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Email is a sort of digital currency that we use to get around online.

Want to download a free piece of content? Pay with your email. Want to buy a pair of shoes? Enter your email address to get a 10% discount and then track your order later on. Want to create an account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other platform or app? Share your email address to be granted access. Email is a crucial element of our online identity and to know how to harness its power is to win big time. Of course, giving out your email isn’t without risks. With so much personal information tied to it, some people even use services like credit monitoring to protect themselves against identity theft and fraud.

If you haven’t heard “money is in the email list” phrase yet, you haven’t done your homework. Sure, social media and content marketing are incredibly powerful tools to grow your business too, but comparing them with email marketing would be like comparing apples with oranges.

Each channel serves a different purpose, so it’s hard to tell which one performs better. However, to effectively spend your marketing budget, you need to identify channels that generate the best results for you.

For example, here is how the performance of email marketing compares to the results of social media and content marketing campaigns.

Let’s say you have 2000 Facebook fans, 2000 followers on Twitter, and 2000 email subscribers. Is it the same thing? Absolutely not.

Facebook’s organic reach has plummeted by 52% last year and is hovering around 6%, while Twitter’s organic engagement is even lower (around 2%). The average email open rate across all industries and devices in 2016 was 24.88%, a smashing figure compared to Facebook and Twitter performance.

Going back to our comparison, this would come down to the following figures:  

  • 498 people would open your email;
  • 120 people would see your Facebook post;
  • 40 people would see your tweet.

Quite obviously, email marketing by far outperforms social media in terms of organic reach and has significantly more potential for generating revenue. The same goes for click-through, conversion, and direct conversion rates. Most importantly, studies have shown that email has better ROI, which is what everything comes down to in business. The areas where social media performs better than email include engagement, virality, branding and assisted conversions.

But one thing that makes email marketing so sexy is that it’s much easier to build a mailing list of 2000 people than to get 2000 new followers on Twitter or Facebook

And here’s how you can do it 10x faster.

Make it ridiculously easy to sign up

Thanks to the increasingly digitalized lifestyle, the average attention span is 8 seconds. People find it more and more difficult to focus on one thing for longer than it takes to scroll through the Facebook feed. Which is an awfully bad news for marketers who need to keep their audience glued to their screens.

If you make the signup process too complicated, people will get distracted and never complete the conversion. Allow one-click signup to ensure you’re optimizing your conversions and keeping it dead simple for the frazzle-minded to join your list.

Another element that will have a huge effect on your conversion rate is the type of call-to-action you use. Both the button copy and design will influence your prospect’s decision. A well-designed CTA stands out from the rest of the offer and is usually the first thing a visitor sees. You’ll need to run some A/B tests to see what colours work best for your website or landing page, but the rule of thumb is to aim for high contrast and eye-catching colour.

When crafting the copy for your CTA, use Joanna Wiebe’s of Copyhackers.com tip. She says the best way to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes is to use the phrase “I want to ____” when brainstorming for the button copy. Fill in the blank with words that you think best describe the benefits of your offer. For example, if you’re offering a free productivity guide, you’d start with I want to “Learn the secrets of productivity”. See, it really is an awesome tip.

Make your “bribes” tempting and relevant

A relevant opt-in offer will focus on highlighting the benefits that a prospect can’t refuse. But heads up, you will only be able to come up with irresistible bribes if you have a clearly defined target audience and know what makes your prospects tick. If you try to sell ice to an Eskimo, you will fail pretty quickly.

This is the time where you look back at your buyer personas and carefully assess your own goals. Who are the people that you’re trying to attract? What are their passions, pain points, and desires? What is it that you do or have done in the past that intrigues and motivates others? Answering these questions early will help you better define and tailor your signup offer.

The popular opt-in bribes can include access to a closed community, special offers or discounts, highly valuable content, or anything else that fits with your brand.

Build Email List Faster Opt-Ins

Images Source: SocialTriggers

Implement emotional triggers

According to the internet millionaire Jeff Walker, there are 9 mental triggers that can influence people’s decisions. Deeply rooted in our mental psyche, these triggers often work without us realizing it and are, therefore, incredibly powerful weapons of influence. These are the triggers on Walker’s list: authority, reciprocity, trust, anticipation, likeability, events/rituals, community, scarcity, and social proof.

