add your newsletter.

Option 1 is all about trying to keep those few readers that do visit your site at the beginning coming back.

If that is something you want by growing your email list from a few daily readers to thousands then it’s a good idea to add your newsletter right from the start.

Option 2 is all about using google instead as the driving force to get traffic to your blog and then only start a newsletter for your business later.

You would already have thousands of readers coming to your blog by google pushing your articles to the first page. It would just be a matter of them signing up for your newsletter.

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