How I Plan to Grow FigPii’s Newsletter by 40% in 4 Months?

It’s been months since I gave you an update about my journey here at FigPii!

This week I am going to show you the steps I intend to take in my journey of trying to grow FigPii’s email list by 40% in 4 months.

My plan includes churning out quality content, doing webinars/events, launching Facebook ads and so many more. 

I will also mention the different hurdles that I have been facing so far and how I have been overcoming them.

To put everything in context, Iet’s start with a bit of a background on how it all started with FigPii’s newsletter.

The First FigPii Newsletter

The first FigPii newsletter was sent out on the 4th of October, 2021.

Here’s a screenshot of what it looked like: 

Before that day, the FigPii newsletter was as good as dead.

People were subscribing to the newsletter via the opt-in on the home page, but they were not receiving any emails. 

So, when I sent out the very first email blast on that September morning, I didn’t know what was going to work and what wouldn’t. 

And trust me when I say, I did way too many mistakes in it like:

• I was too formal. I needed to chill out a bit and make it a one-to-one conversation between me and our subscribers.
• I distracted our subscribers by adding blogs links at the start of the email. That should have been added later on.
• I didn’t start AB testing right away on the newsletter. I should have done it from the first newsletter. At least I could have started by testing the time; when should I email our subscribers.

Later on, from the second one, I started doing the following practices: 

1. AB testing subject lines.
2. Testing whether text only will work or text with GIFs and visuals.
3. Adding emojis to the subject line to check if it will increase the open rate. 
4. Testing the length of the copy.
5. AB testing which timing is the best to send the newsletter and the best day to do so.

At this point, the email only had around 813 subscribers. At the time of writing this article, we have 1,271 subscribers. That means we have grown by 458 subscribers in six months. 

The first newsletter I sent had a 37.4% open rate and a 2.1% CTR. Right now the newsletter has an average 39.2% open rate and 2.4% CTR. 

I always send the newsletter every Monday at 8:30 AM Eastern time.

Email Marketing Challenges I’ve been Facing 

If you have ever had people saying that email marketing has its own set of challenges, believe them. 

You have to think of interesting and insightful content to send out to your subscribers every week. You have to attract new subscribers. 

Striking the right balance between those two things is not for the faint of heart. I have faced a lot of challenges in trying to do so. Here are some of them:

Subscriber retention 

Subscriber retention means trying to keep your subscribers and prevent them from switching to a competitor.

Unfortunately, your subscribers won’t be always interested in what you send them. This can go back to many reasons!

1. Maybe they aren’t interested in the topic/event you’re writing to them about. 
2. Or, your copy isn’t appealing enough. 
3. Or, perhaps your copy is good, but the subject line doesn’t show that.
4. Or, you’re not sending your email during peak hours. 

And many more reasons.

So, how can I make them open my email? How do I keep them intrigued? How to make them read the whole email and click on the links inside? 

With those questions in my mind, I had to think of the best ways to make them stay engaged in reading FigPii’s newsletter. Here are some of the things that came to my mind: 

Adding enticing subject lines

In most cases, the subject line is what makes subscribers open an email – even though sometimes it can be the name of the sender. 

There are many ways to come up with enticing subject lines. You can pose a provocative question, reveal a business-changing revelation, or include a breaking number. 

For example, I once A/B tested these two subject lines:

1. Into the World of CRO With FigPii
2. Hold on, Black Friday is NOT OVER YET!

Which one do you think was the winner? 

Yes, you’re right…the second one won. 

Any idea why it won? I will go first…

It was catchy and it carried a hint of what the email was about. From reading the first one you could tell that it was about CRO, but it didn’t build up curiosity in the reader’s mind. 

Here are some tips I use when writing subject lines:

1. Keep it short. It is recommended to use subject lines with fewer than 50 characters to make sure the people read the entire message, according to HubSpot.
2. Use your own name as the sender’s address. Your customers need to feel that they’re talking with you, the individual — not the company as a whole.
3. Never use noreply@company.com. People don’t open emails from unfamiliar senders; They don’t like talking to a robot.

Add an email preview that provokes subscribers to read

Email preview can have the same effect as subject lines. It can influence peoples’ decision whether to open an email or not. 

Here are some tips I found that be helpful in crafting an effective email preview:

1. Using action words will help you talk to your recipients and compel them to open the email. You can use words like:

• Unique

• Announcing

• Trending

• Crucial

• Impactful

Here’s a couple of screenshots of how I used one of these keywords in some of my emails:

2. Using a trend or statistic supports what you’re writing with a claim, which intrigues your audience into reading your email.
3. Focus on the benefits they’ll get from your email. Focus on the problem you’re solving because only then you can convince them to read your email.

Segmenting my email list

I intend to do this and this

Personalization is the purpose of list segmentation.

