Building a massive email list is possible, especially if you know how to leverage your content.

It’s one thing to write and publish great content on your blog. However, it’s another to use content not just to generate thousands of organic traffic to your site but also to encourage them to sign up to your email list as well.

In the scheme of things, an email list is a part of your blog funnel. Here, tactics like SEO, social media, revenue-generating email marketing, content marketing, and others work in unison to deliver consistent and sustainable traffic to your blog.

Therefore, you will learn in this post the different ways how you can create new content and use old ones to get more of your audience to sign up as a subscriber to your newsletter.

#1 – Repurpose Articles into Content Upgrades

If you have old and well-established articles on your blog, you can convert them into a PDF and use it as a content upgrade to your email list.

A content upgrade is an incentive that compels people to sign up to your email list in exchange for getting a copy of your PDF. Content upgrade only works if the content is something that your audience is interested in.

This is the same tactic that Chanty used to grow their email list as leads of their SaaS. 

Looking at your previous blog posts, you want to narrow down your selection of content upgrades to posts that were once ranking on Google before they dropped out of the first page. You can check Google Search Console or use an SEO content editor to check your organic traffic over time based on keywords they were ranking on top before. Then, you can edit or repurpose your content with new keywords to bring more traffic.

You want to use them as content upgrades because Google found them valuable enough to rank them on the first page before. And the traffic shows that people are indeed interested in the information you provided. At the moment, there are many reasons why they’re no longer ranking, and one of them is because they contain old and outdated information.

Also, since they’re not visible on organic search anymore, most of your audience doesn’t know they exist or may have forgotten about them.

Using these factors in your favor, you can create a PDF version of the article and edit it to contain relevant information today. You can use a tool like Beacon to convert the blog post into a PDF file and edit it from there.

Once you’ve recreated the post into a PDF file, create a widget promoting the content update to visitors on your site. Inform them that they can only get a copy of the PDF if they join your email list. 

Then, using your email marketing tool, set up a trigger that will send them a link to your content upgrade. You should use tools for managing your email list, but choose wisely and pick the ones you are most comfortable with. Therefore, try as many platforms as possible and settle for the right one as quickly as you can.

Setting up your email tool to work will require a certain level of expertise. So, be sure to take time and learn how to create pop-up forms where your content offer will appear.

#2 – Turn Blog Posts into Drip Campaigns

If you have published blog posts under a particular topic in your niche, you can create a drip campaign and repurpose those blogs into engaging newsletters meant to grow your email list.

While these articles are readily available on your site, your audience may not have read all of them. It’s because the pages aren’t ranking on Google yet, or people simply weren’t able to spot it on your site.

Regardless, this presents an opportunity for you to drive more traffic to your underrated blog posts and give them the love they deserve.

To do this properly, you need to create a flow of emails that will help shed the best light on your blog posts. Think of your drip campaign as a collection of onboarding emails geared to excite subscribers about what content will come their way. Ideally, you want your campaign to zero in on a single theme related to your niche and that you’ve covered extensively on your blog. This way, you have lots of choices of blog posts to include in your drip emails.

Next, from your email tool, create a drip campaign consisting of emails that will be sent out to subscribers over a period. You can choose to send them daily, once a week, or whichever times you prefer. The goal is to get subscribers to open their emails and click on the link to your blog posts. You can do this by writing headlines that speak to your audience, among other actionable email tips worth observing.

Your newsletter copy should be inspiring and compelling so you can engage your readers and pique their curiosity. Although newsletter writing is different from blog content, it’s another aspect of content creation that you need to worry about. Because if your emails simply aren’t interested enough, they’ll unsubscribe from your email just as fast as they signed up.

Also, to ensure that your emails are getting through to your subscribers, ensure that your domain is not part of an email blacklist where email clients send your emails straight to spam. There are various reasons why this happened, but you should find ways to get yourself out of the blocklist before you proceed with this campaign.

Finally, to maximize your email’s conversion and open rates, you must A/B test your emails to determine what other factors you need to work on to hike up the score. Remember, crafting a good email is an essential part of your inbound marketing strategy.

#3 – Gate Exclusive Content

Another great way to generate more signups to your email list from your blog is to create gated content. Similar to content upgrades, people can only see the content if they become subscribers to your newsletter. A great way to win new clients, right?

However, the difference in gated content is in its presentation. Instead of receiving the content immediately after signing up, only people who previously signed up to your list will get to view your gated content. And if you’ve posted gated content before, subscribers can also view them and all your upcoming gated content as well.

Think of gated content as exclusive content that only members of your site can access. The exclusive nature of gated content makes it appealing for your audience to sign up to your email and see what the fuss is about.

However, to make your gated content marketing work, you must ensure that all the exclusive blog posts you publish are of higher quality than those available on your blog in public. 

To do this, you need to provide information that can only be found on your site. Aside from doing research, you can engage with your audience by asking them for insights about the topic of your gated content to help you provide premium content to your subscribers. It would help to use survey tools to help create a short questionnaire for them to fill out in a few minutes. You can then use the data gathered to develop your exclusive content.

In setting up gated content on your blog, you’ll need a plugin like WishList Member for WordPress to help you manage the content that will be gated. From here, you can create different membership tiers if you want to scale your content efforts for this campaign. For example, those who joined your email list can view content under a particular tier. If they’re going to view more exclusive content, you can set up a paid level where members will have to shell out a monthly subscription to view all content in this tier.

Also, expand your idea of what content can be. Aside from blog posts, you can create videos, podcasts and even hold webinars to help spice things up and make your content tiers more interesting. Improving your email engagement might take some time, but tools like EasySendy can set you on the right track to success.

Conclusion

Getting creative with your existing content and revamping your blog content creation process is key to encouraging more signups to your email list. As the saying goes, “the money is in the list.” 

And even if you’re not making money from your email marketing strategy just yet, building a list using the tips featured above should eventually help you create a new income stream for your blog.