When you implement these strategies, you can create a landing page design to skyrocket your conversions.

• Why You Need a Landing Page
• 18 Best Landing Page Tips (With Examples)
  • 1. Stick to a Single Goal
  • 2. Keep Your Design Distraction-Free
  • 3. Consider Using a Landing Page Template
  • 4. Pick the Right Colors
  • 5. Be Mobile-Friendly
  • 6. Write a Compelling Headline
  • 7. Make Your Text Copy Easy to Read
  • 8. Offer Value Above the Fold
  • 9. Make Your CTA Persuasive
  • 10. Add Video to Explain Complex Information
  • 11. Integrate with Social Media
  • 12. Display Social Proof
  • 13. Keep Your Forms Short
  • 14. Use a 2-Step Optin
  • 15. Create Urgency with Countdown Timers
  • 16. Answer Questions with an FAQ Section
  • 17. Do A/B Testing
  • 18. Add an Exit-Intent® Popup to Recover Abandoning Visitors

Why You Need a Landing Page

A landing page is a standalone page on your site created for a specific offer or campaign. Its main task is to attract people who are interested in your offer and convince them to take a single action.

That single action is what sets landing pages apart. They’re different from your website’s homepage, which has many different options for visitors to choose from.

You can create a landing page for many different purposes, like:

• Offering a lead magnet in exchange for contact information
• Promoting a specific product or service
• Selling tickets for a one-time event
• Getting registrations for a webinar
• And much more

When visitors arrive on your landing page, there are no other options or choices to distract them. Instead, they can focus on taking your desired action.

18 Best Landing Page Tips (With Examples)

The most basic of landing pages have the following elements:

• Headline
• Subheadings
• Copy
• Images
• Call-to-Action (CTA)

In addition to these basics, landing page best practices can turn your page into a lead-generation machine.

Here are some landing page design tips to help you create the highest-converting landing pages.

1. Stick to a Single Goal on Your Landing Page

The whole purpose of a landing page is to be laser-focused on a single goal. When there are too many options and choices to make, visitors will be less likely to take the desired action.

So, you need to make sure your landing page message is clear and focused.

Here is a focused landing page example from Taboola:

It has 1 single offer on it: Download a free ebook to learn more about creating content for native campaigns.

If you have more than 1 ebook you want to offer as a lead magnet, create separate landing pages for each.

When you keep your landing page focused on a single goal or offer, you can increase conversions easily.

2. Keep Your Landing Page Design Distraction-Free

When designing your landing page, make sure there are no distractions that will cause users to leave.

For example, if you include a navigation menu on your landing page, visitors can easily click away without opting in to your offer.

Remove any external and internal links from your landing page. These include like navigation menus, footer links, and so on.

After removing all of the unnecessary links, the only one left to click will be your CTA button.

A distraction-free landing page will help you increase conversions and reduce your bounce rate.

3. Consider Using a Landing Page Template

Designing a professional landing page yourself can be difficult. That’s why we often recommend using a landing page template.

Landing page templates are created by professionals, so you can ensure your page is well-designed. Plus, you can customize them to match your brand and particular offer.

SeedProd is the best landing page builder on the market. Here’s an example of creating a landing page with SeedProd:

SeedProd comes with 180+ professionally-designed landing page templates.

You can get ready-made designs for:

• Sales pages
• Webinar pages
• Video landing pages
• Coming soon pages
• Squeeze pages
• Thank you pages
• And more

With the drag and drop builder, you can easily customize any template. Click on any existing element to edit it, delete it, or move it. And to add new elements, drag landing page-specific blocks and drop them into place.

SeedProd offers conversion-focused landing page blocks like optin forms, contact forms, countdown timers, testimonials, and more.

You can create the highest-converting landing page in no time by starting with a SeedProd landing page template.

4. Pick the Right Colors

Did you know that the colors you choose for your landing page can have an effect on your conversion rates? I have another article called Which Is the Best CTA Button Color? 3 Proven Ways to Get More Clicks. While researching, I discovered that there’s no right or wrong color to use for conversions. Instead, contrast is what matters most.

Here’s an example of one of our own landing pages for OptinMonster:

We use a white background and black text. The only pop of color on the page is the bright green CTA button.

When choosing colors for your landing page, use your brand colors or colors that work well with them. Then, focus on readability and directing attention to your CTA.

5. Be Mobile-Friendly

People aren’t going to visit your landing page from just their desktop browsers. They’re also going to visit it from their smartphones and tablets.

Because of this, you need to make sure your landing page is responsive so that it looks great on all devices.

Luckily, if you use SeedProd to create your landing page, you don’t have to worry about it being difficult to read on a small screen. Here’s an example of how a SeedProd landing page adjusts for mobile screens:

Any page you create with SeedProd is fully responsive and mobile-friendly. Simply click on the mobile preview button to see how it looks on smaller devices.

You can even edit your page right from the mobile preview. So, if a headline is too small on mobile, you can make it bigger without having to go back to the desktop view.

Any changes you make will be automatically applied to both versions of the landing page.

6. Attract Attention With a Compelling Headline

Your headline is often the first thing a visitor sees when they land on your page. So, you need to make it good.

With a compelling headline, visitors will stick around to learn more. With a bad headline, they’ll leave.

Here’s an example of a great landing page headline from Airbnb:

It’s simple, to-the-point, and tells the benefit to the visitor.

There’s no need to be metaphorical with your headlines or come up with some unique play on words.

The best way to inspire your visitors to take action is by telling them exactly how they’ll benefit from the offer.

7. Make your Text Copy Easy to Read

The text on your landing should formatted so it’s easy to read and scan.

Keep these tips in mind:

• Avoid any long paragraphs
• Use plenty of white space
• Use bulleted or numbered lists when possible
• Use simple, easy-to read fonts

For that last tip, SeedProd comes with a ton of ready-made font pairings, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time make sure your text looks clean.

This makes it easy to use multiple fonts on your landing page while maintaining a clear and cohesive look.

8. Offer Value Above the Fold

The best landing page structure is one that keeps all of the most important landing page content above the fold.

Above the fold refers to the section of your landing page that is immediately visible. In other words, it’s what visitors see before scrolling.

Here is an example from Bluehost:

Anything below this section is below the fold, and users have to scroll to see it.

You don’t have very much time to convince visitors to take action. So, you don’t want to waste that time by having visitors scroll through your page to get to the good stuff.

Put your most important content, like your offer and call-to-action, above the fold so it’s the first thing they see.

9. Make Your CTA Persuasive

The call-to-action (CTA) is the most important element of your landing page. It’s the button that visitors click when they’re ready to opt in.

Your CTA button should be big, have a contrasting color to draw the eye, and it should be persuasive.

Making your CTA button more persuasive is as simple as changing the button text.

For example, your CTA button could read:

• Download the Ebook Now
• Claim Your Discount Today
• Get “Product Name” Now
• Try “Product Name” For Free

Instead of having a CTA that reads something boring like “Submit” or “Contact Us,” you can make it more persuasive by demonstrating the value of opting in.

You can get even more creative, like this CTA from Radical Design, which reads “Let Me Buy It!”

If your brand voice is more light-hearted and humorous, try out funny CTA text.

10. Add Video to Explain Complex Information

Adding a video to your landing page is a great way to boost engagement and drive more conversions.

In fact, 82% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. Learn even more benefits in our list of video marketing statistics.

Plus, you can use video to explain more complex information about your product or service, instead of crowding your landing page with difficult-to-read text.

We have an embedded video on our OptinMonster University landing page:

The top of the video is above-the-fold, which signals to visitors that they can scroll down to watch the video.

11. Integrate with Social Media

Imagine if everyone that visited your landing page shared it with their family and friends online. Having your landing page go viral would be an awesome way to get more traffic and conversions.

But, most people won’t share your page on their own accord. You need to encourage them and make it easy by adding social sharing buttons to your landing page.

With social share buttons, visitors can share your content with 1 click.

12. Display Social Proof to Increase Trust

If you want to convert visitors into leads or customers, then you need to gain their trust.

That’s where social proof comes in. Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon where people look to the actions of others to decide what to do.

For example, customer reviews are a form of social proof. If a user is unsure about buying a product, they’ll read the reviews. Just a few glowing reviews can convince them to buy.

So, be sure to add social proof to your landing page. You can add:

• Customer Reviews
• Testimonials
• Star Ratings
• Well-Known Client Logos
• User-Generated Content
• And More

Another way to add social proof to your landing page is with TrustPulse.

TrustPulse is a social proof notification software that displays recent activity notifications across your website.

These small messages let visitors know how other people are currently interacting with your business.

Here’s what they look like:

You can display social proof notifications when someone signs up for your email list, purchases a product, leaves a review, and more.

These messages not only help you gain trust with visitors, but they also help you create FOMO (the fear of missing out).

When visitors see notifications about the awesome experiences others are having with your brand, they’ll be more likely to convert so they don’t miss out on the fun.

It’s a powerful way to boost your conversions.

Want to add social proof notifications to your website? Sign up for your free TrustPulse account today!

13. Keep Your Forms Short

There’s nothing that will turn off visitors to your landing page more than a long form. With too many fields to fill out, visitors will abandon your page before they even get started.

That’s why it’s important to keep your forms short.

Only ask for the information you really need from your visitors, like their email addresses.

When your form takes less than a minute to complete, visitors will be much more likely to take action.

14. Use a 2-Step Optin

On most landing pages, people can sign up for your offer in 1 of 2 ways:

• Clicking the CTA button
• Filling out a form

Many people will be scared off by seeing a form right away, no matter how short it is. So, using the CTA button method is better for conversions.

But, the issue with using a CTA button is that it redirects visitors to a different page, which can cause friction in the user experience.

That’s why we recommend using OptinMonster’s MonsterLinks 2-step optin technology.

This technology lets you display an optin campaign when people click on the CTA button. The form will display on the same page, instead of redirecting people to a different one.

A visitor that clicks on your CTA button already has an interest in your offer, so they’ll be more likely to complete the form.

This landing page design tip also takes advantage of the Zeigarnik effect, which is a psychological principle that says that people are more likely to finish a process once they’ve started it.

Take a look at this tutorial to learn how to create a 2-step optin form.

15. Create Urgency with Countdown Timers

Instead of having visitors to your page mull over whether they should opt in or not, you want them to act fast.

And you can get users to make a decision faster by creating a sense of urgency.

You can do this by using urgency words in your headlines, copy, and CTA that implies urgency, like:

• Now
• Today
• Fast
• Don’t Wait

But an even more powerful way to create urgency is by using a countdown timer on your landing page.

With a limited-time offer and a timer that’s counting down the minutes until it expires, visitors will rush to make a purchase before it’s too late.

You can easily add a countdown timer to your page with SeedProd.

Simply drag the ready-made countdown timer block and drop it into place on your landing page. Then, click on the block to customize the style, set the end date, time, and more.

16. Answer Questions With an FAQ Section

Most people have questions before they sign up for something or make a purchase. If these questions aren’t answered, they’re unlikely to convert.

So, this landing page tip will help you ease the concerns of your potential customers and move them closer to conversion.

