If you’ve ever read anything about the blogosphere, then it is highly likely that you’ve come across a claim that “every blogger needs an email list!” I know I have plenty of times.

While the importance of having an email list is clear, not often you will find information explaining what to do with that email list. Maybe send news updates to subscribers? But what else? Why is it so important?

In this post, I will clear some things out for you. I will explain how to create an email list for your blog, what is its purpose and even what email marketing tool to use. If you have any questions for me after reading this post, just drop them in the comment section below. I will be sure to answer them there. 🙂

Why create an email list in the first place

In today’s online world, email is still the number one way to get in touch with a group of people at once. Sure, you can publish stuff and send messages directly to your subscribers on social networks, but because there already is so much “noise”, it’s going to be very hard to get noticed. Besides, sending one message at a time on Facebook is a lot of work.

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Online networks are crowded with bots, online marketers, ads and even scammers, all of which are competing for your attention. They all want to sell you something. Seriously, sometimes when I go on Instagram or Facebook, I feel nauseous from all of the ads I see.

Because there is just too much stuff going on inside of the social networks, most of your posts will not get noticed by your followers. But to make it worse, your posts won’t even be shown to most of your followers. You have to pay for that to happen. Yep, you have to pay money for an ad (which adds to the whole “too much noise on social networks” spiel) in order for your posts to reach even those people that have actually already followed you and want to see those posts from you. It’s crazy, but that’s just how social networks work.

So as you can understand, you can’t really count on communicating to your followers through social networks. This is exactly why you need an email list.

You don’t have to be big. You have to be remarkable. – Joe Pulizzi

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By having a person’s email, you can speak directly to them, which makes the whole experience for both, you and that person, a lot more intimate. By receiving your email to their inbox directly, it is much more likely that your subscriber will open it and read it.

On the side note, because email marketing has become so common today, many people will have tens or even hundreds of spammy incoming emails that they won’t even open anymore. Your email may be just another one of them. So you kind of still have to compete for attention. That being said, email is still the surest method of communicating with your readers today.

What exactly can you do with an email list?

With your email list set in place, there are a number of things you can do. First of all, you communicate with your readers and subscribers. You notify them whenever you publish a new article or post on your blog. This is the best way to get people returning back to your blog over and over. Remember, if you don’t collect their email, a person that visits your blog and leaves will probably never return. So you definitely want a way to stay in touch with them. Having returning readers is one of the ways to grow traffic.

Secondly, just like any blogger out there that creates a ton of value for free, every now and then you will share something useful with your readers that they can potentially buy and you can earn a commission from. I am talking about affiliate marketing in this case. This is also one of the ways that bloggers make money.

Finally, if you ever want to create your own product or service that you think your audience would like, you can always let them know about it through email.

How to create an email list for your blog

If you’re wondering how to create an email list for your blog, keep reading on.

The first thing that you will need to do is create an account with an email marketing tool of your choice. The two tools that I recommend will be discussed below.

Once you have created an account with the email marketing tool, you need to set up a new “list” or “audience”, depending on how that tool calls it. Once that is done, you create a form that will be used to collect emails and put them into your newly made list/audience.

When you collect emails, try not to collect unnecessary personal information if you don’t need to, such as last name or address. Giving this much personal info to you will push most people away. All you want is their email and possibly their first name. I collect the first name for smoother communication, but I do not require it.

The form that you will create can then be embedded into your WordPress blog. The instructions regarding how to do this are given by the email marketing tool that you choose.

Voilà! That’s pretty much all there is to it on the most basic level. You now have an email collecting form and have started to grow your email list.

You can create as many forms as you like and as many lists as you like. In my case, I have two different forms that place emails into two different lists. One list is for people that want to receive blog updates on self-development -related topics, and another list is for people interested in blog-related stuff only.

You can find the first list’s form and landing page here, and the second list’s form and landing page here. Don’t forget to subscribe. 😉

It’s worth mentioning that most people don’t want to give away their email in exchange for news updates, unless, of course, they really love your content, but this is rare. You need to give something of value up front, also known as an “ethical bribe”. With both of my forms you can see that if you sign up, you will get something from me in return.

Which email marketing tool to use

There are plenty of different email marketing tools out there, but I will talk about the two that are used most by bloggers.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools. It’s been around for a long time, and it’s more than enough for any starting blogger. In fact, I still use it up to this day.

Despite having many useful features, MailChimp is most famous for offering a free plan, which includes having up to 2,000 subscribers and sending out up to 12,000 emails per month. For many people that can’t afford a paid service when starting out, this really is a no-brainer.

Additionally, what I also really like about MailChimp is that there are a lot of guides online explaining how to use it. So you won’t ever feel lost, not understanding how to use one of its features.

The downside of MailChimp is that they strictly prohibit affiliate marketing using their service. You may get your account shut down if you do it.

ConvertKit

While MailChimp is known to have fancy-looking email templates, which go very well with e-commerce websites, ConverKit’s main advantage is that it is made specifically for bloggers. In fact, ConvertKit was made by creators for creators (bloggers, authors, YouTubers, etc.), which means that they know very well what pain points we, bloggers, have.

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ConvertKit, fortunately, now also offers a free plan. Other pricing plans start at $29 per month. And while that may seem like much to some, ConvertKit has proven to be very effective over the years by thousands of bloggers. I’ve even heard of people’s email open rates go up after switching to ConvertKit from.. well.. the other email marketing tool. 🙂

To conclude, MailChimp is a great product with plenty of features that is known to work better for e-commerce websites, while ConvertKit tries to keep it visually more simple, but for bloggers, while offering outstanding results. From what I have seen, most big bloggers that make a living from blogging use ConvertKit. If that’s not a sign of quality, then I don’t know what is. I’ve also come to the conclusion that when I decide to up my game, ConvertKit will become my tool of choice.

So here you go. This was, in a nutshell, your information on how to create an email list for your blog and what email marketing tool to use.

I know that I didn’t cover everything here, but that wasn’t my aim. There is so much information on the subject that I could write a whole book on it. My goal was to give you an introduction on why and how to create an email list for your blog so that you at least understand what you need to do to get started.

Please understand that there is no “too early” for collecting emails. As soon as you have your blog up and running, you need to collect those emails. Remember, every person that visits your blog and does not go on your email list will probably be lost forever. Don’t worry about how your form for collecting emails looks like or what it says – that will be improved as you keep growing. Your goal is to have it there so that if someone does like your content, they have the opportunity to sign up.

Thank you for stopping by and good luck!

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