When it comes to building an email list, many of these triggers can be incorporated into your tactics to boost their effectiveness. Here’s a little bit more about the triggers that work well in email marketing:

  • Authority. A doctor, professor or judge are some of the best examples of how powerful the idea of authority is. People tend to look for help and guidance from those who are established, respected experts in their fields, as it helps them to make decisions faster and more efficiently. By positioning yourself as an industry leader, you will have a better chance convincing people to sign up to your email list.
  • Scarcity. We are motivated by the perception of scarcity and often act on an impulse to get something while it’s available. Adding the element of scarcity (or urgency) to your headline or offer can have a significant effect on the conversion rates.
  • Trust. Getting your prospects to trust you almost as much as they trust their friends or family members will take quite a bit of time and effort, but once you break the ice it will be plain sailing from there. Focus on developing strong relationships with your prospects and learn how to boost your credibility if it’s a little shaky.
  • Social proof. If you can use testimonials, quotes, high-level statistics or case studies to demonstrate how you helped other people achieve their goals or solve their problems, your prospects will automatically place more trust into you and your offer. A very simple example of this trigger is people’s tendency to choose to go to a restaurant that has more people inside than another one that looks empty. Following the crowd requires less thinking.
  • Likeability. Personality sells. If you can get your prospects to like you, selling to them (or getting them to sign up to your mailing list first) will be much easier. It’s important to keep your messages simple and relatable, write in a human way and use high-quality, professional images as well as add your own headshot where appropriate.      

Make use of custom built landing pages

CoSchedule’s headline analyzer is a great example of how smart businesses implement list building tactics that also help them to raise brand awareness, build trust and likeability. Giving stuff away for free will boost your credibility and help you develop a value-based relationship with your prospects, you just need to make sure the signup process is stripped to the bare minimum.  

With this tactic, the best way to capture emails and build your mailing list is by creating a separate landing page for the piece of content or tool that you’re offering. This way, you can easily put a lock on the valuable content and track the performance of your campaign.

Build Email List Faster Landing Page

Image Source: CoSchedule

Organize giveaways that appeal to your target audience

If you can put a price tag on the stuff you’re giving away for free, your chances of succeeding increase significantly. To seize the attention of your target audience, you must refer back to your buyer persona and study your audience to identify the prizes that would be too difficult to ignore. Ridiculously attractive offers will most likely be shared with friends and even talked about offline. It can also be an opportunity to build your social following and generate awareness, depending on how and where you decide to host the giveaway.

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However, it’s worth keeping in mind that giveaways will only be effective if the main prize is something that people love and can hardly resist. If you can get your hands on products that are just about to be launched, are sold out or quite expensive, it’s more likely your giveaway will be a success. It’s probably best to run a few smaller-scale campaigns to test the concept, figure out the rules and capture the general sentiment towards your brand, and then go all guns blazing.

Utilize bots to automate email opt-ins

As one of the best performing marketing channels, email is also a fiercely competitive battleground for marketers. With so many different tactics at their disposal, they often struggle to cover the whole range and therefore, lose out on perfectly good opportunities. That’s why marketing automation is becoming a life-saving solution. If you can automate it, you should have done it yesterday. 

Messenger bots are dramatically outperforming email, as around 50% of people open bot messages compared to around 25% email open rates. Another great thing about bot messages is that they’re just as persistent as email, so if they want to, people can come back to those messages later on. You can also use bots to send direct messages to new followers on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and include a link to a landing page with your offer, which is an incredibly effective tactic if you’re attracting the right kind of followers.

Build Email List Faster Bots Automation Opt-ins

Image Source: Engadget

Team up with influencers  

Being endorsed by a big name influencer and getting in front of their cult following will most certainly result in a sweet spike in email sign-ups. If you have an opportunity to work with an industry celebrity, seize the day. And while cross promotion is not a rare phenomenon in the digital marketing world, you need to make sure your goals and brand values align with those of the person you’re teaming up with. Otherwise, you’ll end up damaging your brand,  generating low-quality traffic and trashing your list with emails that have no potential.

The most trusted and credible form of advertising is personal recommendation, as according to Nielsen, 83%, or 8 out of 10 global consumers, trust word of mouth recommendations from friends and family. Influencers often enjoy a trust-based relationship with their community and can be incredibly powerful in terms of swaying their opinion. Look for someone who has the right kind of audience and is not a direct competitor of your business.