Adding an FAQ section to your landing page is a great way to answer common questions like how your product works, what’s included in the deal, or how to cancel/return the product.

Here’s how Netflix does it:

With SeedProd’s built-in landing page sections, you can easily add an FAQ section to your landing page.

Simply click on the style of FAQ section you like and SeedProd will automatically add it to your page.

SeedProd also offers pre-built sections like Features, Hero, Footer, and more, so you can create a helpful and beautiful landing page layout in minutes.

17. Do A/B Testing

Wondering whether a green CTA button works better than a red CTA button? Not sure which version of your landing page headline results in more conversions?

You’ll never know how well your landing page design works, unless you do A/B testing.

A/B testing is when you compare 2 different versions of a webpage against each other to find out which one works better.

For example, you can test which CTA button phrase converts better:

A/B testing is an important step of designing your landing page. Even the smallest of changes can result in more conversions.

So, make sure you A/B test each element of your landing page.

You can check out this article to discover more A/B testing examples.

18. Add an Exit-Intent® Popup to Recover Abandoning Visitors

If a visitor abandons your landing page, they might never come back and you’ve missed your shot at converting them.

Luckily, there is a way to recover abandoning visitors on your landing page. Just use Exit-Intent® campaigns from OptinMonster.

With Exit-Intent® technology, you can track when a visitor is about to leave your landing page and send them a targeted message at exactly the right time.

A campaign like this will re-engage your visitors’ attention and give them another opportunity to convert.

In fact, InternetSuccesGids used this tactic to convert 24% of visitors and grow its email list by over 250%!

You could see similar results if you add Exit-Intent® to your landing page.

Create an Exit-Intent® Campaign Today!

That’s a wrap! With these landing page design tips, you can easily create a landing page that is beautiful and high-converting.

If you found this article helpful, you may also enjoy the following resources about landing pages:

• How to Easily Create a Landing Page (in Under 5 Minutes)
• 36 Best Landing Page Creation Tools to Win You the Most Conversions
• Opt-in Page Perfection: Examples & Tips to Boost Conversions

These articles will guide you through each step of designing and creating a successful landing page.

Do you want to make money while you’re asleep? Welcome to the world of affiliate marketing.

If you’re an online publisher, content creator, or digital marketer, you can earn a commission by promoting other people’s products or services.

Does affiliate marketing really pay? It absolutely does. Affiliate marketing spending has grown steadily each year since 2010, reaching $8.2 million in 2022.

Smart eCommerce businesses use affiliate marketers to spread the word about their products to new audiences. Those marketers then receive a payout in exchange for that promotion.

In this guide to affiliate marketing, we’ll explain everything you need to know, including affiliate marketing’s meaning, how it works, and how you can start earning money with affiliate links.

• What Is Affiliate Marketing?
• How Does Affiliate Marketing Work
• How Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money
• Types of Affiliate Marketers
• How to Start Affiliate Marketing
  • Create a Website or Blog for Your Niche
  • Choose Affiliate Products To Promote
• How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
  • Step 1: Create Content That Generates Affiliate Revenue
  • Step 2: Promote Your Affiliate Products in the Content
  • Step 3: Turn Your Visitors Into Affiliate Customers
  • Step 4: Optimize Your Existing Traffic for More Revenue
  • Step 5: Grow Affiliate Revenue from Your Email List

But before we dive into our guide on how to make money with affiliate marketing, let’s clarify why you should take our advice in the first place.

We’re (Humbly) One of the World’s Best Affiliate Marketers

Unlike other wannabe experts and marketing gurus, we practice what we preach and have done so for decades.

Our CEO, Syed Balkhi, is one of the top affiliate marketers in the world. We’ve built and managed several high-profile publications that attract millions of monthly visitors. These are sites you’re familiar with, like WPBeginner and IsItWP.

But let me tell you a secret about those sites:

They don’t actually sell anything.

So how do they earn money?

2 words: affiliate marketing.

That’s why we’re excited to teach you the affiliate marketing strategies we use. Not only that, but we’ll share how you can use the same strategies to increase your affiliate marketing revenue drastically.

Before we get in too deep, let’s make sure we’re clear on the definition of affiliate marketing and how it works. The beginning of this post will cover the basics of affiliate marketing for beginners.

If you’re already a seasoned pro, feel free to jump straight to our section on how to make money with affiliate marketing.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing strategy where an affiliate partner earns a commission for promoting someone else’s products or services. Affiliate marketers provide an advertising service by including referral links in their content. If a sale is made through their unique referral link, the affiliate earns a commission.

It’s classic advertising in a less intrusive way. Rather than promoting a product on your website with visual advertisements like this:

You embed the product link in your content like this:

In the image above, the affiliate partner is Bluehost, which offers website self-hosting services. In fact, the link in the previous sentence is actually an affiliate link. If you were to click that link and make a purchase from Bluehost, our company would receive a commission.

Does that mean you can create a website, toss in a bunch of affiliate links, and watch the affiliate commissions roll in? Not quite, but we’ll get to that.

For now, you need to know the basics of how affiliate marketing works:

1. You recommend a product or service to your followers through your website, blog, or email list.
2. Your followers purchase the product or service using your affiliate link.
3. You get paid a commission for the sales made using your affiliate link.

Let’s break down this process into more detail to make sure you know exactly how to make a successful affiliate marketing strategy.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work

To understand how affiliate marketing works, it’s important first to understand the several essential components of the affiliate marketing system.

Merchants create the product or service that needs promotion. They can be an individual, a large corporation, or anything in between. A merchant might also be called a brand, seller, creator, retailer, or vendor. For merchants, affiliate marketing is both low-cost and low risk.  They usually only pay when the affiliate when a sale is made.

Affiliate marketers, or affiliates, promote the merchant’s products and attempt to persuade potential customers to buy them. They’re often publishers or content creators. Through these partnerships, marketers receive payment for successfully promoting the merchant’s products.

Consumers are the people who click the affiliate links and ultimately purchase the product. The affiliate receives a commission based on the sale.

Affiliate networks, or affiliate marketing programs, are intermediaries between the affiliate and the merchant. They offer a database of products for affiliates to promote. The affiliate network connects a merchant with affiliate marketers. They also generate unique, trackable links for each product or service. For instance, Amazon is the largest affiliate network for promoting consumer products. You can use the Amazon Associates program to create a custom affiliate link for any item sold on their platform. You likely see Amazon affiliate links regularly on various blogs and social media pages.

In short, affiliate marketers use affiliate networks to find products they can promote and to get unique affiliate links for those products. The marketer then includes that link in their website’s content. Consumers read this content and click the affiliate links. The network keeps track of all those clicks, plus any sales made through the link. Then, the merchant pays a commission to the marketer based on the number of clicks and sales.

How Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money

The income potential in affiliate marketing varies widely. Some marketers earn a few hundred dollars each month, while others hit 6 figures annually. The size of your audience plays a significant role in how much you can earn as an affiliate.

Different affiliate programs use various payment models, which may be called price models, payout models, or conversion types. The payment model specifies the goals for which you’ll get paid.

For example, if you promote a Software as a Service (SaaS) product, you may get paid based on the number of downloads or app installations. If you promote physical products, you may get paid for each purchase.

Most programs use last-click attribution, rewarding 100% credit to the affiliate that received the last click before the purchase. However, this practice may change as programs adopt better attribution models and reporting. For instance, you may share equal credit for a sale with other affiliates in a buyer’s customer journey or conversion funnel.

Affiliates can get paid in various ways, depending on the program. Some common payment structures include:

• Pay per sale (PPS): In this model, the affiliate receives a commission for every sale they generate for the merchant. This is the most common payment method used in affiliate marketing.
• Pay per click (PPC): The affiliate earns a commission each time a user clicks on their affiliate link, regardless of whether they purchase.
• Pay per lead (PPL): The affiliate gets paid when a referred user fills out a form, signs up for a trial, or takes any other action the merchant considers a lead.
• Revenue sharing: The affiliate receives a percentage of the revenue generated by the sale rather than a flat fee per sale.
• Cost per action (CPA): The affiliate is paid when a specific action is taken by the consumer, such as filling out a form, subscribing to a service, or downloading software.
• Tiered commission: Affiliates receive a higher commission rate once they reach a certain level of sales or referrals.

Check out this article for more affiliate marketing tips to earn more income through affiliate marketing.

Types of Affiliate Marketers

The types of affiliates are defined by the marketer’s level of knowledge about the product they’re promoting, i.e., have they personally used the product or service they’re advertising?

In specific industries, such as tech services or diet products, customers may require proof that the affiliate has tested and approved the product to establish trust. However, you don’t necessarily have to use every product you promote.

In 2009, prominent affiliate marketer Pat Flynn categorized affiliate marketing into 3 types, unattached, related, and involved, to distinguish between affiliate marketers who have a close association with the product and those who do not.

Unattached: Unattached affiliate marketing is where the marketer has no affiliation or knowledge of the product or service. Such affiliates do not possess expertise or authority in the product’s niche and cannot endorse its use.

These marketers typically run PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns, relying on affiliate links to encourage customers to make purchases.

This type of affiliate marketing is attractive to those who seek to generate income without committing to the product or establishing customer relationships.

Involved: Involved affiliate marketers connect directly with the product or service they promote. These affiliates try the product and gain first-hand experience, believe in its quality, and can make claims about its use. Involved affiliates talk about their experience with the product when marketing it, resulting in a reliable and trustworthy source of information.

For example, review sites often used involved affiliate marketing.

Related: Related affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is a fusion of unattached and involved. These affiliates may not personally use the company’s products or services, but they connect to their target audience. They have established followings or influence within the product’s niche and can provide some level of authority.

For instance, there are many lifestyle bloggers and YouTube influencers who have large audiences interested in fashion. In related affiliate marketing, these content creators might promote clothing brands that they haven’t actually purchased from.

While related affiliate marketing allows affiliates to leverage their expertise to drive traffic, they risk losing the trust of their audience if they recommend a bad product or service they have not used.

Of these 3 types, involved affiliate marketing requires the most effort and time. However, the returns on investment are likely to be higher because you have built credibility and trust with your audience.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing

If you want to learn how to become an affiliate marketer, there are 2 things you need to do first:

• Create a website or blog in your niche
• Choose affiliate products to promote

Let’s look at each of these in a bit more detail.

Create a Website or Blog for Your Niche

To make money with affiliate marketing, you first need a website.

When it comes to building your website, you have tons of options. But we highly recommend using WordPress.

With WordPress, anyone can quickly build a professional-looking website in minutes, even if you don’t know how to code:

WordPress has more tools to help their sites perform at a higher level than other website builders. That means more functionality across your site and a better user experience (UX) for your visitors.

WordPress is your way to go if you’re interested in making money with affiliate marketing. You can check out these tutorials if you need help building your site:

• How to start a WordPress blog
• How to make a website with WordPress (step-by-step-guide)

Once your website is built, you must determine which products you want to promote. That takes us to the second prerequisite for starting out with affiliate marketing.

Alternative: Influencers can use affiliate links on their Instagram pages, YouTube channels, or other social media platforms.

