How to leverage content and convert traffic into email subscribers

Traffic is often the center point of any content and SEO strategy. While many websites publish content to educate readers about industry news or inform them of new product announcements, the main focus of most websites is often increasing the traffic volume.

Most of the efforts, time, and money is served towards achieving this goal. However, if you have managed a website for a decent period of time, you’d have realised that you lose most of that traffic never to return.

Traffic visitors come from a variety of sources: direct, social channels, search engines, etc. And a huge majority of that traffic never comes back to your site.

We all know that retention of a customer or visitor is almost always cheaper than acquiring a new one. So, what’s the best way to maximise the benefits of that content and SEO strategy and retain some sort of connection with those random website visitors?

The answer is an email marketing list.

In this blog post, we discuss how to use your content and leverage it to build an email list that you can later optimise for getting more free traffic, testing products, and increasing sales and profits.

Here are a few tips to follow:

1. Creating a high-quality lead magnet

To encourage more website visitors to join your email subscription list, you will have to create many incentives for them.

One of those incentives is a high-quality lead magnet that your target audience would be interested in.

In short, instead of saying “subscribe for weekly updates” or “sign up for a monthly newsletter”, you are offering them a free checklist, guide, e-book, white paper, or case study that contains a lot of value for your audience.

Identify who your audience is and what their biggest problems are. Create an easily digestible but high-quality piece of content in the PDF format that addresses those problems and presents actionable solutions, and give it to them for free.

To incentivise more sign-ups and build a bigger email list, you will have to craft something that goes beyond “sign up.”

2. A separate well-optimised landing page

Whether you are using a lead magnet or not, you need to have a separate landing page for your opt-in form.

This opt-in form should be well-optimised for conversions, readers, and search engines. You can also promote this URL on different channels, e.g., social channels.

Make the copy of that landing page persuasive and engaging. From the main heading to the call-to-action to the bottom, everything should be to increase conversions.

Treat that opt-in landing page as an important product page and use a similar approach. It’s going to be a test of your copywriting and content writing skills.

Here is a very good example of how a separate landing page for email sign-ups and lead magnets looks like.

3. Use guest blogging

Content marketers and SEO professionals often rely on guest blogging. It not only helps with traffic generation, but guest blogging is also a viable tool for generating backlinks from reputed and well-established websites.

When you write and publish a guest blog, don’t forget to redirect readers to the landing page you created.

Remember that those readers may not know you. If you send them to the homepage of your website, you may lose most of them. They may read an article or two on your website, but chances are less that they will become a regular visitor and an avid fan after visiting your website just once.

By redirecting them to a lead magnet and inducting them into your email subscription list, you will be able to connect with them later, invite them to your website once more, and market your products or services to them.

4. Offer exclusive content

Lead magnets are essential, but they have one problem. Almost all websites now offer some sort of lead magnet. Unless yours is exceptional and completely unique, it might not create a great impact.

Here is another solution.

Offer your email subscribers exclusive content — content that they won’t find elsewhere, not even on your blog.

If the quality of your content is truly good, your readers would naturally want more of it. If you gate some of it behind an email subscription list, you will likely have a better conversion rate.

5. Run A/B tests to increase conversions

Nothing is set up perfectly from the get-go. Testing and optimising regularly are key stages of success in the online marketing world.

Make sure that you test everything to get the best possible conversion rate: from the title of your lead magnet to the copy and color of the call-to-action.

Warning: Be careful of too many pop-ups

In an attempt to increase email subscribers, some websites may use too many pop-ups and interstitials ads. Those negatively affect the user experience on your site, which leads to lower search engine rankings.

Make sure to prioritise a good user experience over everything else.