You’ve excitedly set up your MailChimp account, drafted an email and are waiting for loads of people to sign up to your mailing list before you press send for the very first time.
You’re hanging on in there for the list to get bigger but it’s taking longer than you expected. Need some ideas on how to grow your MailChimp subscriber list? We can help.
Remember though, that even if you have just 5 names on your list, these are 5 people who have explicitly requested that you send them information about your products and services so it’s important that you email them as soon as you have something interesting to share. By not emailing these individuals at the point when they are most engaged in your organisation, you are missing a valuable opportunity. A welcome email can be automated as a paid feature of MailChimp, or you can manually select new people in the recipients section of the campaign by choosing:
-> Date Added -> is after a specific date
And in order to build your email list, try the following activities and let us know how you get on:
- Make sure your list is easy to find. (We can add a Gravity form to your website to collect email addresses. These will automatically update to your MailChimp list.)
- Add widgets to every page of your website inviting people to sign up.
- Make your list quick and easy to fill out. A long questionnaire can be a barrier to a signup so consider which information you actually require.
- Ask permission to add your own contacts to your list (journalists, customers, collaborators).
- Add a MailChimp email signup form directly to your facebook page.
- Offer a reason for people to join your list “be the first to find out when we get this back in stock”
- If you have an online shop, add an opt in box at the checkout suggesting “Sign up to our newsletter”. Most people will heed this strong call to action.
- Collect email addresses at events, in your physical store and wherever you are interacting with people. Tip: people are more likely to fill out a small card and put it into a box than add their name to a list that everyone else can see.
- Run competitions to get new people to sign up. Prize draws are a good way of attracting new subscribers and offering a prize that is relevant to your target customer will mean that participants are more likely to stay subscribed after the winner has been announced.
- Give away a freebie. A white paper, a printable download.
- Ask current subscribers to forward to a friend.
- Consider a pop up on your website. However irritating you might find them on other websites, they do actually work. If people are interested enough to visit your website, they often just need a tiny push to sign up to receive your emails. We can add a pop up to your website via a simple plugin, so get in touch to find out how we can do this.
By the way, if you see a few people unsubscribing from your lists every now and then this is perfectly usual and very ok. People’s interests and priorities change and it’s natural for some individuals to not be interested in your products or services anymore. However, if you see a mass unsubscribe, e.g. after sending a particular campaign, then you need to investigate.