Choose Affiliate Products To Promote

If you’ve done the work to choose a niche, choosing affiliate products to promote should be easy. Choose products that fit your niche and relate to your content.

One of the best ways to select your affiliate products is by joining an affiliate network.

As discussed earlier, affiliate networks are businesses that connect merchants and affiliate marketers so both can earn more money. Affiliate marketers use these networks to choose the best products to promote on their sites.

There are many affiliate networks out there, but here are a few of the most popular:

• ShareASale
• CJ Affiliate
• ClickBank
• Amazon Associates

One of the benefits of these affiliate marketing services is they typically provide more sales data on the different promotional products. You can then use that data to increase your affiliate marketing profits.

For more information, check out our helpful post: Earnings-Per-Click: How to Win Big at Affiliate Marketing.

You can optimize your affiliate strategy by making data-driven decisions, rather than simply choosing products that appeal to you.

Get Started With OptinMonster Today!

Now that you have a website and have joined an affiliate network, it’s time to start monetizing your site with affiliate marketing.

Let’s get started!

How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

By following the 5 steps below, you can learn how to do affiliate marketing and start making money quickly.

Step 1: Create Content That Generates Affiliate Revenue

The basic meaning of affiliate marketing is simple, and it’s relatively easy to get started. However, building enough traffic to generate a significant income takes time and effort.

Many beginners publish random content and insert affiliate links within the article. That strategy may or may not work, but if you genuinely want to boost your affiliate revenue, you must ensure your published content reaches your target audience.

Your target audience is someone who wants to buy a product but is wondering whether or not the product is worth it. They’re searching for product reviews, lists, and ratings to help them make their choice.

Sometimes, the user may need help knowing which product will fulfill their needs.

As an affiliate marketer, it’s your job to help users discover the right product for their needs. By producing high-quality content, you can help them make a purchasing decision, and then you can navigate them to the product website to complete the purchase.

Pro-Tip: Your articles should target investigational intent keywords. These are the Google search terms that your target audience uses to research the product they’re interested in.

You can check out our guide on choosing the right keywords for more details.

Step 2: Promote Your Affiliate Products in the Content

Just like the keywords you target, you should take an investigational approach to your content. Focus on topics that provide the information you’re target audience is searching for.

Once you’ve done your keyword research and have your content ideas, it’s time to start inserting affiliate links in your content.

How you insert your affiliate links will depend on the specific article you’re writing.

For instance, you shouldn’t add 5 different affiliate links to a review post for a single product. Instead, your entire post should focus on driving traffic to that 1 product’s affiliate link.

On the other hand, if you’re showcasing the “Top 10 Tools for Solving X,” you’ll include affiliate links for each list item. Doing so will increase your chances of making more sales.

The goal is to insert your links as strategically as possible.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of your affiliate links’ placement:

• Only link where appropriate: Don’t add an affiliate link if it doesn’t fit your content. Irrelevant links will negatively impact the user experience (UX) and cost you more lost sales in the long run.
• Add links as early as possible: If you’re showcasing many products in 1 article, add your affiliate products at the top of the list. Most people won’t take the time to read an entire article. You want to make sure they see your affiliate links early on.
• Get more out of your site’s space: You can use floating bars, inline banners, and sidebar widgets to promote your affiliate products. These enhance the impact of your content and lead to more sales over time.

Here’s an example of affiliate links from a post by IsItWP. It lists the best recipe plugins for WordPress:

The first several items in this list are affiliate links. This strategy ensures that readers will see the affiliate links, while still allowing them to research all options.

Again, you want to promote your links often, appropriately, and as powerfully as you can.

Pro-Tip: Invest in an affiliate link plugin before adding hundreds of affiliate links across your site.

Imagine having to sort through and update hundreds of expired affiliate links. This task becomes even more difficult when you have no idea where you’ve placed them on your website.

You’re looking at hours of headaches. Plus, when you let your links expire, you lose out on tons of profit.

Fortunately, this is one nightmare that can be avoided with an affiliate management plugin. One of the best options on the market is Pretty Links:

Pretty Links is an affiliate marketing management plugin that lets you keep track of your affiliate links. It’s easy to set up and super user-friendly, even for beginners. Best of all, it lets you put your affiliate marketing on auto-pilot.

It also lets you cloak affiliate links to make them look short and neat. This makes them easy to share through emails and social media.

Whenever you need to update your old affiliate links from your partners, you’ll be able to accomplish it in minutes, not days.

Plus, if you do run into trouble, Pretty Links has an amazing support team to help you at each step.

At this point, you’ve created the right content and strategically placed your links, using an affiliate management plugin. Next, it’s time to kick things up a notch with targeted conversion campaigns.

Step 3: Turn Your Visitors Into Affiliate Customers

One of the biggest mistakes new affiliate marketers make is assuming they need 10x the traffic to get 10x the profit.

It doesn’t work that way, which is excellent news for you.

For example, let’s say you’re promoting a product that pays a $50 affiliate commission for every sale. Out of every 100 visitors who click your affiliate link, 2 of them buy the product. This gives you an affiliate conversion rate of 2%.

That means the CPC (cost per click) you earn is $1 per click.

(CPC = Total affiliate revenue / total traffic you sent)

If you send 2X more visitors to the affiliate product site, you could also double your affiliate revenue. Thankfully, you don’t have to drastically increase traffic to double your affiliate clicks.

Instead, you can boost your revenue with a conversion optimization campaign.

With conversion software like OptinMonster, you can increase your revenue by converting more of your existing traffic into affiliate customers. Without a doubt, this strategy is much easier than doubling your traffic.

Here’s how OptinMonster can boost your affiliate income:

a) Create a Popup Campaign That Promotes an Affiliate Product (And Increase Revenue by 30%!)

Lightbox popups are 1 of the best ways to catch your user’s attention.

Creating a popup campaign is the easiest method to convert more of your visitors into affiliate customers.

OptinMonster provides over 50 pre-built templates to help you make the right campaign for your affiliate product. We also offer many targeting rules and campaign triggers to ensure you’re showing the right message to the right people at the right time.

This is the exact strategy Top 6 Digital used to increase their affiliate revenue by 30%.

The company had a webpage to help parents choose the right car seats for their children. When the reader tries to leave this page, the following campaign would appear on their screen:

This simple popup campaign was hugely successful. It grabbed the audience’s attention, and over 17% of users clicked the affiliate link.

b) Display Campaigns When Users are More Likely to Buy

When it comes to popup campaigns, targeting is important. Targeting lets you control who sees your popups, as well as when they see them. For example, studies show that the best time to show a popup is when a user is about to leave your site.

With OptinMonster’s Exit Intent technology, you can show a popup that promotes an affiliate offer when your users are about to leave.

Our customers use Exit Intent along with Page-Level Targeting and see massive results. Page-level targeting allows you to create affiliate offers for specific pages on your site. So when a visitor is reading an article about the best hiking boots for winter, you can show them a campaign that highlights the EXACT affiliate product you’re promoting in that article.

Since the offer you promote in that campaign is highly targeted, it’s more likely to convert than a generic campaign.

The WordPress hosting company FlyWheel used page-level targeting to increase engagement by 660%. For instance, the popup above offers a guide to increasing freelance revenue. FlyWheel showed this popup only on blog posts related to running a business.

Or take the fitness company Crossrope, for example. They grew their email list by over 900% by catching abandoning traffic with exit-intent popups.

You can combine these strategies to skyrocket your affiliate clicks.

Step 4: Optimize Your Existing Traffic for More Revenue

This next step comes from a strategy that’s driven by something called “the 80/20 rule.”

The 80/20 rule, in this case, suggests that 80% of your profits will come from 20% of your content. While it’s not an exact metric, the basic principle stands firm:

Identify your highest converting content. Make those posts the priority for your affiliate campaigns. 

Once you know that a particular post or video is resonating with your audience, you can create a targeted campaign with OptinMonster to increase affiliate sales.

This is a much better plan of action than blindly making campaigns for every page on your site.

How do you get started?

Jump into your Google Analytics dashboard, identify the articles that bring in the most content, and then create targeted campaigns for those URLs.

And if you really want to level up your game, you should consider getting MonsterInsights:

MonsterInsights is the world’s #1 Google Analytics (GA) plugin. Many marketers love the idea of gathering data from Google Analytics, but they get confused, annoyed, or intimidated by GA’s user interface.

Rather than letting all that valuable information go to waste each month, you can get the same data delivered straight to your WordPress dashboard. This data includes a review of your site’s top posts:

Once you’ve identified which posts bring the most traffic, you can optimize your content and conversion campaigns to generate more affiliate revenue.

This strategy will ensure that you’re always prioritizing your most profitable content. That means you can save time and increase revenue as efficiently as possible.

Step 5: Grow Affiliate Revenue from Your Email List

No matter how you look at it, email marketing is still the best way to earn passive income. All of the other methods fall short in some way.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is great until Google changes its algorithm and your rankings tank. Paid ads can bring quick results, but only if you have the budget for a lot of trial and error. Paid ads require also constant care and attention to keep conversion rates high.

But your email list gives you a direct route to your target audience.

It’s full of people who are interested in your niche and have already engaged with your content. That means they’ll make an ideal audience for your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Unfortunately, many businesses struggle to grow their contact list to the point where monetization is possible.

That’s where OptinMonster comes in:

OptinMonster is hands down the best way to generate leads for your affiliate email campaigns.

Similar to how you use conversion campaigns to send traffic to your affiliate links, you can also use them to grow your email list.

You can create targeted popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, and more to entice your website visitors to join your list. Offer a lead magnet to convert even more visitors into subscribers. Lead magnets can be special offers, free ebooks or PDF guides, or coupon codes that users only receive by giving you their email address.

Here’s an example of an optin campaign you can use to grow your list:

Want more examples of lead magnets? Check out our list of 60+ lead magnet ideas you can start using today.

Once you’ve built an email list, you can send email campaigns with your affiliate links embedded in them.

Make sure that you read this post on how to create an affiliate email marketing campaign before getting started.

Email marketing is a great way to improve your revenue. You can use your email list to drive more traffic to your high-converting posts, or you can include your affiliate link in your emails. Either way, more people will see your affiliate links.

And, again, to grow your list, the best tool for the job is OptinMonster.

OptinMonster can help you capture more leads.  More leads mean a bigger subscriber and customer base, which means a higher revenue potential.

In fact, check out these success stories from some of the businesses that use OptinMonster with great success:

• How Adam Enfroy Got Over 11k Subscribers
• American Bird Conservancy Grew Their Lead Collection by 1000%
• AutoAnything Increased Daley Email Optins 2.5x

Get Started With OptinMonster Today!

These are just a few examples of people who grew their list with OptinMonster. You can have similar results and make even more money with online marketing.

We hope you found this article helpful. If so, you may be interested in reading the following posts:

• Affiliate Marketing Statistics All Marketers Must Know
• Best Tools for Affiliate Marketers
• How to Increase Affiliate Sales by 30% With 1 Simple Strategy
• Content Marketing Examples
• Sales Promotion Examples

Are you ready to start making more money with affiliate marketing? Sign up for your risk-free OptinMonster account today!

