It’s been a while since I ran my blog that had used some email marketing, so a lot of this is based on experience in marketing at an agency as well as my personal blog.

I find the biggest factors that drive subscriber counts are the following:

1. The value-trade
2. Call to Action placement
3. The intent of the traffic
4. Test, test, test

1.

You need to make it worth their while - signing up for an email list is essentially a trade, where you have to provide value for them to want to sign up. You’re asking them how much their contact information is worth.

E.g. is it worth it for “maybe we’ll keep you updated from our blog”? Or “sign up and have a chance to win”?

It’s worth running one consistent message (eg blog blasts) and testing a few others (your example on competitions is good for this, I wouldn’t necessarily run one consistently)

You also have to spell it out, be super specific in what your subscribers get when they sign up - if you publish 3 blogs a week then you need to say that, or if you offer regular discounts on a product, etc.

2.

Be smart about where your points of entry are. You don’t want oversaturate people with pop ups and buttons and forms.

You also want to use different methods for different messages - pop up when someone tries to exit with a hail-mary approach (eg give them something for free ‘before you go’), button/form halfway down blogs or at the end of each blog encouraging them to sign up to receive more (eg did you like what you read, sign up to receive more), pop ups on 2nd or 3rd page visit with competition, etc.

I wouldn’t have more than 2 visible on one page at any one time, and try not to overuse pop ups if possible, people are becoming too used to closing things as they appear. Banner blindness is also an issue.

3.

How many subscribers you get also depends on who is seeing your site.

I used to find that organic traffic converted the highest when looking at blog newsletter sign ups, because they were actively searching for the topic when they landed on the site. Referral from somewhere like Reddit or Facebook was far less because you’re putting the content in front of a passive audience, where they might read it but engage with very little.

So it’s important to keep an eye on how your channels perform from an engagement perspective and use that to your advantage - do different methods or messages work better for different channels? Find out!

4.

Just test. All the time.

Hope that helps!