9 Ways to Optimize Your Podcast's Website for Email Subscriptions
On yesterday's episode, I spoke the need to collect first-party data since third-party data is not long for this Earth. On today's episode, I talk about some simple ways you can update your website in order to optimize it for growing your email subscriber list.
Here are 9 ways you can optimize your podcast's website in order to grow your email subscriber list:
- Make sure your sign-up form is prominent. A lot of people bury their newsletter sign-up at the bottom of the page or on the “Contact Us” page. Give it the prominence it deserves.
- Reduce the fields in your sign-up form. Research shows that the more fields you have, the fewer people will sign up. Unless you require specific information to segment your audience, I recommend starting with just the email address OR name and email address.
- Give something away for every subscriber. If you want to grow your list fast, offer something like a free sticker, custom piece of art, shout out on the pod, etc. for signing up. Remember that if you go with something physical that you have to mail, you’re going to need to mail it. And in the U.S., postage is at 60¢ plus the cost of the envelope, sticker, and your time. It can get pricey, but it may be worth it depending on how you monetize your show and your email list.
- Add a timed pop-up or exit-intent pop-up on your homepage. You’ve all seen this before. The box pops up after a few seconds on the site asking you to sign up for the newsletters. You’ve seen them so often because they work. An exit-intent popup works by triggering when the site detects the mouse moving to the top of the screen (signaling that the visitor is about to bounce).
- Add pop-ups on your most popular content. If you don’t want everyone getting hit with a pop-up, you could only put it on pages that are high performers.
- Require registration for blog comments. If you take comments on the show, you could require that the visitor registers first. In that registration process, you could include an opt-in box. Just be sure you’re following GDPR/CCPA/etc. guidelines.
- Test & update your CTAs. Have you not been getting many sign-ups? Maybe the copy isn’t landing with your audience. Try changing up your Call-to-Action and button copy.
- Make a quiz. People like to interact with fun quizzes and polls. Put one on your website and require the user to sign up in order to see the results.
- Create a survey. Ask your listeners to give you feedback about your show and at the end, give them an opportunity to sign up for your email list.
There you go! Nine ways to grow your subscriber list. Thanks for listening to GMP!
Transcript
Fuzz Martin 0:00
Good Morning Podcasters! So we're snowed in. A nice day to make some simple updates to your website to help you grow your podcast email subscriber list.
Fuzz Martin 0:14
I hope you're having a great day. My name is Fuzz Martin and this is Good Morning Podcasters each Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, I give you actionable tips and news for marketing, your podcasts my qualifications, I work in marketing and advertising. I'm one of the owners at a mid sized advertising agency in the Milwaukee area. So we're snowed in here today in southeastern Wisconsin. So I thought it would be a good time to talk about some rainy day things or some snowy day things that you can do to your podcasts website in order to grow your email audience. Does that work for you? It works for me. So let's get into it.
Fuzz Martin 0:55
Now there are a ton of different ways that you can drive email signups through advertising social media events, calls to action on your podcast itself. But today I'm going to focus solely on some ideas for optimizing your website to get more email subscribers. Let's start with the basics at the agency, we call this hitting singles. Why? Because sports analogies are easy for people to remember. So where is the simplest place to improve your email, signups? Your signup form? Yeah, real simple. A lot of people bury their newsletter signups either at the bottom of their homepage, or on the Contact Us form or somewhere else on their site. If you want to focus on growing your email list via your website, you don't want to make people search for it, make the form more prominent. If this is your focus, move it above the fold, give the call to action more pizzazz, razzle dazzle them and make it sing.
Fuzz Martin 1:57
Next, and this holds true for every form that you might ever put on a website ever. Research shows that the more fields you have in a form, the fewer people will complete them. So unless you require specific information to segment your audience, I recommend starting with just the user's email address, or at the most their name and email address. And of course, the opt in box.
Fuzz Martin 2:23
Do you want to juice the number of signups on your site, try giving something away free to every subscriber. This could be a free sticker, a free custom piece of art. A shout out on your podcast that's free. A white paper download focused on your niche industry, there are a whole bunch of things that you can give away for free. Remember that if you go with something physical, you're going to have to mail it and that means in the US postage is 60 cents plus the cost of an envelope sticker, your time et cetera can get pricey, but it might be worth it depending on how you monetize your show, and your email list. And of course, if you're going to be mailing something physical, you'll need their address, which I would recommend you ask for after they've signed up. Again, going back to the last step, because you want to reduce the number of form fields that it takes to fill in the form.
Fuzz Martin 3:14
Alright, so the next thing you could do to drive email subscribers is add a timed pop up or an exit intent pop up to your homepage. You've all seen this before. Either the signup box pops up after you've been on the site for a few seconds or a minute. Or an exit intent pop up works by triggering when your website detects the mouse moving toward the top of the screen, signaling that the visitor is about to GTFO.
Fuzz Martin 3:43
The availability of some of these features depends on what kind of platform you're using on your website. If you're on WordPress, it's super simple. There are others that I'm certain works on. But you may want to research and Google that solution to see if it works for your site before you go too far.
Fuzz Martin 4:00
If you don't like the idea of hitting everyone with a pop up, you could skip the homepage and only drop in pop up code on interior post pages or on your highest performing pages. If you have a lot of people who comment on your website, you could consider requiring them to register in order to comment. Obviously, you'll need to include an opt in to make sure that they want to get your emails. And really you should do that on every single signup form that you have. But if you're using Facebook or discuss comments, perhaps consider adjusting that to allow you to collect first party data. Oh look a callback to yesterday's episode.
Fuzz Martin 4:36
Another thing that you can do to increase the amount of email signups on your website is to test and track different types of call to action copy. Maybe your boring old sign up for my newsletter copy isn't working. Maybe the word newsletter is boring. Switch it up a bit, give it some personality. Try a number of different things and see what works best. And the last couple of ideas for you today try a quiz or a survey people To interact with fun quizzes and polls, but when on your website require the user to sign up in order to see the results, this might be the sole reason that BuzzFeed still exists.
Fuzz Martin 5:10
And then if you have a survey, you can ask people for their thoughts and your show and give them the ability to opt in at the end of that survey.
Fuzz Martin 5:17
So there you go, I gave you nine different ways to optimize your website for email subscriptions you want to recap, here we go. Number one, make sure your signup form is prominent. Number two, reduce the number of fields in your signup form. Number three, give away something to new subscribers. Number four at a time to pop up a modal window or an exit intent pop over. Number five add pop ups only on your most popular content. Number six require blog comments registration with the ability to opt in. Number seven test and update your calls to action and give them more personality. Number eight, make it quiz Allah BuzzFeed. Number nine. Make a survey. Now run off and try one or a few of those things and see if it makes a difference and your email subscriber numbers.
Fuzz Martin 6:05
Thank you so much for listening to Good Morning Podcasters. If you enjoy the show, please consider following GMP. Click the Follow button in your podcast player. Do it. Do it right now. Thanks. You can find all the episodes of Good Morning Podcasters at goodmorningpod.com New episodes come out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and occasionally we'll give you BONUS episodes of a show called podcasting sucks with Jeff Townsend on Saturdays. Those episodes come right here into the Good Morning. Podcasters feed we just recorded an episode last night. It might come out this Saturday, or it might be next week. But I'll definitely let you know on social media again. My name is Fuzz Martin, I appreciate you. And I'll talk to you next time. Right here on Good Morning Podcasters