Content marketing examples include, but are not limited to, blogs, social media posts, videos, podcasts, and infographics. These content types are designed to engage, inform, and provide value to your audience, ultimately attracting them to your brand and driving customer action.

Through content marketing, businesses can establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive sales.

There’s just one problem: creative content marketing can be challenging work.

If you’re running content marketing campaigns day in, day out, it can be difficult to consistently come up with new ideas and keep the momentum going.

That’s why we’ve written this article. From blogging and social media to video and visual marketing, we’ve got a great collection of B2C and B2B content marketing examples to inspire you.

These content marketing examples from the business world will help you find new ways to get creative and inspire you to produce winning content marketing campaigns.

Here’s a table of contents to help you jump to the content marketing examples you most want to see.

• Blogging Content Marketing Examples
• Social Media Content Marketing Examples
• Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples
• Visual Content Marketing Examples
• Video Content Marketing Examples
• Ebooks Content Marketing Examples
• Other Content Marketing Examples

But before diving into the list of our 29 content marketing examples, let’s clarify what content marketing is in the first place.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is creating and curating content to attract new prospects and nurture them into leads.

It includes any form of messaging to attract, educate, inform, persuade, and inspire a prospect to move them closer to becoming a customer.

The goal of content marketing is more than immediate sales but rather lead generation combined with strong brand recognition.

This type of marketing may be delivered via blogs, newsletters, e-books, forums/discussion boards, case studies, videos (businesses are creating more and more webinars), social media channels, and many other platforms.

In short, content marketing is about creating high-quality content to attract prospects and customers and to convert them into engaged followers who will spread the word about your products and services.

Content marketing also has several advantages and can help you increase the following:

• Traffic: You’ll drive traffic from search engines, social media, and people following links in email or article-sharing sites.
• Sales: Content marketing is often a great way not just to drive traffic but to drive the right traffic (people who are more likely to become customers).
• Email Subscribers: If you are writing articles, you will be able to drive people to opt-in on your signup page (this is the best place for them to do that—don’t try and get it out of them elsewhere)

Now that we know what content marketing is and why it benefits your business let’s look at our 29 content marketing examples.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

Recommended Reading: 130+ Blog Ideas: The Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas for Every Niche

Blogging Content Marketing Examples

When most people think of types of content marketing, they think of blogging as a starting point.

Blogging helps you get visitors’ attention with helpful information and provides content to flesh out your social media presence and fuel your SEO efforts.

Here are a few examples of companies getting it right.

1) OptinMonster

Since we’re writing a blog post on content marketing examples, OptinMonster’s blog would be the most appropriate place to start.

OptinMonster’s blog is a valuable resource for current customers (looking to use OptinMonster in new ways) and prospective customers.

OptinMonster has become an authoritative resource on lead generation tips, tools, and strategies through its blog.

For people who want to grow email subscribers, increase conversions, and drive more sales, the OptinMonster blog is an excellent tab to bookmark.

It’s also how OptinMonster attracted more than 1,213,437 websites that use its services.

2) Buffer

Buffer’s one of our favorite content marketing examples due to its three-pronged content marketing strategy.

The company used guest blogging to fuel its initial growth, writing a few times daily and publishing content on high-visibility sites. That growth hacking strategy helped Buffer attract its first 100,000 users.

On Buffer’s blog, the company initially concentrated on writing for the people who influenced their customers, producing high-quality and highly shareable content.

Buffer now has four blogs, including the Transparency blog and Open blog, where they have shared business ups and downs over the years.

And they share their best content via regular email marketing.

The results speak for themselves: Buffer is a highly recognized and trusted brand, with almost 400,000 users and around a million followers across multiple social media sites.

3) HubSpot

Regarding examples of content marketing done right, HubSpot’s always on the list. In addition to creating a free tool as a growth hacking strategy, HubSpot has used content marketing by:

• Writing in-depth blog posts about the issues their visitors care about
• Adding content upgrades such as ebooks to their blog posts
• Creating an educational and content-sharing hub, Inbound.org (which gets 321,000 visitors each month) and provides an excellent opportunity to promote its certification and partnership programs
• Creating videos for Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and using LinkedIn to send traffic to those videos

It must be working because HubSpot’s growth and reputation speak for itself.

4) Rip Curl

Rip Curl bills itself as the “ultimate surfing company”. One way it shows dedication is via an online publication called The Search.

The Search chronicles surfers’ search for the best waves and the ultimate surfing lifestyle and features excellent photography and stories told by surfers for surfers.

With over 100,000 YouTube subscribers and a whopping two million-plus Facebook followers, this is a great example of matching content to your target audience to grow your business and make it profitable.

Are you trying to level up your YouTube game? Check out this helpful post: 13 Steps to Get Your First 100 YouTube Subscribers.

Social Media Content Marketing Examples

As we mentioned in our guide to social media and SEO, social shares can help indirectly with search ranking, which helps with lead generation.

So it’s no surprise that many companies have focused on content creation on social media to “WOW” their audiences.

5) GE

GE is a great place to start when you’re looking for inspiring B2B content marketing examples.

We’re not talking about washer-dryers and vacuum cleaners but about the company’s other business: wind turbines, jet engines, locomotives, and so on.

GE’s long been known for taking what some might see as a dull business and bringing it to life, and this Instagram content marketing campaign is a perfect example.

GE combined the campaign with influencer marketing, getting six Instagram influencers and several super fans to do the #GEInstaWalk.

That meant touring their manufacturing facilities and taking, uploading, and hashtagging pictures. The results were spectacular:

• 8 million views of GE’s Instagram account
• 3 million reaches per tour
• 3,000 new followers

And it was done without any paid advertising.

Want to learn more about how you can grow your business with Instagram? Just check out this helpful resource: How to Make Money on Instagram (Without 10K Followers)

6) RafflePress

RafflePress is the best online giveaway plugin for WordPress. It’s also been working to build a strong presence on Facebook, as the platform is a great way to increase page views for its blog.

And as a side bonus, they also get customer testimonials posted in the comments section of their posts:

This is free social proof that helps other people either go to the RafflePress blog or head to their website to try the product.

Ultimately, even something as simple as resharing blog posts on social media can be an excellent content marketing strategy as your business grows.

7) Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel is about small groups, big adventures, and responsibly traveling. It supports that with a content hub called The Journal.

In The Journal, you’ll find stories from real travelers sharing their experiences, which helps the company connect more with its core audience.

But another facet of Intrepid’s content marketing strategy is posting aspirational travel images from travelers on its social media interspersing that with its own content.

That’s given the company 301K+ Instagram followers and strong communities on other social media sites.

8) Superdrug

Our next content marketing example uses both publishing placements and social media to get the audience’s attention.

Superdrug wanted to raise awareness around body image issues.

To do this, the company asked 18 graphic designers around the world to edit a photo of a model in Photoshop to bring it in line with their own country’s beauty norms.

The company published the results on Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, resulting in:

• International news coverage, and placements with major publications like the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Business Insider
• Celebrity endorsements of the campaign, like the one from Sofia Vergara below
• 3 million views of the original study
• Around 1 million social shares

Plus the company got more than 1,000,000 page views to their site within a five-day period.

Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples

Next, we’ve got a couple of content marketing examples that don’t rely on social media promotion.

9) John Deere

Anyone who’s read up on content marketing has probably heard of The Furrow, one of the first examples of content marketing.

First published by John Deere in 1895, this publication aimed to help the company’s customers with the issues they faced and show the company’s expertise at the same time.

Sounds familiar.

The fantastic thing is that more than 120 years later, the publication’s still going and is now available online.

10) AARP

Here’s another content marketing example that underlines the importance of knowing your audience and delivering the content they want.

The AARP The Magazine has won awards for its content, design, and photography quality, but there’s nothing mysterious about its success.

They listen to their readers, who reach them by email, letter, and social media, and use that information to determine the topics that will resonate with them most.

It’s America’s biggest consumer magazine, going to 22 million households. In addition, more than half of its 37 million readers have read three of the last four issues.

Visual Content Marketing Examples

Images are the lifeblood of social media. They easily connect you with your audience and give potential leads an engaging way to interact with your brand.

Need some proof that visual content marketing works? Check out this helpful resource: 24 Content Marketing Statistics to Make You a Marketing Genius.

Now let’s look at some visual content marketing strategies that have worked.

11) Zomato

Zomato is a restaurant finder mobile app available in 24 countries.

The company uses humor in its marketing strategy. In particular, it creates and shares images referencing popular culture, as this recent example spoofing an Oscar-nominated film shows.

They are simple, creative, and entertaining, proving that a minimalist approach can do the trick.

It must be working because the company’s got 1.5 million followers on Twitter, 1.9 million on Facebook, and the app’s been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

12. Shutterstock

Shutterstock’s in the business of images and used its expertise to make a resource that everyone can use: a creative trends report. This capitalizes on the fact that people love reliable data, and this type of resource gets widely shared.

Last year’s infographic attracted thousands of social shares and attracted more than 6 billion site visits, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

Shutterstock has made the resource interactive, including images, video, and music. It’s been shared more than 10,000 times.

13) Rolex

Just because you’re an iconic brand doesn’t mean you can’t rock content marketing.

Rolex proves this by conveying its brand’s quality and timelessness through excellent photography that radiates quality.

And the fans love it: Rolex has over 14.2 million Instagram followers and around 7.7 million on Facebook.

Video Content Marketing Examples

Video marketing drives brand awareness, leads, and sales, so it’s no surprise that many content marketing examples include videos.

14. Blendtec

Let’s start with Blendtec, whose viral videos prove there’s no such thing as a boring industry if you can tap into what hooks your audience.

Blenders might sound boring, but they become a heck of a lot more so when you put weird stuff in them.

The Will It Blend video series put the company on the map and resulted in a 700% sales increase in three years.

Today, Blendtec’s YouTube channel has more than 850,000 subscribers, and the campaign’s still going strong, with videos regularly attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

15) Hootsuite

When you’re launching your content marketing strategy, it always helps to tap into popular culture and one of the most popular shows in recent years has been Game of Thrones.

Hootsuite used this as a jumping-off point to tell a relatable story about their brand via a video titled A Game of Social Thrones.

This video has over 1.3 million views and is their most successful branded content.

16. Zendesk

This Is Zendesk Alternative

Here’s one of the coolest content marketing examples from the business world.

It’s an example where Zendesk jumped on something that could have gone against them and showed their brand values and personality at the same time.

Whenever you offer a product or service, there’s someone searching for an alternative. When Zendesk realized people were searching for Zendesk alternatives, they basically hijacked the keyword phrase, creating a mini-site and video optimized around it.

The result? A page-one spot for that keyword phrase and a heck of a lot of goodwill!

17) Old Spice

For a brand that’s been around since 1937, Old Spice is doing great at staying in touch with its market.

It wasn’t always this way.

Several years ago, the brand was losing ground to its competitors when someone had a fantastic idea: scrap the old world image in favor of something – or someone – new, young, and hot.

It worked. In a series of videos and ads delivering humor and, in some cases never mentioning the brand, Old Spice changed its image to become relevant for a new generation.

