How to Grow Your Daily Deal Subscribers List and Increase Revenue

Growing your members and subscribers is one of the core goals that a daily deal company should always continually be working on.  Well, all web-based businesses for that matter. Email database size and promotional campaigns are extremely important in the daily deal industry.  One of the ways that a deal site is valued is directly correlated with the size and responsiveness of the website’s email database.  Remember to put focus no quality over quantity.

Before publishing this report I was speaking with Christine McDannell of ProfitWithDailyDeals and she had this to say…

“The size of your subscriber list is in direct proportion to your revenue so it is vital that you are not only growing your list but also keeping your current subscribers engaged. Not enough daily deal sites are nurturing their subscriber list in creative ways. How about keeping their attention with a quick contest or giveaway every few weeks through email? This will increase your open rate and the likelihood they are actually paying attention to the emails you send out.“

This article discusses 11 proven ways that daily deal websites (and just about any other web based business) can grow their member base, build a better relationship, and see an overall increase in revenue.

1. Optimize Your Landing Page for Maximum Conversions

The ratio of people who visit your website – to those who opt in – is the rate that your landing page converts visitors into subscribers.  The goal for most every web based business; especially daily deal businesses should be to increase that conversion rate.  Increasing the conversion rate of your landing page will grow your user base quicker and end up resulting in more revenue for you – with the exact same amount of traffic.

Here are a few options, tips, and things to consider when taking a look at your website and optimizing it for the best conversions.  Remember, the only way to truly know what will convert better is by split testing variations from your website, appropriately analyzing the data, and making strategic changes based on the analyzed data.  Using an analytical service like Crazy Egg or Google Analytics is also very helpful in learning what your visitors do when they are on your website.

1. Force your visitor to dish out their info before gaining access to your website.
2. Make it optional for your visitor to subscribe to your site, but make the opt in box and call to action very obvious and compelling.
3. Keep your opt in box above the fold and always visible to those who have not yet subscribed.
4. Make opting, connecting, and joining your site easy by allowing Facebook Connect or Open ID as an alternative option to register.
5. Provide a solid and real reason that a user should subscribe and make it a no brainer.

2. Get More Eyeballs to Look at Your Website

Seems obvious enough, right?  The more eyeballs that you have looking at your website, the more opt ins you will get which should and typically does result into more sales.

Here are a few options and tips to drive more targeted traffic to your website:

1. Grow your social media presence.  Create and become engaged on your company’s Facebook page.  Tweet often about relevant news in your industry.  Seek new strategic relationships from your LinkedIn page.
2. Optimize your website for the search engines by having relevant key words, titles, and meta descriptions on your website.  On-page text and copy plays a vital role in ranking of websites.  Without a vast knowledge of SEO, the wise thing would be for you to outsource this aspect to professionals.
3. Release remarkable content and build up back links to your website.  Submitting and syndicating all forms of content around the web is a great way to increase search engine rankings and drive search traffic to your website.  Videos, articles, press releases, podcasts, and social bookmarking are a few types of content that you can submit to various websites.
4.  Paid Traffic.  There are many ways to pay for website traffic.  Facebook Advertising, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and just about any website that has a significant amount of traffic can be a potential avenue for you to pay for advertising.  When doing paid traffic, be sure to start small, carefully analyze results, and grow accordingly.

3. Hold a Contest

People absolutely love competing and even more so winning.  Holding a unique and engaging contest can drive your subscription numbers through the roof.  User generated content and traffic can be one of the most powerful ways to grow your business.  When you engage people in a fun and exciting contest; they become more than happy to tell their friends and seek new votes in an effort to win.

4. Give Commissions, Rewards, or Credits for Sharing and Referring Friends

In our socially connected world, it is very easy for us to click a few buttons and share something with our entire networks of friends on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  Incentivizing your subscribers to share your deals and website will make sharing that much sweeter.  Give your people a reason to share.  Offer them commissions, rewards, or credits to your website by spreading your brand.

5.  Add ‘Forward to a Friend’ and Social Sharing Options Inside Your Email Promotions

Make it as easy as possible for people to share your emails, deals, and website in general with their email contacts, and various social networks.  Add a link in your emails to “Forward this email to a friend who might like this deal.”  Add the ability to share your email promotions via the social networks directly in your emails that you send to your subscribers.

6. Give Away a Free Gift or Credits to your Website in Exchange for the Opt in

Most people’s email addresses are important to them and are hesitant to just give out the address.  Email takes up our time and our time is money.  One of the best ways to gain more subscribers is to incentivize visitors to opt in by giving away something of a great value in exchange for the opt in. Sure, “Enter your email address to receive great daily deals in your inbox” is pretty appealing – but spice it up, add more value, and make it a real no-brainer.

7.  Add an Exit popup to your website  

Yes, I agree.  Exit popups annoy me greatly also.  The fact remains, however, that an exit popup on a website that delivers value – can drastically increase the size of a user base.  If someone is going to leave your website you can have an exit pop that asks them to subscribe in exchange for something of value.  You could potentially have people subscribe to enter into a contest, get credits for purchases on your site, or give some form of valuable content in exchange for the subscriber optin.

Please note that I am not directly recommending that you add an exit popup to your website.  I dislike them, many others do also, but they will increase your subscriber base.  If you do decide to have an exit popup, do so with class and what you have to tell us on the exit popup better be important and valuable.

8.  Run a Free Give Away Drawing

Running a free random giveaway has worked for years.  Giveaways online, work in the same way as they do offline.  A similar example of this is when you put your business card in a fishbowl drawing for a free lunch.  People are always interested to try and win free things.  If you do a free giveaway, remember to set the rules, follow the rules, and deliver the value that was promised in the giveaway.  Example – “Enter your name and email for a chance to win a free iPad!  Winner will be randomly chosen in 7 days.”

9. Nurture Your List

Your email promotions and way that you communicate to your current members and subscribers is directly correlated to how well your email promotions do, how many people open your emails, click your links, share your stuff and ultimately buy from you.

Find your voice, be engaging, potentially humorous, and treat your members like actualpeople and not just a big list. Your subject lines and headlines are very important in determining your open rates, so remember to spend time creating and testing those.

10. Properly Track and Split Test Your Emails and Your Website.

Track your emails and work to engage your members, and optimize open rates and click through rates.

The real answer to the question about how to convert visitors to subscribers and subscribers to buyers is by split testing a couple of variations and analyzing the data.
Google Website Optimizer is a great free tool to use to run variant split tests.  When you run split tests you want to be sure you clearly know what you are testing.

11. Have Remarkable Content and Deals

Having incredibly compelling and entertaining copy and remarkable deals will be cause for people to remark, share, and have more loyalty to your brand.

When you provide remarkable deals and content – people are much more likely to remark.

Each of these 11 ways can be elaborated upon much further and separate reports created for each of them.  When implementing any of the above recommendations, remember to do so strategically and methodically and don’t overload yourself.  For many of the areas, your best option might be to outsource the requested action to a company more suited for the job.

Make moves today,
Marc Horne

PS – Want to learn more about our Deal Software solutions and training?  Visit http://dailydealbuilder.com to learn how you can create and launch your own daily deal website quickly and effectively.

Article originally posted on Daily Deal Media.