Setting Up Email List Building Software the Right Way

Setting up email list software? Building an email list is a vital part of the business for any magazine publisher. It’s more than just building a list. It’s actually a relationship with your audience, one that allows you to gain a direct line of communication with them.

Each person on your mailing list needs to get some personal attention, or at least feel like they do if you want to maximize your list’s potential.

We see so many publishers making the same mistakes: throwing subscribe forms all over their digital properties and sending emails out sporadically, then expecting to grow their list of active subscribers from such minimal efforts. This simply isn’t enough. It won’t work.

We suggest putting in more effort in the beginning and setting up a system that will help you both build and scale.

So what’s the best system that can accomplish this? We’d recommend a good email list building software. They’ll do the heavy lifting for you, assuming they’re set up properly.

Here’s how to setup your email list building software – the right way:

Choose a software that will help you collect email addresses, as well as automate and send newsletters

The most popular software available for this is MailChimp. It offers free accounts for lists below 2,000 subscribers. However, I like an alternative software called MailerLite and I’m going to use its interface in this tutorial. Since both of these softwares are meant to send newsletters and build mailing lists, they’re actually rather similar, which means mastering one will make you more than comfortable if you decide to use the other.

Create a new account and add an email address that you’re going to use to send your newsletters

Afterward, verify your email address and domain name.

Now we need to create a subscribe form that we’re going to embed in your digital properties

a. Go to: Forms -> Create Embedded Form

b. Give the form a name

c. Choose form type -> click Create Embed form

d. Choose a group or create a new group where you wish to store your subscriber email addresses to. This will help you create micro-audiences and separate subscribers that used different forms to subscribe.

e. Customize the form to fit your digital property design and your personal needs. Protip: Create a new field to capture each subscriber’s name; it will help you personalize your emails and get better open rates. Make the name field come first, but don’t make it mandatory.  

f. Grab the form code that was generated and add it to your digital properties. Protip: Try using JavaScript code first; if it messes things up on your digital property, go with iFrame code instead. 

g. Use the form URL to test the form. The new subscriber should land in the group you chose when creating the form.

The subscriber has to verify his email address right after joining.

Note: This is where most people stop. Don’t be most people.

Let’s go further and create a little bit of automation to welcome our new subscriber

Somebody showed sincere interest in your content and subscribed, so let’s start a relationship by saying “Hi!” and trying to learn more about the subscriber.

a. Go to Automation -> Create a new workflow

b. Select the trigger “When subscriber joins a group” and select the group you created (when you created the form).

c. Now we need to specify what the automation needs to do when a new subscriber joins a group. Let’s send them a welcome email.

d. Add a subject and create a beautiful email design that sounds like you just wrote it. Short, simple and friendly emails are the best for welcoming subscribers.

e. Add a call to action to the end of every email. When crafting email copy, you should always add a call to action line that will allow you to learn more about the subscriber. For example:

*** Welcome email text with personalization***

CTA line at the end: 

Here’s a list of hand-picked products you might want to check out. *Relevant Link*

f. Now you can start bringing the subscriber down the funnel based on how he behaved. If he opened the email but didn’t click the link funnel, he’s sorted down path A; if he clicked the link, though, then he might be interested in converting, so you might want to usher him down path B.

Protip: Automation can help you send more relevant content to your subscribers, group them by interest, and run more successful direct marketing campaigns.

If you need help setting up your mailing list software the right way, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.