If you have a website — which is nearly everyone and their grandmother — and have not implemented a newsletter or mailing list sign up form, then you are totally missing out on a good monetization opportunity.
And if you carelessly shrug your shoulders at the thought of possibly monetizing your website, then at least think about the opportunity of growing organic traffic.
Executing a sound popup form upon scroll, entry, or exit, or a sidebar, footer, or header sign up form is a MUST for every website I develop. Why?
When I first started developing a few of my personal domains into websites circa 2000, I never really saw the opportunity in implementing a newsletter or mailing list sign up form.
The main reason for this blindspot was due to the complexity of having to roll your own code back in the stone ages of the internet.
Newsletter or mailing list sign up forms were certainly not as easy as pointing, clicking, copying and pasting code or installing a plugin today.
It wasn’t until I developed my very own PHP/MySQL newsletter subscription feature because of a customer request.
Once I discovered the number of folks signing up daily, I religiously implemented sign up forms moving forward.
Fast forward a few dozen websites, and I unknowingly reaped the benefits when lead magnets became the flavor of the month.
Little did I realize that quite a few of my websites would qualify as lead magnet candidates. But even if they didn’t qualify, newsletter and mailing list sign up features we baked into my codebase — whether or not it truly made sense.
What I discovered though — whether or not you had a lead magnet or planned on email customers with newsletters, etc. — is that many website visitors would and still sign up today.
In fact, there have been a few websites I’ve been able to make additional advertising revenue on because I’m able to position a product or service towards a distinct target market.
But enough about all the many reasons for implementing a newsletter and mailing list sign up feature on your website.
One of the first things you’ll discover implementing a newsletter and mailing list sign up feature on your website is that folks love to give fake email addresses.
To hedge against having a bogus email entered — which you really can’t be 100% certain a person’s email is real — I stopped redirecting visitors to a download page.
This action alone exponentially increased the odds of an email address being real. Why? Well, because instead of redirecting visitors to a download page, I forced users to click a download link that they would ONLY receive… you guessed it… via email. 
With that out on the table, I’m extremely glad and grateful that technology has progressed, making it easy to email a lead magnet upon successful newsletter sign up.
In fact, watch a quick tutorial video below should you want to learn how easy it really is to email a lead magnet specifically using Mailchimp.
Mailchimp has been my goto email marketing provider due to their ease of integration with a number of websites, especially having a trove of free and paid WordPress plugins available.
Last but not least, review OptIn Monster’s 9 lead magnets to increase subscribers to get a few ideas for your website.
In closing, I wish you the best in realizing increase organic traffic and monetization opportunities because of implementing a newsletter and mailing list sign up feature on your website as well as lead magnets too!
Thanks and that’s all for now!
Let me know if you questions/comments by simply dropping me a comment below.
We use MailerLite. 🙂
It is important to be aware of the fact that it is against the MailChimp Acceptable Use Policy to use it if your website uses affiliate marketing.
https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/