Incentivize the email forward to a friend

Again, personal recommendations can be incredibly effective. Deliveroo offers reward money if you invite a friend who orders food for the first time. Dropbox achieved staggering growth mostly due to this growth hacking idea to offer free storage space to users who invited their friends to sign up and try the app. Uber and Airbnb are also trying to capitalize on this technique by using monetary incentives. Since these wildly successful startups seem to be happily adopting the tactic, it’s safe to assume it is generating enough revenue to cover the costs. If you can’t afford to offer incentives that involve money, find a different offer that resonates with your audience.  

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Produce valuable resources

There is no need to tout the importance of solid content, every decent marketer knows it’s gold. The only problem with content marketing is that it takes time to ramp up and show results. However, producing high-quality, valuable resources is a smart and effective workaround this issue. With a custom built landing page or smartly integrated email capture forms, downloadable long-form content, worksheets and gated online tools can generate a lot of interest and help you quickly grow your email list without breaking a sweat.

There are dozens of tools online that you can use to get the capture forms up and running in virtually no time (Email Before Download, WP Subscribe Pro, App Sumo or OptinMonster). If you decide to build a dedicated landing page to gate your content and collect email addresses, check out these easy-to-use landing page builders, like Instapage or Unbounce. Some marketers choose a more aggressive approach, which is to keep the resources locked until an email address is shared. It’s a great way to identify marketing qualified leads, as the initial barrier of sharing the email address puts off everyone who is just browsing. The other option would be to offer free access to all the content and resources and utilize popups or similar tools to entice visitors to sign up to a newsletter.

Redesign your main landing page to focus on email optin form using previously mentioned mental triggers

If you’re really serious about building an email list, take your time to revamp (or build from scratch) the main landing page, keeping in mind the mental triggers that drive people to take immediate action. The focal point of a robust lead capture page should be the email optin form that unapologetically asks visitors to join the email list in return for something very special. Ensure that you’re communicating the benefits clearly — when in doubt, simply read your landing page copy out loud and ask yourself “so what?”.

Here are several examples from successful email gurus who know how to optimize the email capturing process better than anyone else.

Build Email List Faster Backlinko Opt-in

Image Source: Backlinko

Build Email List Faster OkDork Opt-in

Image Source: OkDork

Build Email List Faster Videofruit Opt-In

Image Source: VideoFruit

Build Email List Faster PJRvs Opt-In

Image Source: PJRvs

As you can see from the examples above, the most important mental triggers are authority and social proof, so be sure to include them in your design too.  

Besides incorporating the mental triggers, you should also pay attention to the mobile intrusive interstitials penalty rolled out by Google in January this year. The penalty will impact pages “where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results”. One of the examples provided by Google states that pages displaying a popup that covers the main content and appears immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results or while they are looking through the page may not rank as high.

Conclusion

And that’s it, we’ve covered the most effective list building tactics that can help you breathe some life into your current strategy.

If you can build your own little community of subscribers who are interested in the same things as you are, turning this email list into a passive income source will be incredibly easy. However, it’s super important to remember that you need to know why you’re building the list and how you’re going to make money off it well before you start implementing any of the tactics we discussed here. Your business idea will massively influence how you go about building that list.

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, once said, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

It’s been awhile since he said that but the words still resonate with us. According to Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest of the article. Imagine, if you could flip this number on its head by boosting your headline’s performance. That would change everything.

Crafting a high-performing headline that is not click-bait but is also incredibly alluring is no easy task. But once you wrap your head around the different creative strategies, you’ll be much more confident about publishing your content to the world wide web.

Upworthy.com have demonstrated what crafting intuitive, intriguing and unexpected headlines can result in. The site’s explosive growth is for the most part attributed to the team’s unbeatable headline crafting skills. Yes, the data is real!

Image Source: The Sweet Science of Virality

Now, let’s explore the different ways of writing irresistible headlines.

Use specific numbers & data in your headlines

Numbers are proved to be one of the best triggers to hook the reader’s interest. For several reasons, our brain is attracted to numbers, and we just can’t help ourselves when we see a carefully constructed headline using a numeral.