The original ad has had more than 59 million views, and Old Spice is still using this approach with a new series of promotions.

18) JetBlue

JetBlue is one of the world’s leading airlines, and it’s always been bold with content marketing. In particular, it uses video to inspire its audience and show off its brand values and personality.

Some examples of content marketing include the Reach Across the Aisle campaign, which encourages people to find out what united them, a series on flying with infants, and the quirky Flight Etiquette video series.

Video views on YouTube range from tens of thousands to millions, while the perception of the brand remains overwhelmingly positive.

19) WPBeginner

WPBeginner uses its video content marketing strategy to educate its audience more than anything else. That means providing in-depth tutorial guides as a counterpart to their blog.

As a result, users can visit WPBeginner’s YouTube channel to learn how to solve their WordPress troubles:

This has led to WPBeginner becoming an authority in the WordPress space. It has helped countless WordPress customers and has led to over 288k subscribers..

20) Squatty-Potty

You may remember a few years back when a video was released for the “Squatty-Potty.” The product’s design makes it easier and healthier for people to use the restroom.

We know… not exactly the most entertaining of topics. And yet, Squatty-Potty produced a funny and entertaining video that quickly went viral.

This video has been viewed nearly 40 million times over the past few years and remains one of the best video content marketing examples around.

Ebooks Content Marketing Examples

As we saw earlier with HubSpot, ebooks and resources are a great way to raise awareness of your brand. Here are a couple more examples of content marketing in this category.

21) LinkedIn

If you want to learn how to use LinkedIn effectively, nobody will be more expert than LinkedIn itself. That’s why the company’s ebook on its own approach to marketing with LinkedIn is such a winner.

The landing page whets customers’ appetites with a series of tips and stats, and most LinkedIn users will want to opt-in immediately.

LinkedIn has continued to use this content strategy by producing more marketing guides, so it’s a sure bet it’s working for them.

Not sure if LinkedIn is for your business? Check out how (and why) you should create a LinkedIn business page.

22) OptinMonster

We’ve already covered OptinMonster’s blog, but we’re far from a one-trick pony.

In fact, we pride ourselves on having a comprehensive (and wildly effective) content marketing strategy. One of the ways we were able to grow an email list so quickly was through our eBook.

This optin campaign offered the eBook and is one of the reasons why our current email list has over 200,000 subscribers.

23) Simply Business

One of the best B2B content marketing examples is from Simply Business, a UK insurance firm known for producing valuable tips and guides.

It’s yet another example showing that so-called “boring sectors” can still wow their audience. Their customer education guides have attracted thousands of links and shares, as well as raised their profile.

You may also be interested in this article for more B2B lead generation strategies or this helpful post on 5 B2B email best practices you need to try.

Other Content Marketing Examples

Finally, here are some different content marketing examples from the business world.

24) Coca-Cola

Coke used personalization to get everybody talking about their brand.

They kicked off their Share a Coke campaign in Australia by putting the 150 most common names on bottles. Then they encouraged people to share a Coke with people with those names.

That user generated content campaign went viral, resulting in sales of 250 million bottles and cans across the summer, or equivalent to just over 10 for every person in Australia.

Unsurprisingly the campaign soon rolled out to other locations. You can now customize your own bottle, as we did here.

25) Grant Thornton

Data analytics is another area that could be seen as dry, but when Grant Thornton ran their Access Granted campaign, it was anything but.

The company took people behind the scenes at the Tony Awards, showing exclusive content on YouTube and Twitter. That resulted in 3.7 million Twitter impressions, increased Facebook reach, and beating their goals for YouTube goals by 115%.

26) Charmin

This content marketing example from Charmin is perfect for its customers. The brand’s always had a sense of humor in its TV ads, and that’s carried through to the Sit or Squat app.

This app aims to help people find clean bathrooms when needed, so it’s also practical. So far, the app’s been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and nobody will forget the brand.

27) Burberry

Burberry’s most outstanding content marketing campaign was Burberry Kisses, blending mobile technology with the human wish to connect with others.

Users could press their lips to the screen via an app and send a digital kiss to anyone. The campaign also allowed people to use Google Street View and Google Maps to see those digital kisses’ journey.

28) Buzzstream

Buzzstream combined several content types (research-heavy guest content, evergreen blog content, and gated content) to position itself as a thought leader within its industry.

The nine-month content campaign was hugely successful, resulting in a record-breaking number of new signups.

29) The Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience has become one of the most widely listened-to podcasts in the world, with over 14.7 million subscribers.

And whether you love him or hate him, you must admit that he has a marketing team full of geniuses.

That’s because Joe Rogan doesn’t just do an audible version of the podcast; he streams each recording, too.

That means he can promote two pieces of content with a single shot. He also has a video to share on YouTube for every podcast he produces.

Since December 2020, the podcast has been exclusively available on Spotify, with highlights uploaded onto the main Joe Rogan Experience YouTube channel.

With this audience, he’s able to promote upcoming comedy shows, new guests, affiliate products, and more.

But there’s one final thing to remember. There’s no point building an audience if they don’t convert.

That’s where OptinMonster comes in.

How OptinMonster Can Help Your Content Convert

OptinMonster is a crucial part of any successful content marketing strategy:

That’s because OptinMonster is the world’s best lead generation software. With this tool, you can deliver any content to the right users to increase conversions across your site.

It allows you to create various optin campaigns like popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, gamified spin wheels, and more.

And the best part is that you don’t need to be a professional coder to make it happen!

Here’s how it works:

Everything starts with selecting one of OptinMonster’s 100+ pre-built templates:

These are fully responsive and look great across all devices. They were designed to save you time, energy, and headaches during campaign creation.

And once you’ve selected the right template to reach your marketing goals, you can use the code less drag-and-drop builder.

This lets you customize your optin campaign to match your brand’s voice, style, and message.

To modify any text, for example, you can do so with the inline text editor. Just click what you want to change, and start typing:

Or, if you want to add new features to your campaign (like images, videos, custom HTML, icons, and more), you can do so with a drag and a drop:

This makes it easy for anyone to create professional and high-converting campaigns in minutes.

Plus, you can use OptinMonster’s advanced targeting rules to get the right content pieces to the right part of your site’s traffic.

Some of the more popular targeting rules include:

• Exit-Intent® Technology: Recover abandoning visitors as they’re actively leaving your website.
• OnSite Retargeting®: Keep users engaged by showing fresh content to returning visitors.
• Geolocation: Personalize the user journey by targeting people by their physical location.
• MonsterLinks: Boost conversions by making your campaigns appear at the click of a button or link.

These are just a few of OptinMonster’s most popular targeting rules, though there are many others.

Once your campaigns are set up, you can integrate your email service provider (ESP) with OptinMonster.

This allows you to set your content marketing strategy on autopilot. Once you’ve gotten new leads, you’ll send them directly to your organized contact lists.

This lets you send automated email series to increase engagement and sales from your audience.

Not sure if OptinMonster will work for you? Just check out how Crossrope was able to explode their list by 900%.

Or how Shotkit uses OptinMonster to get 40+ NEW leads every single day.

You can get similar results by click below and starting your 100% risk-free OptinMonster account today:

And that’s all for today! These have been 29 content marketing examples you can use for inspiration right now.

More on Content Marketing:

• How to Measure Your Content Marketing ROI + 7 Metrics That Matter
• How to Build a Content Marketing Funnel (+12 Examples)
• Step-by-Step Guide to Generate Leads with Your Content Marketing

These aren’t just ordinary words; they’re the triggers that ignite emotion, drive action, and make your message unforgettable.

Word power is so real that you could see a 12.7% increase in conversion rates simply by sprinkling a few powerful words into your copy.

In this blog, we’re not just discussing the power of words; we’re gifting you an extensive 700+ power words list!

Ready to supercharge your content? Let’s dive in.

1. What Are Power Words?
2. 700+ Power Words List
3. Where You Can Use Power Words

What Are Power Words?

Power words are persuasive words that trigger strong psychological or emotional responses. Copywriters use them to create compelling content that deeply influences readers, making these words nearly irresistible in their impact.

That’s likely the simplest power words definition, i.e., powerful words that trigger the desired emotion and action.

But power words aren’t just for copywriters. They can be used by any marketer–even inexperienced ones–to motivate people to take a specific action on their website.

Whether you want to entice your visitors to read a blog post, opt into your email list, or click the “Buy Now” button on your sales page, power words are arguably the quickest and easiest way to increase your conversion rates.

700+ Power Words List

We’ve categorized the 700+ most effective and powerful words into the following 11 types of power words:

1. Power Words for Customer Service
2. Power Words for Headlines
3. Power Words for Conversation
4. Power Words for FOMO
5. Power Words for Curiosity
6. Power Words for Ease and Convenience
7. Power Words for Increasing Desire
8. Power Words for Bragging
9. Power Words for Trust
10. Power Words for Anger
11. Power Words for Fear

1. Power Words for Customer Service

Power words can be the difference between a satisfied customer and a disgruntled one. These words convey empathy, understanding, and a genuine desire to help.

They assure the customer that their concerns are valid, their business is valued, and their satisfaction is a top priority.

How To Boost Conversions With Customer Service Power Words

Include power words into your customer service scripts, email responses, and live chat interactions. Words like “understand,” “priority,” “valued,” and “assured” can make customers feel heard and appreciated.

When customers feel that a company genuinely cares about their concerns and is eager to resolve them, they are more likely to continue doing business with that company and even recommend it to others.

2. Power Words for Headlines

Headlines are the first thing readers see, and they often determine whether the rest of the content gets read. 

Power words in headlines grab attention, spark curiosity, and compel readers to delve deeper into the content. 

They promise value, evoke emotion, and hint at the benefits the reader will gain.

How To Boost Conversions With Headline Power Words

When crafting headings for blog posts, subheads, articles, or advertisements, use power words that resonate with your target audience. Words like “unveiled,” “exclusive,” “breakthrough,” and “revolutionary” can make your headlines stand out in a sea of content. A captivating headline can increase click-through rates, driving more traffic and potential conversions.

3. Power Words for Conversation

Conversations, whether they’re sales pitches, networking chats, or casual talks, can benefit from the strategic use of power words. These words can steer the conversation, emphasize points, and elicit desired responses.

They add weight to statements, making them more memorable and persuasive.

How To Boost Conversions With Conversation Power Words

Add power words into your spoken interactions, especially when trying to persuade, inform, or inspire. Words like “transform,” “innovate,” “pioneer,” and “optimize” can leave lasting impressions on listeners. 

When used appropriately, these words can sway opinions, inspire action, and lead to fruitful outcomes in both personal and professional conversations.

4. Power Words for Greed and FOMO

Greed is the natural human tendency to want more stuff than we actually need.

These power words can trigger that tendency by playing on scarcity and FOMO (fear of missing out), or simply by making something sound more valuable.

How To Boost Conversions With Greed Power Words

Rich Page tested two different headlines on his exit popup. The first headline read, “Is Your Website Optimized for High-Sales? Grab my free conversion toolbox and start succeeding!”

In the second popup, he tweaked the headline to include a few powerful words (circled in red below).