Personalization is when you tailor your content based on your subscribers’ interests and preferences.

​​According to Campaign Monitor:

It is proven to increase open rates and drive revenue by as much as 760% because it helps marketers give subscribers more relevant, individualized content.

Slice your email list into segments based on what you know about your users – like: 

• Buying habits.
• Familiarity with your company.
• Professional background.

Segmentation helps you send the right people the most suitable content at the ideal time.

You can segment your lists of contacts based on the data collected. This data can be actions like: 

1. Clicks on a CTA, 
2. Tweets at your company’s account.
3. Pageviews on your website.

Subscriber Acquisition

Write reasons why I am facing this issue

This part is even more of a challenge to me than subscriber retention.

Why?

Because I keep asking myself: Why my email list isn’t growing?

I kept searching for reasons and I found the following:

1- I am not giving my audience enough places to opt-in

Seriously, I should have realized this earlier!

There is only one opt-in and it is at the bottom of the homepage, which isn’t an obvious place.

From what I read, your opt-in should be on more than one web page and the top of these pages. Also, it should be added as an internal link within blog posts.

Some blogs even suggest adding it to the navigation menu.

In case you don’t know, according to BigCommerce: An opt-in is a form of consent given by web users, acknowledging interest in a product or service and authorizing a third party to contact them with further information.

2- We don’t have an opt-in freebie

What is an opt-in freebie?

It is something you give to your visitors in exchange for their subscription. This thing can be a product or service.

Why do we need it?

• It solidifies the relationship with the reader. It turns subscribers who’ve just heard about your brand into fans.
• It will allow you to share your knowledge with your target audience.

3- I don’t promote my email list

Well, the same as blog posts, if you don’t promote it, no one will know about it even if it’s good.

So here’s what I intend on doing:

• Once I create the opt-in, I will share it in promo threads in Facebook groups.
• I will share the landing page URL frequently on our accounts on social media.

Unsubscribes

When I sent out the first email blast, many people unsubscribed from the newsletter. 

To be honest, that was so heartbreaking. 

I nearly panicked thinking that I had done an expensive mistake. 

But after digging around, talking to different people, and doing some research, I realized that this was common. 

Imagine the relief I had when I found out it was common 😅

If you are facing the problem of too many unsubscribes, here are some of the causes:

• People feel like they get too many emails from you in general. So what I try to do is to cut back on my sending frequency and see if my unsubscribe rates go down from there.
• Sending people irrelevant emails. You can solve this through the previous point I mentioned, which is email list segmentation.
• Having a bad design or your email not mobile-friendly. Well, I, for one, have been facing this with the mobile version. What I try to do is to stick to a good headline, an appealing image, a compelling copy, and a strong CTA in all of my newsletters. 

My Plan to Increase FigPii Email List

My plan consists of 3 parts:

1. Leveling up our content game; To write valuable BoFu content on our blog that gets visitors intrigued and ask them to subscribe to our newsletter.

BoFu or Bottom of the Funnel content comes at the end of the buyer’s decision-making journey, or the final step before buying. 

At FigPii, we target e-commerce, that’s why we create BoFu content.

Why?

Because, it is essential for getting an ROI on your content, and converting prospects into customers.

Also, we make sure that our content is SEO friendly. 

2. Launching webinars and events. We usually host webinars/events every month with an attendance that ranges from 40 to 60 people per each. 

When people subscribe to FigPii during these webinars and events, they are automatically added to our newsletter.

In order for people to subscribe to FigPii, we make sure that we have informative content in the webinar/event, which provokes people to signup to FigPii to see what more do we offer.

3. Launching 3 Facebook campaigns to introduce people to FigPii as a brand. They will run for a total of 4 to 5 months. Also, I will use different kinds of creatives like videos, images, GIFs, etc.

• The first one is for brand awareness. This will help people know what FigPii is and what it does. It will target people based on their interests; people who are interested in brands similar to yours; people who might be interested in FigPii.

It will not only increase FigPii’s brand awareness among new audience, but it will also remind existing customers of our brand, and strengthen our existing brand messaging

• The second one is for subscribers; to ask people to subscribe to FigPii.

Doing so means offering an incentive. 

Why?

Because people are more willing to share their personal information if we offer them something in return. 

I didn’t decide yet what the incentive might be, however, it can be one of these forms:

– Deals and offers

– Attend an event

– Download cheat sheets for free

• The third one aims to re-target. Here we re-target the ones who have seen our second campaign but didn’t subscribe. We will offer them a different form of an incentive than the one in the previous campaign and ask them to subscribe.

Wrapping Things Up

This plan will probably take 3 to 6 months to see some results. However, I am very excited about it.

Moving forward, I will be sharing more updates.

Stay tuned & don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!