Using real headlines from Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, and similar content sources, Conductor carried out a study to determine what type of headlines resonate most with readers. They divided the headlines into five high-level types:

  • Regular (Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
  • Question (What are Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful?)
  • How to (How to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
  • Number (30 Ways To Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
  • Reader-Addressing (Ways You Need to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)

What they found confirmed the growing suspicion that numbers are vital to grabbing people’s attention. Number headlines outperformed the second most popular type by 15%.

Image Source: Moz blog

What is it that makes the number headlines so attractive? There is more than one reason.

  • The promise of something substantial. When you’re on the lookout for something specific, and you’re scouring the internet for real advice, there’s nothing more annoying than clicking on a perfect-sounding headline only to find out it has nothing to do with the rest of the article. But number headlines make a promise that the author will offer more than one idea or solution within the article, so the chances of finding something useful are much higher.
  • The convenience of speed reading. Again, if you’re scanning the internet in search of an answer to a specific question, you don’t necessarily want to spend 20 minutes reading the whole article to find one or two relevant sentences. Number headlines suggest that the article is scannable and won’t take too much time to digest.
  • The simplicity of numbered structure. Writing eloquently and making smooth transitions from one point to another is not always easy – ideas can quickly get lost in the babble. Numbered headlines guarantee at least some measure of structure and flow, which gives readers the confidence to click through and easily find what they’re looking for.
  • It’s the preferred way of receiving and organizing information. In this New Yorker article, Maria Konnikova shows how lists hit our “attentional sweet spot.” We process the information we receive spatially because that makes it much easier to recall it later on. That’s why we write shopping lists, and to-do lists the way we do – even if we lose that piece of paper, our brain can still recall the information based on its location on the paper. Besides that,  lists also appeal to our “general tendency to categorize things”. In fact, we’re struggling not to categorize things even when we make an effort to leave something unlabelled.

But what makes lists truly appealing in the current media environment, where people are overwhelmed by the amount of content, is their promise of a definite ending. The alluring and reassuring certainty that we know what we’re in for also triggers the anticipation of pleasure associated with completing a task. So, really, listicles are a sort of brain candy that online readers simply can’t resist.  

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In case the listicle structure is not suitable for the piece of content you’re working on, another click-enticing element you can include in your headline is data. Adding “Backed by research” or “Backed by science” to support your claim can significantly boost the credibility and appeal of a headline. Readers love the promise of solid, evidence-based content that they can trust and share with their network.

Craft a unique headline

Let’s say that a headline is like a tip of an iceberg. These few words will determine whether the main chunk of your content is read or ignored, so don’t feel like you’re wasting your time writing and rewriting headlines. It takes more than a few tries to capture the essence of your article in an irresistible way. And even more so if you’re determined to craft a unique one.

Upworthy.com, who are notoriously skilled at constructing killer headlines, generate more than 3 million unique visits per month. And as insane as it sounds, they credit most of the success to their unique, inventive headlines that poke at readers’ curiosity.

Have I got your attention yet? Good, because the most important part of the Upworthy.com story is this – their editorial team writes at least 25 headlines before settling on the winner.

In their slide presentation The Sweet Science of Virality, Upworthy.com share their creative process and outline the most important steps to crafting high-performing headlines and content. But there’s one idea that keeps on resurfacing:

“It doesn’t matter how good your content is. If you don’t make it compelling enough to click, no one will know it exists.”

And here’s Upworthy’s editorial process that they follow to write really damn good headlines.

Image Source: The Sweet Science of Virality

Jotting down your best (25) ideas is the first step to writing a unique headline. Once you think you have the one, it’s important to verify its uniqueness quickly. Remember, there are no new ideas in this world, so it’s very likely someone’s already snatched that headline before you. The easiest way to check whether your headline is as unique as you think it is is to ask almighty Google. Type your headline in the search bar, enclose it in double quotation marks, hit search and wait for the moment of truth.

Check what people are seeking for

If we go back to the headline being a “tip of an iceberg” metaphor, its relevance and topicality are crucial to tap into trends and capture a decent amount of traffic. To entice browsers to click on your headline you must use the language, style, and tone that’s most appealing to your target audience.

The best way to get a sense of how your audience talks and what specific words they use is by joining the discussion on social media or sites like Quora. Get involved and analyze the type of questions, ideas, and topics being tackled by your ideal readers to ensure the headlines you craft hit the bullseye.