This version converted much better than the first, and with this optimized popup, he was able to increase his signup rate from 12% to 50%!

Another great use of greed power words is using them to promote giveaways and online contests. Learn how to run an online contest to grow your traffic and generate leads.

5. Power Words for Curiosity

According to curiosity-drive theory, curiosity is a naturally occurring urge that simply must be satisfied, similar to how we satisfy hunger by eating or thirst by drinking.

These power words will make your blog post headlines, email subject lines and landing page headlines impossible to resist.

How To Boost Conversions With Curiosity Power Words

Take a look at this example from a thank-you page on Mary Fernandez’s site after someone opts in for their email list.

The goal was to increase click-throughs to their private Facebook group by making subscribers curious to see what’s on the “other side.”

How many powerful words can you spot?

If you counted seven, you’re right!

6. Power Words for Ease and Convenience

Everybody loves ease and convenience. People are not usually motivated to do more than the absolute minimum work to achieve their goals.

The right power words can convey to readers how easy it is easy to do something. Because they don’t have to do much or put in a lot of effort, they are more likely to take action.

You can use these power words to make your lead magnets sound more digestible, to make your products sound more useful, and to make your headlines more enticing.

How To Boost Conversions With Sloth Power Words

Here’s an example of a blog post headline we’ve used that works very well.

Can you spot all the power words?

Did you get all five?

7. Power Words for Desire and Lust

Lust is usually thought of as sexual, but it’s actually just an intense desire for any item. When we lust after something, we crave it so badly that we stop thinking rationally.

Use these tantalizing strong words to amplify that craving and encourage people to take action.

How To Boost Conversions With Lust Power Words

List25 uses a lust word combined with curiosity words to make for an irresistibly provocative headline.

Did you spot the 3 power words in the featured headline on the right?

8. Power Words for Vanity and Bragging

You may not think of yourself as “vain”. However, researchers have found that vanity is one of the chief driving forces that lead to purchase decisions.

The fact is, we buy into things because of how we think they will make us look: both to others and to ourselves. And it’s not just that we want to look good physically, but we also want to look successful.

Use these power words to show how your offer (whether it’s a product, service, or lead magnet) will make your visitor look more attractive and more successful.

How To Boost Conversions With Vanity Power Words

Snack Nation uses one carefully chosen power word to increase conversions on their popup.

Do you know what power word it is?

Yes, “hero”! They know that their customers love getting positive attention and praise from their co-workers, so of course, they would love to be seen as the “office hero”.

(Bonus points if you also noticed that the words “without lifting a finger” is a great sloth power phrase, even though we didn’t include it in this list.)

9. Power Words for Trust

Have you ever thought that trust is really what content marketing and email marketing are all about?

Whether you are writing blog posts, creating signup forms, sending emails, or tweaking your product pages, the real purpose behind all of that is to build trust between the consumer and your brand.

Use these powerful words to speed up the trust-building process.

How To Boost Conversions With Trust Power Words

In this test at Teespring, the power words “don’t worry” were added in the fine print below the CTA (call to action) button and tested against a control.

The result of just this one tiny tweak in wording was a 12.7% boost in conversions! (That’s huge!)

10. Power Words for Anger

Anger has a huge influence on our perception, reasoning, and decisions. It makes us irrational, which can lead to choices that actually have no bearing on the thing that initially made us angry.

Stirring up the emotion of anger in your visitors and customers is a bad idea when it is targeted at your company. However, it can also work for you, if the anger is directed at something else.

Think about what makes your prospect angry about your industry. Stir up those emotions with these powerful words, then provide the solution.

How to Boost Conversions with Anger Power Words

Advertisements that use anger have been shown to be highly effective. In a study by researchers from Dartmouth and Cornell, anti-smoking TV commercials that used anger to appeal to the viewer’s emotions were more persuasive than those that used sadness.

This ad from Harley Davidson received a lot of praise for blatantly stating the angry, rebellious thoughts on people’s minds in regard to the economy.

Did you find all the power words?

11. Power Words for Fear

Fear is perhaps the most powerful motivator of all. It’s that primal instinct that keeps us safe, that keeps us alive.

If you want to inspire your readers to take action–whether that’s sharing your blog post, downloading your lead magnet, or buying your product–use these strong words to create fear of what might happen if they don’t.

(Just make sure you don’t completely paralyze them with fear: also, provide an actionable solution to their problem.)

How To Increase Conversions With Fear Power Words

Jon Morrow, known for his fear-inducing blog posts, uses powerful words to get his visitors to read and take action.

Here’s an example:

Did you spot the power words?

Where You Can Use Power Words

Here are some of the different places where you can use power words:

1. Website Content:

• Homepages: To immediately capture attention and convey the brand’s value proposition.
• Landing Pages: To persuade visitors to take a specific action, such as signing up or making a purchase.
• Product Descriptions: To highlight the benefits and features of a product.

2. Marketing Materials:

• Email Campaigns: In subject lines to increase open rates and in the body to drive clicks and conversions.
• Advertisements: In headlines and copy to capture attention and persuade viewers.
• Brochures & Flyers: To emphasize the benefits of a product, service, or event.

3. Social Media:

• Posts & Captions: To engage followers and encourage them to take action.
• Profile Bios: To succinctly convey a brand or individual’s value proposition.
• Ads: To drive clicks, shares, and conversions.

4. Sales Pitches and Presentations:

• To emphasize benefits, overcome objections, and persuade listeners.

5. Blog Posts and Articles:

• In titles to increase click-through rates.
• Within content to engage readers and encourage them to read further.

6. E-books and Whitepapers:

• In titles, subheadings, and content to emphasize points and engage readers.

7. Video Title and Scripts:

• To capture viewers’ attention and convey messages powerfully.

8. Customer Service Interactions:

• In scripts, emails, and live chats to convey empathy, assurance, and a willingness to help.

9. Press Releases:

• To highlight the importance and benefits of news or announcements.

10. Product Packaging:

• To highlight product benefits and features.

11. Webinars and Online Courses:

• In titles, descriptions, and content to engage participants and emphasize learning outcomes.

12. Testimonials and Reviews:

• To emphasize positive experiences and benefits received.

13. Mobile Apps:

• In notifications, descriptions, and in-app messages to engage users.

Using power words in these places can significantly enhance the impact of the message, making it more compelling, persuasive, and memorable.

Conclusion (Power Word Style!)

Don’t be a slave to the endless grind of tweaking and testing when you can simply copy the words that the experts use.

With this complete power words list, you are now equipped to turbocharge your conversions in record time!

What are your favorite power words? Can you think of a few we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Exclusive Bonus Download our 700+ Power Words Cheatsheet to Boost Your Conversions.

Also checkout:

• How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Strategy
• SEO Made Easy—Ultimate Guide to Explode Your Traffic
• How to Create an Optin Feature Box Step-by-Step (with Examples)
• eCommerce Best Practices: Set up Your Business for Success
• 8 Best Social Media Platforms for Business: Your Ultimate Guide

This blog will discuss email subject lines, their importance, email subject line best practices, and what to avoid while creating one.

But most importantly, we’ll also share 184 email subject line examples you can use to increase open rates.

Plus, we’ll help you understand the psychology behind them so you can replicate their success again and again.

Table of Contents

1. What Is an Email Subject Line?
2. Why Is a Good Email Subject Line Important?
3. 184 Best Email Subject Lines (and Why They Work)!
   1. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Email Subject Lines
   2. Curiosity Inducing Email Subject Lines
   3. Funny Email Subject Lines
   4. Vanity Appealing Email Subject Lines
   5. Greedy Email Subject Lines
   6. Catchy Email Subject Lines
   7. Customer Pain Points Email Subject Lines
   8. Retargeting Email Subject Lines
   9. Personalized Email Subject Lines
   10. Straightforward Email Subject Lines
   11. Sales Email Subject Lines
   12. Newsletter Email Subject Lines
4. Email Subject Line Best Practices
5. Common Mistakes To Avoid in Email Subject Lines
6. Top Email Subject Line Keywords
7. 3 Bonus Tips for Crafting Catchy Email Subject Lines

ExclusiveDownload the 184 Best Email Subject Lines Cheatsheet for boosting your email open rates.

Ready to get started? Let’s go!

What Is an Email Subject Line?

An email subject line is a brief preview or a one-line summary of the content of an email that appears in the inbox. The best email subject lines grab readers’ attention, provide value to the recipient, and encourage them to open the email.

Here is an email marketing subject line example.

It is usually the subject line that determines whether a reader would open your email or ignore it.

Why Is a Good Email Subject Line Important?

47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. At the same time, 69% of email recipients report emails as spammy based solely on the subject line.

In other words: your subject lines can make or break your email marketing campaigns.

By using good email subject lines, you can increase open rates, which can help improve click-through rates and conversions.

Email marketing subject lines are important for several other reasons as well, such as:

• Grabbing Attention: Subject lines are the first thing recipients see when they receive an email, and they play a crucial role in grabbing their attention and encouraging them to open the email.
• Setting Expectations: Subject lines also set expectations for the content of the email. A well-crafted subject line should give the recipient an idea of the email and what they can expect to find inside.
• Avoiding Spam Filters: Certain words and phrases can trigger spam filters, causing your email to be marked as spam and potentially end up in the recipient’s spam folder or not being delivered at all. Crafting subject lines that avoid these trigger words and phrases ensures deliverability.
• Higher Open Rates: An engaging subject line can significantly increase the recipient’s likelihood of opening the email. This is especially important in email marketing campaigns, where open rates often measure the campaign’s success.
• Encouraging Engagement: Subject lines can also encourage engagement with the email’s content. A catchy email subject line can entice the recipient to read further, click on links, or take other desired actions.

The subject line is the first impression that the recipient will have of the email. It’s important to make it count.

Let’s see 184+ catchy email subject line examples and the proven principles that make them work.

184 Best Email Subject Lines (and Why They Work)!

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Email Subject Lines

One psychological principle that is practically impossible to resist is FOMO, the fear of missing out. You can use this fear in your subject lines by adding an element of scarcity (limited availability) or urgency (limited time).

Email subject lines that include words that imply time sensitivity, like “urgent”, “breaking”, “important” or “alert” are proven to increase email open rates.

Here are some great sample subject lines for emails that use the fear of missing out:

1. Warby Parker: “Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring”
2. JetBlue: “You’re missing out on points.”
3. Digital Marketer: “[URGENT] You’ve got ONE DAY to watch this…”
4. Digital Marketer: “Your 7-figure plan goes bye-bye at midnight…”
5. Digital Marketer: “[WEEKEND ONLY] Get this NOW before it’s gone…”
6. Jersey Mike’s Subs: “Mary, Earn double points today only”
7. Guess: “Tonight only: A denim lover’s dream”

Curiosity Inducing Email Subject Lines

Humans have a natural desire for closure. We don’t like having gaps in our knowledge. You can leverage this desire for closure by leaving your subject line open-ended so subscribers will be curious, like a cliffhanger that can only be satisfied by opening the email.

You can make subscribers curious by asking a question, promising something interesting, or simply saying something that sounds strange or unusual.

