Want to Grow Your Email List? Here’s the #1 Number to Track

A couple of weeks ago I ranted about conversion rates, and how it’s possible to “increase your conversion rate” while actually getting LESS subscribers overall.

That’s because there are lots of ways to manipulate conversion rates.

For example, let’s say you have a popup that displays instantly when someone lands on your site.

Then you read a blog post about how it’s better to wait until someone has read some of your content before asking for their email address.

So you add a 30-second delay on your popup, and lo!

Your conversion rate improves from 2% to 3%.

Only that’s not really an improvement, because 75% of your visitors stay on your site for less than 10 seconds—which means that three quarters of your traffic never even gets the chance to opt in.

Tricky, tricky.

(You can do this same thing with sales pages by sending only highly qualified traffic to the page. You’ll get a higher conversion rate but fewer sales and less revenue.)

Right now my major focus for Simple Programmer is growing the email list.

And as I’m testing different optin forms, I’m being careful to avoid this trap myself by keeping my eye on the ONE conversion formula that actually matters.

Here it is:

# of unique visitors / # of email list subscribers

I don’t care about the conversion rate of any particular form.

What I want to know is, how many visitors to the site signed up for the email list?

This prevents me from getting sucked in by conversion rate “sleight of hand.”

And it keeps me focused on what will really grow the business—maximizing the number of email subscribers.

One tool I’m using to maintain this laser focus is the Thrive suite of email list-building tools.

Unlike most email tools, which encourage you to make bad decisions about your email list by reporting skewed conversion numbers for individual forms…

The Thrive Leads dashboard tells me at a glance what my sitewide conversion rate is.

That means the numbers won’t fool me into thinking I’m doing better than I am.

The more I use Thrive, the more convinced I am that it’s hands down the best tool for entrepreneurs and biz owners who are serious about growing their email list.

If that’s you, grab a copy of Thrive today:

http://joshuaearl.com/thrive

Related posts:

  1. Why is it so HARD to grow my email list? (part 1) This morning I read a question from a VERY frustrated subscriber who I’ll call “Amy”: +++ Why is it so hard to get others to opt in? I’ve tried freebies, download free guides, list… virtually nothing has helped. I don’t have time to waste in growing my business and as...
  2. Grow your email list (and sales) by avoiding this common mistake A few weeks ago, I was talking with another self-published author, comparing notes about how we market our books. His sales had slowed recently, and his email signups had dropped off as well. He wasn’t sure what was causing the issue, but as we talked, one root cause became apparent....
  3. Who else wants a bigger email list? My #1 goal for 2016 is growing my email list to 10,000 subscribers. That’s a 7X increase—pretty ambitious. And my new “weapon of choice” that’s going to help me get there is a suite email marketing powertools from a startup called Thrive. Here’s the problem I’ve always had in the...
  4. Why is it so HARD to grow my email list? (part 2) “Amy” is a frustrated single mom who wants to know: +++ Why is it so hard to get others to opt in? I’ve tried freebies, download free guides, list… virtually nothing has helped. I don’t have time to waste in growing my business and as a divorced mom this is...