Google autocomplete is also a smart way to identify keyphrases that your headlines need to include. Orbit media suggest that using a colon to combine search-friendly and social-friendly phrases can lead you to the perfect headline, as it gives prominence to the keyphrase but also leverages the human psychology. Here are a few examples of this writing tactic:

  • How to Research Keywords: Tips, Competition, and Squirrels
  • Competitive Analysis Tools: 5 Free Ways to See the Analytics of Any Website
  • Neuromarketing Web Design: 15 Ways to Connect with Visitors’ Brains
  • Internal Linking: 9 Best Practices for Internal Links
  • Ego Bait: 5 Simple Ways to Leverage Blog Mentions
  • Thank You, Pages: 9 Example of Missed Opportunities

Make it targeted and specific

If you want your content to be picked up by search engines, incorporating target keywords into your headlines is a must-do. Follow the best on-page SEO practices when crafting a headline to make sure it’s not only unique but also optimized for search.

When creating content for the web, identifying target keywords should be your starting point. It’s the only way to get in front of the right audience and generate traffic. The trick here is to find the balance between creating something that’s findable and content that’s valuable enough to be sought out by your audience.

To indicate relevance to search engines and give prominence to the target keyphrase, ensure you place it at the beginning of the headline.

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Raise a question

The magic of question headlines comes from tapping into your reader’s concerns. With mobile search taking the lead, people are increasingly searching by voice, which means they’re asking complete, full-sentence questions and are using natural language when doing so. Google uses something called “semantic indexing” to understand the content of an article, so if you use a question in your headline and provide a complete answer in the article, chances are the search engine will connect people to your content.

Another huge benefit of question headlines is their power to intrigue the reader and cause their mind to engage in a sort of silent conversation. Once they read a question headline, readers can’t help but try to answer it in their head or start wondering what the real answer is and click through.

Both open-ended and closed-ended questions can increase the effectiveness of your headline, and you can also experiment with the colon trick recommended by Orbit Media to combine the target keyphrase or question that will make it findable with something more appealing to humans.

Create curiosity and urgency

Headlines that leverage human psychology are always incredibly powerful. If you find a way how to trigger curiosity or evoke urgency, it’s almost guaranteed that people will give in and click through. Obviously, your content must match your headline, or you’ll make plenty of enemies very quickly.

So how do you create curiosity? It’s not a precise science, and there’s no formula how to  hook a reader instantly, but one of the most effective methods is not to give everything away in a headline.

Image Source: BuzzFeed

That curiosity gap will be what drives people to your website and hopefully leads to a sale at some point in their journey (or make them come back for more similar content in the future).

The curiosity-gap approach can easily be overdone though, so stay honest about what your readers can actually expect from the content and avoid any click-baiting games. Lying to your readers will only work once, and then you’re in big trouble.

The urgency factor can be a game changer, too. Nothing makes people act faster than the fear of losing out on a good deal or missing their chance to see, hear or download something that’s available for a limited time only. If you’re making a limited offer, be sure it’s reflected in the headline to compel people to take action immediately.

Focus on benefits or loss

Using a headline to state the biggest benefit or loss your readers might experience is a great way to find and address the right audience. This headline style has the best chance of making a long-lasting impression on a reader even if they don’t click through immediately. Since headline is the hook that will determine whether your content is consumed, it’s a good idea to transform the biggest benefit (or loss) that your post offers into a headline. We’ve already discussed people’s unwillingness to spend more time reading something that they don’t find useful, so writing a headline like this will give them the confidence to click and read.

One of the greatest benefits of this style is that even if they don’t visit your site to read the article, they’ve at least laid eyes on your best selling point.

Use power words

Some words attract more shares and likes; other generate better traffic. Since headlines need to fit a certain length to perform well, word choice is truly critical to squeeze the most out of your headline. A lot of research has gone into determining what words elicit readers and have the potential to drive more traffic.

Employing power words is a surefire method to grab people’s attention and get them excited about reading the whole article.

