Twelve years of marketing, tested in public, one post at a time.

As a marketing executive, you know how important it is to have a strong email list. A newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with your audience, promote your content, and generate leads. But growing your newsletter subscriber base can be a challenge.

There are a lot of different ways to grow your newsletter subscriber base, but not all methods are created equal. Some methods, like running giveaways, can attract a lot of subscribers, but they may not be all that targeted. If you’re not careful, you could end up with a list of subscribers who aren’t interested in your content or who you can’t reach with your marketing messages.

That’s why it’s important to use methods that result in targeted subscribers. There are a number of ways to do this, such as creating lead magnets, adding opt-in forms to your website, and guest blogging on other websites.

Another important factor to consider is building out a variety of methods that can all work to grow your subscriber base together, over time. This will help you reach a wider audience and ensure that you’re always getting new subscribers.

Here, I’m going to share 10 free ways to grow your newsletter subscriber base with targeted methods. We’ll also discuss the benefits of building out a variety of methods that can all work together to grow your subscriber base over time.

I hope you’ll find these tips helpful!

Here are the 10 free ways to grow your newsletter subscriber base with targeted methods:

Create a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free piece of content that you offer in exchange for an email address. This could be an ebook, checklist, webinar, or anything else that your target audience would find valuable.

The beauty of lead magnets is that if you make it a goal to create just one per quarter, at the end of the year you’ll have at least 4 lead magnets working within your website to draw and convert traffic into subscribers. While a single ebook or PDF checklist might only get a few subscribers a day, half a dozen or more will see that you’re getting a solid influx of new audience members, all targeted with an interest in the lead magnet’s subject matter.

Constant Contact, my recommended newsletter solution, has an easy to use Autoresponder feature you can use to automatically subscribe interested people to a list specific to that lead magnet and send it to them.

Add a Newsletter Opt-in Form to Your Website

Your opt-in form should be prominently displayed on your website, such as in the sidebar, footer, or at the end of blog posts. Be sure to make it clear what subscribers will get in exchange for their email address.

This may seem obvious, but all too often businesses and content creators forget to make their newsletter easy to find and sign up for. And if growing your list is your top priority, consider putting this link in your social media bio’s as well, particularly Twitter and Instagram.

You’ll see my newsletter linked from the top navigation above as well as in the footer navigation. And I’ll also use it as the CTA in certain articles, like this one!

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Run Social Media Contests and Giveaways

Offering a prize that your target audience would be interested in is a great way to generate interest in your newsletter. Be sure to promote your contest or giveaway on all of your social media channels.

Gleam.io is a great tool for this kind of marketing initiative as you can award points to participants not only for subscribing, but also for referrals, which encourages them to share your content, and your newsletter, with their own audiences.

Guest Blog on Other Websites

When you guest blog on other websites, be sure to include a link to your newsletter in your author bio. This will give you the opportunity to reach a new audience of potential subscribers.

Cross-Promote Newsletters with Other Businesses

If you know of other businesses that target the same audience as you, you can cross-promote your newsletters with each other. This can be done by sharing each other’s newsletters on your social media channels or by mentioning each other in your newsletters.

This is a tactic that my colleagues and besties Amanda Robinson and Jenn Herman and I utilize often!

Attend Industry Events

Attending industry events is a great way to connect with potential subscribers and promote your newsletter. Be sure to bring business cards and have a few copies of your latest newsletter on hand.

I recommend using an app like Linq to create a digital business card that you can share with people you meet using a QR Code or NFC, which leads them to a custom landing page. It’s way more efficient and effective than old school business card!

Here’s what mine looks like currently: https://linqapp.com/MikeAllton

Create a Podcast

Podcasts are a great way to connect with your audience on a deeper level. When you share your expertise in an audio format, you can build trust and rapport with your listeners. You can then promote your newsletter on your podcast by mentioning it in the show notes.

You might also think about having a special Insider’s Club that shares more background about your podcast or guests, bonus episodes, and more. This would simply be a segment of your newsletter subscribers.

Create an Email Course

An email course is a series of emails that you send to your subscribers over a period of time. Email courses are a great way to share your expertise and to build a relationship with your subscribers.

I created one of these years ago targeting new entrepreneurs, to help them overcome some key fears that they were experiencing. It was a huge success! Simply write a series of emails and set them up as an autoresponder with a few days or a week between each email.

Run Webinars

Webinars are a great way to share your expertise with a large audience. When you run a webinar, it’s essentially a video lesson, though it could be a panel discussion or interview, and attendees must register in order to attend.

If you’re goal is list growth and not an upsell of a service, you can say from the outset that there will be no selling or upselling on the webinar, to encourage more registrants.

I highly recommend eWebinar to host webinars and love that once I have a webinar set up, like the one I have optimizing your LinkedIn profile, eWebinar runs it as an evergreen webinar, and I even have fun pop-ups and countdowns on my site the generate more registrants.

Speak at Virtual Events

If you’re asked to speak or are accepted to speak at a virtual event that’s unpaid, you should be able to receive the information on registrants who attended your session, if not the entire event.

For help generating and building out ideas for lead magnets, email series, webinar topics and more, try using Magai!

Additionally, one has to ensure that their newsletter is worth subscribing to. Not only does that increase open rate, reduce unsubs, and increase the effectiveness of your newsletter, it also encourages your readers to share your newsletter with others, further increasing subscribers.

  • Make sure your newsletter is well-written and engaging. People are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter if they find the content valuable and interesting. Routinely share segments or full issues of your newsletter “ungated” so folks can see what you’re putting out.
  • Personalize your newsletter as much as possible. Addressing subscribers by name and using relevant content will help you build a stronger relationship with your audience.
  • Make it easy for people to share & subscribe. Each issue of your newsletter should include buttons for subscribers to easily share socially, as well as a link for someone to subscribe if they aren’t already a subscriber. (You can see mine at the bottom of this email.)

By following these tips, you can start growing your newsletter subscriber base with targeted methods. And by building out a variety of methods that can all work together, you can ensure that you’re always getting new subscribers. The AI Hat newsletter is where I put most of this into practice each week.

Learn how to grow your newsletter organically, to targeted subscribers, using a variety of methods you can implement yourself.

About Mike Allton

Mike Allton is a practitioner, not a futurist - founder of The AI Hat, which runs on a Digital Crew of his own.
He helps teams clear the Admin Drag burying their best people - redesigning the work first, then building a Digital Crew of AI agents to take the busywork.
He is the host of The AI Hat Podcast and a keynote speaker who works the rooms he teaches - from national sales meetings to insurance and Medicare distribution conferences.
He also helps organizations bring Shadow AI into the light through governance and training.