Pete Ericson shows how to use email newsletters to convert readers into paid subscribers. He walks through the Small Boats newsletter, which curates articles and places subscription CTAs prominently, then explains how to tag free users in Mailchimp so you can target them with conversion-focused content.
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Let's dig into the newsletter a little bit. It's really important. Your newsletter is your number one direct marketing tool. It's landing in people's inboxes. It's sending people back to articles that they want to read. And so this, this is my Gmail account. This is one of small boats newsletters that comes in as a, as a magazine publisher. You know, their articles are longer, they don't have that much volume for content. They actually will. They do a really good job of pulling archive articles like they might send because they email about twice a week. And one of those is usually an archive article newsletter. So they'll send a couple of related, like two articles that are related. Maybe it's the same boat style or I can't remember exactly what it is, but it works. And with beautiful pictures, very compelling. And nobody reads all your content in your magazine or on your website. So people read it, they click back to it. So this newsletter now is, you know, you have email address, right? You're growing your list, you're sending people back to your website. They're, you know, they're clicking the, they're clicking the title, they're clicking back to your site and they're using up their free registration benefit. Whatever you decide that free registration gives that person access to, they're using it up. And what they're seeing after they use it up is the, is the upgrade message or the paid subscription message. Just scroll down a bit. This is something that I think is very elegant and we know it works, is always have your paid subscriptions being promoted. So with the free registration, you'll probably organize that email that free registered user by tag, like mailchimp does it through tagging. So somebody registers on your website for free, they get added to your mailchimp list and then the tag free goes to mailchimp. And now you know who's free. Well, you can, now you can target those free registered subscribers with the newsletter that promotes your paid subscription. So if you look here, you know, the articles are at the top. And then here you have the join the small boats community and you'll get all these benefits, right? And then also really important, use a big button just like they do to join. You know, links are fine, but buttons boost clicks big time. So create a nice big button to join or to subscribe or whatever, whatever the benefit is message is to, to pay. Their, their sponsors are down below, which is a nice elegant way to handle that. I just thought it's so good. I just thought I have, I had to share that.