Here are some research-backed power words that have been shown to achieve the best results:

  • Words that increase clicks from search results: why, best, tricks, how to, free, you, blog post, great;
  • Words that get more retweets: you, Twitter, please, retweet, post, blog, social, free, media, help;
  • Words that appear most often in viral posts: smart, surprising, science, history, hacks (hacking, hackers and “life hack” related topics), huge / big, critical;
  • Negative words that are most appealing (negative words that appear in viral posts): Kill, Fear, Dark, Bleeding, War;

Power words are simply emotionally impactful words that can make people cry, laugh or ponder. Charging your headline with a couple of power words will make it stand out more, so spend a few minutes searching for a less commonly used but just as effective combination:

Image source: SmartBlogger

Run numerous A/B tests

As with everything online marketing, testing is an instrumental process that should never be ignored. You may think a headline is too small of an element to run A/B tests on and who has time for that anyway? However, ensuring your headlines are polished to perfection and have the capacity to drive a decent amount of traffic will make your content creation efforts worthwhile.

One of the main tips from the Upworthy.com editorial team was to test the hell out of those headlines that made it to the top of your list and choose the one that clearly outperforms the rest. With the data obtained from A/B tests, you will quickly learn to write headlines targeted specifically at your audience, in the right style, tone and using the right language.

Make a bold statement evoking an emotion

People connect with emotions, not words. Studies have shown that viral content tends to be emotionally complex, often invoking strong positive or negative feelings, such as happiness, admiration, anger or fear. It’s been demonstrated numerous times that people are more likely to click, read and share content that pulls at their heartstrings, so packing your headline with words that elicit feelings will lead to increased virality and reader engagement.

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CoSchedule found that negative superlatives performed 30% better than positive ones, but be sure to run your own A/B tests before letting the content out into the world.

Image source: CoSchedule

BuzzSumo analyzed top 10,000 most shared articles on the web and used a categorization system to map each color to emotion, like joy, sadness, laughter, amusement, etc.

Here’s the breakdown of emotions:

Image source: okDork

Positive emotions are clearly leading the headline optimization race, so it’s best to focus on crafting content that has the power to surprise people, make them laugh or drool in admiration.

Get crafting

We have only scratched the surface on the number of headline writing tips available online. They’re all tried and tested by online marketers, but no one has the formula for writing killer headlines that go viral. Great headlines are a mixture of creativity, honesty, and surprise and often take almost as much time to write as the content itself. So use Upworthy.com advice and start writing a minimum of 25 headlines for each article until you hit the jackpot. As they say, 24 out of 25 headlines will be stinky, but the winning one will make you glad you tried.

“Content upgrades are all about making it easier for your reader to execute on your article’s strategies.” ~ James Scherer, Wishpond.com

Go ahead and take a wild guess at the number of blog posts published every day.

The answer is 2M. Yeh, 2 million blog posts are written and published every single day. Just to give you some context for the enormity of this figure, here are some mind-blowing statistics about content consumption in general:

  • The average reader spends around 15 seconds reading the article they land on. In fact, 55% of people spend less than 15 seconds actively engaged on a page.
  • Only 20% of readers will finish an article they started reading.
  • The average visitor will only read 25% of an article.
  • Readers spend about twice the time with long-form news content on their mobile phones as with short-form.
  • 43% of people admit to skimming blog posts. (HubSpot, 2016)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m by no means advocating for less content. On the contrary, I believe the success of any profitable online business lies in its ability to produce amazing content that stands out and garners high engagement. But how do you get yourself noticed in such a ridiculously saturated marketing channel with an audience that suffers from content fatigue? By giving your readers more valuable stuff than they could ever expect.

Essentially, content upgrades are free, high-value “bonuses” that you create for your readers to help them act on the advice you share in the article. They’re called upgrades because these additional pieces of content elevate people’s reading experience to a more hands-on approach and come as “extras” in addition to the value of your post. Let’s say it’s like buying an alarm clock and receiving batteries as a free complimentary gift “on the house”. Yes, you could get the batteries somewhere else, but that would be such a hassle, wouldn’t it?  

Typically, readers can access and download content upgrades by sharing their email address, making these bonuses a fantastic list building tool. We are quite used to seeing content upgrade offers at the end of an article, but, in fact, the bonus material can be included at the beginning of and throughout the article.

As post-specific, bite-sized lead magnets, content upgrades are one of the most effective ways to build an email list. But what makes a desirable content upgrade? The key factor in producing enticing bonus material is to keep it uber relevant to your article. There’s nothing wrong with offering something simple like a checklist, a cheat sheet, a template or workbook, as long as it’s seen as a value-add and would make executing on the article’s strategies easier.

Even though it’s unrealistic to expect all the visitors to finish reading your articles (no matter how well written they are), you can pack them with additional offers to grow your email list and make the most of the traffic you get.

