In recent posts we looked at what makes for a good free guide and how to go about creating your own killer resource to give away on your blog.  In this post I’m going to demonstrate how to use that free content to build a mailing list.

Using killer content such as a free report, guide or ebook is a great way to build your list.  Here is an example of one of my own blogs where I started a mailing list last year.  The blog gets about 10000 visitors per month and the mailing list signup rate was fairly modest at first.  See if you can guess when I started offering up the free guide to subscribers!

To do this for your own blog you will need a mailing list provider or email marketing service such as Aweber.  There are other good providers out there, and even some free ones, but Aweber is what I use and recommend.

Why a Mailing List?

You might be wondering why you would need a mailing list for your blog.  Aren’t RSS subscribers good enough?

There are two reasons we’re focussing on building a mailing list here:

1. Everyone uses email, but RSS is relatively unknown to non-technical people
2. An RSS subscriber only receives your blog posts, while a mailing list subscriber can be delivered your blog posts, preconfigured autoresponder series, and other special one-off marketing messages.

Whether you want to sell more products or simply create more engagement with your visitors a mailing list is the way to go.

Will People Just Sign Up for the Freebie and Then Leave?

You may get some people who join your list, download your free content, and then immediately unsubscribe.  Don’t worry about these people – they aren’t going to buy anything from you anyway and its no different to any of your other free content that people consume when they visit your blog.

A small number of unsubscribes is only natural.  Some people will enjoy your free resource but find your follow up blog posts are not to their liking.  It is well worth capturing every possible lead in the hope of convering them into a loyal subscriber, or better yet a buyer, than it is to let all those potential leads slip away by giving your great content away without a mailing list.

Setting Up Your Blog Pages

For this list building technique I recommend creating two blog pages.  The first one is a “Thanks for Downloading” page, which is where you will send new subscribers after they have completed the opt-in process for your list.  This page should explain that to the subscriber what will happen next in the process.

The second page is where you will host the link for new subscribers to download the file.  Upload your PDF file using the Add Media button in the editor.

Click on Select Files and navigate to your PDF file on your hard drive and upload it.

Once you’ve uploaded the file give it a title, make sure the Link URL is pointing to the file URL, and then insert it into the page.

As an extra precaution you can password protect the page.  You might have a plugin or theme on your blog that lets you set a “no index” flag on the page to stop Google from showing it in search results, but just in case it can pay to password protect the page as well.  The password can be sent to your new subscribers when you send them the link to the download page.

Starting Your Mailing List

Starting up a new mailing list is easy.  Firstly, sign up with Aweber or your choice of email marketing services.  I’m going to be using Aweber for this example, so things may look different if you’re using something else.

Once you’ve logged in go to My Lists and create a new list.

Give the new list a name and description, and change the From Address to suit your branding.

You can also add additional branding which is a nice touch, but not mandatory.

Click the preview link to see what the results will look like for your subscribers and then click the button to save the new list settings.  You’ll notice that Aweber now tells you what to do next with a handy tip at the bottom of the screen.  Click on Do This Step to continue.

Now its time to customize the opt-in message.  This is the email that a new subscriber will receive to get them to verify (opt-in) that they want to subscribe to your list.  The default messages are not too bad, but you might want to tweak the Subject and Intro a little bit.

You should also edit the Closing section of the message to add a more personal signature.

Click on Save Confirm Message when you are happy with it.

Next set up the Confirmation Success Page.  This is the “Thanks for Downloading” page you created earlier on your blog.  This is an optional step, but for me it adds an extra bit of help to new subscribers who might not understand that they will receive a second email containing the download link.

You can also use this page to remind them to check their spam folder if they don’t receive the email, offer them a way to contact you if they have any problems or questions, or even to promote a product or service to them.

Click on Save Confirmation Success Page when you’re done.  You’ll notice once again that Aweber prompts you for the next step to take and provides a link to continue.

Create a Welcome Message.  This is the first email the subscriber will receive once they have completed the opt-in process.  Keep it short and simple, provide them with the link to your downloads page, the password for the page if you set one, and a way to get in touch with you if there are any problems.

Scroll to the bottom and click on Save Message.  You have now completed the setup of your new mailing list.

Publishing a Signup Form

After you have set up your mailing list it is time to create a web form to publish on your blog so that people can sign up and download your free resource.  Fortunately Aweber and WordPress combine to make this really simple.

When you finished your list setup you should see Aweber present you with a link for the next step of creating a web form.

Click the button to Do This Step.  Aweber provides dozens of great looking web form templates as well as a customization interface that basically means you can create any design for your web form that you like.  For this demonstration I’m just going to make a few quick changes to the default web form.

Click on Edit Header and type in some text to let people know why they should join your mailing list.

Click OK when you’re happy with the text and then click on Go To Step 2.  Here you can give your web form a name and configure other advanced settings.  I’m just going to leave the settings as defaults for now and click on Go To Step 3.

Choose I Will Install My Own Form and copy the Javascript snippet to your clipboard.

Log in to your WordPress admin area.  Go to Appearance -> Widgets and drag a Text widget into your sidebar.  Paste in the Javascript snippet from Aweber and save the widget.

When you refresh your blog you should now see the Aweber signup form in your sidebar where you placed the widget.  If anything doesn’t look quite right such as colors or sizing you can simply modify the form using Aweber’s web form editor.  Because the form is being called as a remote Javascript any changes you make on the Aweber editor will automatically appear on your blog.

Testing the Whole Process

Now that you’ve put in all this hard work setting up your mailing list and publishing the web form it is time to spend just a few more minutes testing the whole process from the user perspective.  To do this you simply sign up to your own list using the form on your blog and make sure that:

1. The signup form works without any errors
2. You are sent the opt-in confirmation message, and it doesn’t contain spelling or grammar mistakes
3. Confirming your subscription sends you to the correct “thank you” page
4. You receive the email with the download link, and the link takes you to the correct page
5. The link to download the file itself works, and the correct file is downloaded

Congratulations, you’ve just started building your mailing list, an important first step in internet marketing.

Image Credit: Flickr

Tagged as: Aweber, Mailing Lists, Marketing, Subscribers