Here are some great examples of curiosity-inducing subject lines:

8. Manicube: “*Don’t Open This Email*”
9. GrubHub: “Last Day To See What This Mystery Email Is All About”
10. Refinery29: “10 bizarre money habits making Millennials richer”
11. Digital Marketer: “Check out my new “man cave” [PICS]”
12. Digital Marketer: “Is this the hottest career in marketing?”
13. Thrillist: “What They Eat In Prison”
14. Eat This Not That: “9 Disgusting Facts about Thanksgiving”
15. Chubbies: “Hologram Shorts?!”
16. The Hustle: “A faster donkey”
17. Mary Fernandez: “? a surprise gift for you! {unwrap}”

Funny Email Subject Lines

If your subject line makes your subscribers laugh, they must open it. After all, have you ever read a subject line that tickled your funny bone and didn’t read it?

Being humorous and catchy requires more thought and creativity, but it can pay off in terms of your open rates.

Here are some funny email subject lines to make your subscribers laugh:

18. Eater Boston: “Where to Drink Beer Right Now” (Sent at 6:45am on a Wednesday.)
19. OpenTable: “Licking your phone never tasted so good”
20. Groupon: “Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)”
21. The Muse: “We Like Being Used”
22. Warby Parker: “Pairs nicely with spreadsheets”
23. UncommonGoods: “As You Wish” (A reference to the movie The Princess Bride.)
24. Travelocity: “Need a day at the beach? Just scratch n’ sniff your way to paradise…”
25. TicTail: “Boom shakalak! Let’s get started.”
26. Thrillist: “Try To Avoid These 27 People On New Year’s Eve”
27. Baby Bump: “Yes, I’m Pregnant. You Can Stop Staring At My Belly Now.”
28. Gozengo: “NEW! Vacation on Mars”
29. The Hustle: “Look what you did, you little jerk…” (This one’s a reference to the movie Home Alone. We hope.)

Vanity Appealing Email Subject Lines

Everyone has a bit of vanity. People love to be liked, accepted, and even revered by others. It’s just a part of being human.

That’s why some of the most clever subject lines use vanity to get you to open the email. To do this, you can either promise something that makes the subscriber look better to their peers or invoke the fear of being shamed.

Here are some great examples of clever email subject lines that leverage vanity:

30. Guess: “Don’t wear last year’s styles.”
31. Fabletics: “Your Butt Will Look Great in These Workout Pants”
32. Jeremy Gitomer: “How Have You Progressed Since the Third Grade?”
33. Rapha: “Gift inspiration for the discerning cyclist”
34. La Mer: “Age-defying beauty tricks”
35. Pop Physique: “Get Ready. Keep the Pie Off Your Thighs Returns.”
36. Rapha: “As worn in the World Tour”
37. Sephora: “Products the celebs are wearing”

Greedy Email Subject Lines

You may not think of yourself as a “greedy” person, but it can be tough to pass up a great deal, even if you don’t need the item right now. That’s why sales, discounts, and special offers work well in your subject lines.

However, be careful about offering massive discounts; the higher the percentage, the less reliable its effect on your open rates (perhaps because consumers don’t believe large discounts are real).

Regardless, you can usually expect an increase in click-through rates whenever you offer a discount in your subject line. That’s because the people who open these emails are interested in your offer, so they’re naturally inclined to click.

Here are some great email subject line ideas for hitting your subscriber’s “greed” button:

38. Topshop: “Meet your new jeans”
39. Topshop: “Get a head start on summer”
40. HP: “Flash. Sale. Alert.”
41. HP: “New must-haves for your office”
42. Seafolly: “A new product you won’t pass on”
43. Guess: “25% off your favorites”
44. Rip Curl: “Two for two”
45. La Mer: “A little luxury at a great price”
46. Rapha: “Complimentary gift wrap on all purchases”
47. The Black Tux: “Get priority access.”

Catchy Email Subject Lines

Catchy email subject lines create excitement and encourage readers to open the email.

There are many different ways to grab your readers’ attention. For example, you can create an attention-grabbing catchy email subject line by being controversial, confident, or conversational.

You can also give readers an easier way to achieve their goals by offering a shortcut or a helpful resource (e.g., a lead magnet) that saves time and energy.

Here are a few catchy email subject line examples that capture the readers’ attention in one way or another.

48. Syed from OptinMonster: “ 63-Point Checklist for Creating the Ultimate Optin Form”
49. Syed from OptinMonster: “Grow your email list 10X faster with these 30 content upgrade ideas”
50. Ramit Sethi: “How to email a busy person (including a word-for-word script)”
51. Digital Marketer: “Steal these email templates…”
52. Digital Marketer: “A Native Ad in 60 Minutes or Less”
53. Digital Marketer: “212 blog post ideas“

Customer Pain Points Email Subject Lines

If you understand your buyer persona, you should know their biggest pain points. Use those pain points to get subscribers to open your emails by solving that problem.

Here are some examples of email subject lines that bring out the subscriber’s pain points and offer a solution:

54. Pizza Hut: “Feed your guests without breaking the bank”
55. IKEA: “Where do all these toys go?”
56. IKEA: “Get more kitchen space with these easy fixes”
57. HP: “Stop wasting money on ink”
58. Sephora: “Your beauty issues, solved”
59. Uber: “Since we can’t all win the lottery…”
60. Thrillist: “How to Survive Your Next Overnight Flight”
61. Guess: “Wanted: Cute and affordable fashions”
62. Evernote: “Stop wasting time on mindless work”
63. Duolingo: “Learn a language with only 5 minutes per day”

Retargeting Email Subject Lines

Retargeting emails are sent to subscribers when they fail to complete an action or a step in your sales funnel (e.g., when they abandon their cart or fail to purchase after their free trial). These emails serve to bring your subscribers back to your sales process.

You can write effective retargeting subject lines by overcoming objections, offering something to sweeten the deal, or alerting them that something bad will happen if they don’t take action.

Here are some excellent examples of retargeting email subject lines:

64. Nick Stephenson: “How you can afford Your First 10,000 Readers (closing tonight)”
65. Bonobos: “Hey, forget something? Here’s 20% off.”
66. Target: “The price dropped for something in your cart”
67. Syed from Envira: “Mary, your Envira account is on hold!”
68. Syed from Envira: “I’m deleting your Envira account”
69. Ugmonk: “Offering you my personal email”
70. Animoto: “Did you miss out on some of these new features?”
71. Pinterest: “Good News: Your Pin’s price dropped!”
72. Unroll.Me: “ Unroll.Me has stopped working”
73. Vivino: “We are not gonna Give Up on You!”

Personalized Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines that use personalization by including a name boost open rates by 10-14% across industries.

But including your subscriber’s name is only one way to make personalized subject lines. You can also use casual language, share something personal, or use copy that implies familiarity or friendship.

Here are some examples of personal email subject lines that work:

74. Guess: “Mary, check out these hand-picked looks”
75. Rent the Runway: “Happy Birthday Mary – Surprise Inside!”
76. Bonnie Fahy: “Mary, do you remember me?”
77. Kimra Luna: “I didn’t see your name in the comments!?”
78. John Lee Dumas: “Are you coming?”
79. UrbanDaddy: “You’ve Changed”
80. Influitive: “So I’ll pick you up at 7?”
81. James Malinchak: “Crazy Invitation, I am Going to Buy You Lunch…”
82. Brooklinen: “Vanilla or Chocolate?”
83. Sam from The Hustle: “I love you”
84. Ryan Levesque: “Seriously, Who DOES This?”
85. Jon Morrow: “Quick favor?”
86. Mary Fernandez: “you free this Thurs at 12PM PST? [guest blogging class]”
87. Mary Fernandez: “? your detailed results…”
88. Syed from OptinMonster: “300% increase in revenue with a single optin + a neat growth trick from my mastermind!”
89. Revolution Tea: “Thanks for helping us”
90. Harry’s: “Two razors for your friends (on us)”

Straightforward Email Subject Lines

When in doubt, make your subject line simple. Contrary to what you might think, these “boring” subject lines can convert well.

The key to making this work for your list is consistently providing value in your emails. Only send an email if you have something important to say: always make sure your campaigns are packed with value. If you do this, you’ll train your subscribers to open your emails no matter what the subject line says.

For help with writing better emails, check out our post on 19 quick and dirty tricks for writing better emails.

Here are a few examples of email marketing subject lines that get straight to the point:

91. Al Franken: “Yes, this is a fundraising email”
92. AYR: “Best coat ever”
93. Barack Obama: “Hey”

And these “boring” subject lines performed the highest out of 40 million emails, with open rates between 60-87%.

94. “[Company Name] Sales & Marketing Newsletter”
95. “Eye on the [Company Name] Update (Oct 31 – Nov 4)”
96. “[Company Name] Staff Shirts & Photos”
97. “[Company Name] May 2005 News Bulletin!”
98. “[Company Name] Newsletter – February 2006”
99. “[Company Name] and [Company Name] Invites You!”
100. “Happy Holidays from [Company Name]”
101. “Invitation from [Company Name]”

Sales Email Subject Lines

Sales email subject lines are specifically crafted to promote and sell a product or service to potential customers.

These subject lines grab the recipient’s attention and create a sense of urgency or exclusivity. They often use phrases like “limited time,” “exclusive offer,” or “sneak peek” to entice the recipient to open the email and take advantage of the promotion.

They often include a clear call to action, such as “Shop now” or “Learn more,” to encourage the recipient to take action and purchase.

Here are a few examples of effective sales email subject lines that work very well:

102. “Limited time offer: Get 20% off your first purchase!”
103. “Don’t miss out on our biggest sale of the year!”
104. “Sneak peek: Introducing our newest product line”
105. “Upgrade your [product/service] and save 10%”
106. “Exclusive offer: Buy one, get one free!”

Newsletter Email Subject Lines

Newsletter email subject lines are used to promote and share regular updates, news, or information with subscribers.

Newsletters, often sent regularly, such as weekly or monthly, are intended to keep subscribers engaged and informed about the latest developments related to the brand or industry.

Here are a few examples of newsletter email subject lines:

107. “Stay in the know: Our monthly newsletter is here!”
108. “5 must-read articles for this week”
109. “New product announcement: Be the first to know”
110. “Your weekly dose of inspiration and motivation”
111. “Exclusive content: Subscribe to our newsletter for access”

Learn more about newsletters in the following articles:

• How To Create An Email Newsletter in 5 EASY Steps
• 27 Awesome Newsletter Ideas That Will Keep Subscribers Engaged

Follow-up Email Subject Lines

Follow-up email subject lines are used to remind or follow up with a recipient after an initial email has been sent. They are often used for cold emails in sales or networking situations, where a prompt response is needed to close a deal or establish a relationship.

Here are a few examples of follow-up email subject lines that work:

112. “Quick follow-up on our meeting”
113. “Just wanted to touch base on [topic]”
114. “Checking in on your progress”
115. “Friendly reminder: [Action needed]”
116. “Don’t miss out: Last chance to [offer]”

Cold Email Subject Lines

Cold email subject lines are used to outreach prospects or potential customers. They are often used in sales or networking situations where the goal is to generate leads or establish new business relationships.

