In email campaigns, the recipients list is of primary importance. Every effort must be made in order to seize new subscribers, or else response falters as the inevitable “list attrition” rules prevail.

Use these Top 10 Tips for Boosting Subscriptions in order to ensure that no opportunity to collect email addresses for your campaigns and corresponding permissions is missed.

1. Create “Special Reports“ and offer them in return for subscribing to your list. Make the offer enticing enough to overcome the reader’s natural reluctance to disclose his or her email address.

2. Clearly explain your opt-in, opt-out and privacy policy. Give a summary on the opt-in landing page and link to the entire policy from there.

A suggested summary:

“Our Privacy Promise: Your email address would never be passed on or disclosed to any third party.

You may unsubscribe at any time with immediate effect.

We would never send you anything other than the e-zine that you signed up for“.

3. Try not to focus solely on the Web to collect email addresses and send out special reports. Align yourself with brick and mortar businesses and create joint email list building ventures. If your newsletter is about tropical fish for example, work with businesses that are willing to permit you to collect their customers’ names and e-mail addresses in a fishbowl. Offer them a Special Report on a related subject and be sure to mention the local business as a good source for tropical fish supplies.

This creates a win-win situation where you collect highly targeted names and the businessperson gets some great exposure as well. Use your imagination and you can come up with plenty of joint-venture ideas.

4. Offer special follow-up content to people who attend your online seminars, Podcasts or Tele-classes. Besides offering a printed transcript of the event, you can offer “insider-only“ information available solely to subscribers

5. Conduct a web-based survey and offer a cool prize to be drawn amongst those who register. Not only can you collect e-mail addresses, but if the prize requires surface delivery, like an iPod or even a T-Shirt, you are bound to receive postal addresses too.

With e-mail saturation at an all-time high, you could use these to run postcard campaigns and get even more sales.

6. Make sure to mention your web URL on your telephone voicemail message.

For example:

“Thank you for calling ‘The Company’. We are sorry that there is no one available to take your call. Please leave your name and number after the tone and we will contact you as soon as possible. (Pause).

In the meanwhile, you can visit us on www.thecompany.co.uk”.

Also, add your list subscription URL to your e-mail signature. Do not simply add the link, but rather include a clear benefit to subscribing.

7. Put a link to your opt-in form on every page of your site. Don’t overlook the “Thank You Page” that appears after someone has placed an order for your product or service.

8. Speaking of opt-in form links, forget the dull and boring “Click here to subscribe” message.

Spice it up with a compelling reason:
“Subscribe to the FREE Frugal Boys e-zine and discover how to cut your annual household expenses by 30% or more!”

9. Make sure that your email is highly targeted to your visitor’s needs. If you cover a wide variety of subjects, sprinkle different sign-up sales pitches throughout your site. In the example shown in item #8, the pitch was for household expenses. That might not appeal to younger visitors.

Here are some examples for creating more targeted inducements along the same lines:
“Subscribe to the FREE Frugal Boys e-zine and discover how to save 25% or more on your next car purchase”.
Or…
“Drink beer, save money. Subscribe to the FREE Frugal Boys e-zine and discover how”.

10. Make sure that your actual sign-up landing page clearly defines the benefits of subscribing as well as what will be sent and how often. And do not forget a link to your Privacy page.