And here’s everything you need to know about creating content upgrades that will send your readers into a downloading frenzy.

Remove friction from user to the desired outcome

We’re used to seeing lead magnets promoted on dedicated landing pages, in sidebar banners and pop-ups. Marketers often go to elaborate lengths to create visually striking pages in an effort to entice visitors to enter their personal information and email address to download or access whatever’s on offer. There are several steps involved in this kind of conversion path, significantly increasing the likelihood of drop-offs.

What’s different about content upgrades is that they’re much simpler-looking and more accessible offers that have an explosive effect on conversion rates. Brian Dean of Backlinko saw a 785% increase in conversions in one day by adding a content upgrade to one of his high-performing blog posts.  

Thanks to its simplistic design, content upgrade stands out just enough to draw the reader’s attention but still looks like a part of the blog post. They’re often designed to look like infoboxes with a peach-coloured background and a simple frame.

Here’s what Teamgate used for his super successful test:

content-upgrade

And after entering your email address, a very straightforward link to content upgrade would come up:

Content upgrade offers don’t need to be flashy sales messages. Keep the fancy stuff to a bare minimum, and you’ll start seeing the benefits very soon.

It must be valuable and relevant to context, audience, and even month

This may come as a surprise, but no one wants your 10-page whitepaper on marketing trends. Maybe it’s a great piece of content, but if I landed on your site looking for information on Instagram ads, it’s unlikely I’d be tempted to download a generic paper.

Content upgrades are so effective at boosting conversions because they are created specifically for that particular blog post, which means you catch people in the right state of mind and provide an actionable solution to their problem. If your content upgrade offer is a perfect fit for what the reader is looking for, sharing their email address will seem like a small price to pay.

You should also think about tailoring your content upgrade to the type of audience that will be consuming your article. This can determine the format, style and length of your content upgrade. For instance, if you’re writing for the creative crowd, you’ll need to keep the design side of the piece in mind as well as sharpen your copy. If the article is aimed at top-tier managers, you’ll know that you need to keep it brief and to the point — a checklist or a summary would perform best.

Depending on the industry you’re in, there might be potential to harness seasonality or a certain time of year, too. Christmas period is a great time for eCommerce blogs to churn out content about discounts, shopping tips, and gift guides. Fitness blogs are thriving in spring and summer, when most people are concerned with improving their looks. January is the month of New year’s resolutions, when everyone’s looking for quick hacks and tricks that could lead to achieving their goals much faster.

When creating content upgrades, don’t ignore the bigger picture but keep the content highly focused on adding value to the post and making your readers’ life easier.

People are sold by their emotions instead of you telling them to get it

As mentioned above, in order for your content magnets to be effective, the piece of information you offer should solve a problem and make your target audience’s life easier. You must offer something of value to them in order for them to give up their email, so focus on their emotions. Use strong storytelling in order to convince and persuade your audience. For example, intertwine your content magnet (i.e. eBook) in your post, rather than creating a flashy pop-up. This proves to your audience that you are trustworthy and, in turn, makes them more inclined to come back for more. Case studies are also great for establishing that kind of relationship with your audience.

Another way to secure your audience’s trust is by including testimonials on your website or even post. Consumers find the reviews and opinions of other customers to be more trustworthy than the brand’s promise. Ensure you talk about the benefits of joining your mailing list – eBooks, cheat sheets, discount codes etc, but do so in the words of your already existing happy customers. Include links/action buttons under each testimonial (even if they’re old) in order to make the content instantly available for your audience.

Create case studies where you highlight the success stories of your customers in order to create credibility and build trust with your audience. Case Studies are long and in order for them to be successful the content within it must be of great value to the consumer. Use it to answer questions and doubts about your brand, mostly focus on the success of your already existing consumers.

Remember, people love free stuff, so ensure that you make your offers clearly visible and easily accessible to your audience.

Research shows that using scarcity and making it exclusive makes people want it more

It’s been known for a while now that scarcity can significantly increase the perceived value of a product or service. The fear of not getting something because it sells out drives people to make impulsive decisions and act much faster.

While not particularly relevant for digital offers (you would be hard-pressed to advertise a content upgrade as ‘low in stock’), you can take advantage of the urgency factor to prompt visitors to act immediately. For example, you can achieve more conversions by adding a countdown timer to your offer or stating a “available until” date. This will give your visitors an additional reason to quickly get in with the content upgrade. To get off to an easy start, check out Fomo, a one-click plugin that creates urgency by displaying key customer behaviors in real time.

Images Source: Fomo

Exclusivity is a huge catalyst of sales for many of the luxury brands. People want what’s rare and exclusive. They want to be among the selected few that get what others could only dream about. If you know how to harness exclusivity, your conversions will skyrocket.

Buffer compiled a list of 12 phrases that imply exclusivity and could be used in the copy of your offer: members only, login required, class full, membership now closed, ask for an invitation, apply to be one of our beta testers, exclusive offers, become an insider, be one of the few, get it before everybody else, be the first to hear about it, only available to subscribers.

By highlighting the exclusivity of your content upgrades, you’ll encourage people to join your mailing list (which is what you want!).

Make it problem-focused and provide an actionable solution

Images Source: Pexels

When you start looking into your Google Analytics reports to find the most popular articles, you will be able to quickly identify the topics that your readers are most interested in. The best part about creating a content upgrade is that you know the subject is relevant and interesting to your audience. All you need to do then is figure out how to enhance the blog post with a piece of actionable content. Essentially, a content upgrade is the ‘how’ part of the proposed solution.

One of the best tips is to take your time to review all reader comments under your high-traffic articles. Chances are, your readers have already told you what kind of content upgrade would have the highest value. Maybe it’s a transcript, if you’re posting videos, or a spreadsheet template, if you did a step-by-step piece on creating an editorial calendar. Whatever your readers want, though, it shouldn’t take you too long to produce.

Content upgrade is only effective when it’s useful and packed with exclusive tips and hacks. It should be action-oriented and aim to help readers to apply what they’ve learned from your blog post.

Provide tangible result and instant gratification

When someone’s hunting for a solution to a problem, they want it solved immediately. Technology has spoilt us to the point where there is an app for everything and we can access the information, products and services we need in a few seconds.

Something as vague as “join our mailing list to receive awesome tips and tricks every month” will put most people off because it sounds impersonal and does not promise instant gratification. Focus on crafting compelling CTA copy for your content upgrades to ensure the benefits are communicated clearly.

Targeting people’s desire for instant access to products, experiences and solutions is a shortcut to boosting conversions and growing your email list fast. But be sure you can deliver the content upgrade as fast as you promise because people hate waiting to receive something.

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Use social proof

Social proof is a tactic used to increase conversation by easing the mind of worried consumers. Nearly 70% of customers read product reviews before making a purchase and customer reviews are 12 times more trusted than manufacturer’s sales copy. Consumers basically seek 3rd party approval of the product or service they are about to purchase before they commit to buy. The power of social proof is undeniable. This is why almost all big companies display consumer testimonials on their website, and so should you. Ensure that testimonials are displayed clearly and in the right format. Whether you decide to have a separate customer review page or you display them right under the product or service (star ratings/comments) ensure it is the right format for your business. Studies have shown that testimonials can increase conversions on sales pages by as much as 34%, so make sure you are making the most out of your testimonials.

Another great way to ease your audience and capture their attention is by letting them know how many people have downloaded a piece of content or bought your product or service. Use your statistics to bring credibility to your brand and your content. The numbers will act as 3rd party approval of your offer and the higher the number, the more likely that next visitor will trust it.

If your service or product has been mentioned in the media, let your audience know. Take excerpts, if possible, from any mentions of your product or service in the media (i.e., articles, reviews, podcasts) and paste them on your homepage. Make sure they are concise and clearly visible. The simplest and probably most convenient way of showing that is by having a ‘Featured In’ section on your homepage followed by a handful of recognizable items. Media mentions is another great way to naturally incorporate your content upgrades into your posts and website.

Conclusion

So, the key points to take away for your killer content upgrades are: ensure you are providing enticing and valuable material. Eliminate the noise and keep it simple – make your content upgrades a part of your post and watch your mailing list grow. Content upgrades are only effective at boosting conversions when they are specifically created for that particular post – so make sure you are paying attention at who you’re talking to. Make use of social proof to increase credibility and desire and don’t forget the fear of missing out. The real kind and the the tool FOMO, which helps you boost your product and service by creating the sense of scarcity around your product or service. Nothing worse than missing out on a great deal, huh?