These types of subject lines are designed to be personalized, brief, and intriguing. They often use phrases like “introducing,” “would you be interested,” or “let’s chat” to communicate the purpose of the email in a friendly and non-invasive manner.

They often include a clear value proposition or a statement of how the sender can help the recipient further establish the potential benefits of engaging with the email.

Here are a few examples of cold email subject lines:

117. “Introducing [Product/Service] – A solution to your [problem]”
118. “Would you be interested in [Value proposition]?”
119. “Can we help you achieve [Goal]?”
120. “Let’s chat about [Topic]”
121. “Reaching out to explore a potential partnership”

Top Email Subject Line Keywords

Many studies have analyzed the effectiveness of using specific email subject line keywords. Use these keywords to boost your open rates even further when crafting your email copy and subject lines.

According to Alchemy Worx, which analyzed 21 billion emails sent by 2,500 brands, the top five most effective subject line keywords were:

122. “upgrade”
123. “just”
124. “content”
125. “go”
126. “wonderful”

In another study from Alchemy Worx, which analyzed 24.6 billion emails, the top subject line keywords for open rates were:

127. “jokes”
128. “promotional”
129. “congratulations”
130. “revision”
131. “forecast”
132. “snapshot”
133. “token”
134. “voluntary”
135. “monthly”
136. “deduction”

Based on Digital Marketer’s analysis of 125 million emails, some top subject line keywords to try are:

137. “free”
138. “ICYMI”
139. “$ today, $$$ tomorrow”
140. numbers (e.g. “7-figure plan”, “212 ideas”, “60 minutes or less”)
141. [brackets] (e.g. “[EMAIL MARKETERS] $95 today, $995 tomorrow,” “[In Case You Missed It] Our best-performing blog post of all time,” “[NAME’s Last Reminder] Up to 90% off our best-selling products gone in 3…2…1…”)

Adestra analyzed over 2.2 billion emails and found the following top subject line keywords:

142. “free delivery”
143. “available”
144. “new”
145. “alert”
146. “news”
147. “update”
148. “summer”
149. “weekend”

In another study from Adestra, which looked at over 125K email campaigns, the top-performing subject line keywords were:

150. “thank you”
151. “*|*|*|*|” (i.e. a subject line that has multiple stories delineated by pipes. For example, “Headline 1 | Headline 2 | Headline 3 | Headline 4”)
152. “monthly”
153. “thanks”
154. “*|*|*|”
155. “bulletin”
156. “golden”
157. “iPhone”
158. “breaking”
159. “order today”

Finally, a report by Smart Insights looked at a random sample of 700 million emails and found that the top-performing subject line keywords were:

160. “introducing”
161. “celebrate”
162. “buy”
163. “continues”
164. “get your”
165. “what…?”
166. “won’t…?”
167. “do…?”
168. “can…?”
169. “may…?”
170. “on orders over”
171. “orders over”
172. “off selected”
173. “your next order”
174. “available”
175. “brand new”
176. “latest”
177. “special”
178. “wonderful”
179. “great deals”
180. “sale starts”
181. “back in stock”
182. “stock”
183. “sale now”
184. “now in”

Did you knowOptinMonster works on any website, but it’s also got the best WordPress popup plugin on the market. Learn about the OptinMonster Effect and how we can help you get more subscribers and customers in 3 simple steps!

Best Practices for Email Subject Lines

Following these email subject line best practices, you can craft subject lines that grab your audience’s attention, increase open rates, and drive engagement.

• Segment Your Audience: Tailor your subject lines to different audience segments based on their interests and behaviors. This can increase open rates and engagement.
• Avoid Spam Trigger Words: Avoid using words that are commonly associated with spam, such as “cash,” “earn money,” “free,” or “act now.” These can trigger spam filters and cause your email to be marked as spam, ultimately affecting your email deliverability. This applies to both the subject line and the body of the email.
• Be Clear and Specific: Your subject line should indicate the content and purpose of the email. Avoid vague or overly general subject lines that don’t give the recipient a good idea of what to expect.
• Use Action-Oriented Language: Use strong verbs and action-oriented language to create a sense of urgency and encourage the recipient to take action. This can include words like “limited time offer,” “urgent,” “today only,” or “ending soon.”
• Use Personalization: Include the recipient’s name or other personalized information to make the email more relevant and personalized.
• Keep A/B Testing: A/B test different subject lines to see what works best for your audience. Try different lengths, formats, and styles to see what resonates with your subscribers.

Common Mistakes To Avoid in Email Subject Lines

When you’re creating that perfect email subject line, try to avoid the following mistakes:

• Using Clickbait or Deceptive Language: Avoid using misleading or exaggerated language to entice the recipient to open the email.
• Using All Caps or Excessive Punctuation: Using all caps or excessive punctuation can make the subject line appear spammy and turn off recipients.
• Making False Promises: Only promise something in the subject line delivered in the email’s body.
• Being Too Vague or Generic: Make sure the subject line is specific and provides value to the recipient.

3 Bonus Tips for Crafting Catchy Email Subject Lines

Before choosing a subject line at random, remember these tips for the highest possible open rates.

1. Most People Open Emails on Mobile

Regardless of which of the above techniques you use, make sure your subject line is optimized for mobile users.

While mobile access to email saw a dip at the end of 2018, it’s still the preferred way people access their email.

You can use free marketing tools like Zurb’s TestSubject to see how your subject line will appear on various popular mobile devices.

2. Originality is Key

Also, remember that being original is the key to sustainable success with your email subject lines.

The truth is subscribers get bored easily. If you want to engage first-time openers and long-term inactive subscribers, you don’t want them to read your subject line and think, “There’s that weekly newsletter again that I always ignore.”

You should keep things fresh and exciting. And writing good subject lines for emails is the best way to do that.

3. Try Out Emojis

According to a report by Experian, using emojis in your subject lines can increase your open rates by 45%.

We’ve also been testing this at OptinMonster, and we can confirm that the email subject lines with emojis beat the plain text ones!

Here are the top 15 emojis by subject line appearance.

These aren’t necessarily the “best” ones but the most popular. You can get creative with emojis and emoji combinations for your email subject lines.

That’s it! We hope you found these 184 best subject lines for emails helpful in creating your next subject line. If you did, consider downloading the cheat sheet, so you can always have this guide handy.

Email subject lines are critical to any email marketing campaign, especially for those in the eCommerce industry. They can make or break the success of an email campaign, especially during peak sales events like Black Friday.

Now it’s your turn. Choose one of the subject line examples above to modify and make your own.

Consider incorporating top subject line keywords to boost your newsletter open rates even more.

Need to send a newsletter? Learn how to create and send your first email newsletter with our guide.

Looking for the best bulk email services to help you reach a wider target audience? Check out the Top 10 Best Bulk Emails Services.

If you enjoyed this article, you should also check out the following blog posts:

• 8 Product Recommendation Email Examples to Drive Sales
• 30 Content Upgrade Ideas to Grow Your Email List
• Email Subject Line Statistics To Help You Maximize Your Open Rates
• 27 Abandoned Cart Email Subject Lines PROVEN to Convert
• 29 Best Email Automation Tools to Transform Your Business

I’ve worked in digital marketing for over 15 years, and I’ve learned an important lesson: the words I write don’t matter if I can’t convince the audience to read them. Strong, evocative visuals are your best tools for catching users’ attention. And when you weave those images into a compelling narrative, you can build a strong foundation for a lasting relationship with your brand.

• What Is Visual Storytelling?
• 8 Visual Storytelling Elements (& Their Benefits)
• 5 Visual Storytelling Examples
• 6 Tips for Visual Storytellers

What Is Visual Storytelling?

Visual storytelling is the art of using photos, graphics, videos, and other visual elements to convey a narrative and connect with an audience. By integrating visual media into your marketing content, you can communicate messages more quickly and effectively.

Visual storytelling captures attention, evokes emotions, and enhances engagement. It helps you express complex ideas more simply and memorably. Audiences are constantly bombarded with content, and you can use visual narratives to stand out and ensure your story resonates with users.

8 Visual Storytelling Elements (& Their Benefits)

“Visual” is a broad term, so let’s look at some of the specific elements, types, and methods of visual storytelling. Each elements can tell a story on its own. However, they’re often combined to create an engaging, multi-faceted visual narrative.

1. Photos (Preferably of People)

Photos of people can evoke strong emotions and create a personal connection with your audience. For example, this email campaign from Habitat for Humanity features a photo of a new Habitat homeowner:

Habitat wanted subscribers to click the “Yes, I’ll help!” call-to-action (CTA). The photo of a real-life beneficiary encourages subscribers to act.

In fact, one A/B test showed that using a photo of a person can increase conversion rates by more than 95%.

2. Graphics and Illustrations

You can still create visual narratives even if you don’t have good photos to use. Graphics and illustrations can be very effective in adding interest, breaking up text, and creating meaning.

Here are a few examples of graphics that are useful in visual storytelling:

• Iconography: Simple, recognizable symbols used to represent complex ideas quickly and clearly.
• Maps: Often used to show locations, distribution, or the reach of a brand.
• Custom Illustrations: Unique drawings or designs that represent specific ideas. They add a personalized touch to storytelling.
• Pull quote graphics: Images that highlight important quotes in your narrative.

3. Animations

Animations can simplify complex concepts and make your story more engaging and eye-catching. For example, we added animation to this video about the benefits of website popups:

The video starts by acknowledging that poorly designed popups can be very annoying. At the 12-second mark, we illustrate that point with an animation of a bunch of popups blocking the video. The animation shows what we’re talking about much more effectively than just explaining it with words. Plus, it makes the video livelier and more dynamic.

4. Visual Timelines

Visual timelines are great methods for showcasing your brand’s history or progression. They organize information chronologically, making it easier for your audience to follow and understand the story. Timelines can be particularly effective in demonstrating growth or change over time.

When you simply list accomplishments or events in paragraph form, you end up with a wall of text that’s unengaging and intimidating. A timeline lets you present the same information in a more appealing and digestible way.

5. Scrollytelling

Scrollytelling is an interactive visual storytelling technique, where information is revealed dynamically as the user scrolls. Scrollytelling can include any and all of the other visual elements I’m listing here.

In a Scrollytelling narrative, the reader’s scrolling triggers animations, transitions, and changes in content presentation. As users scroll down the page, new elements appear, move, or change, guiding them through the story in a visually compelling way.

Chartipedia’s “Deedive into the Venezuela Refugee Crisis” is a great example of effective Scrollytelling.

This technique is particularly effective for explaining complex processes, showcasing step-by-step guides, or telling a story that benefits from a chronological flow. Scrollytelling is especially popular in journalism because it can present a great deal of information and research.

6. Video

87% of video marketers say that video has directly increased their sales. That statistic shows just how powerful video can be in encouraging action and engagement. Obviously, video is its own format of visual storytelling. But video can also include animations, photos, and graphics. And video can be included in scrollytelling or visual timelines.

7. Data Charts & Graphs

If your story is backed by data, then charts and graphs can make that information accessible and understandable. They help highlight trends, patterns, and comparisons, and they allow your audience to grasp complex information quickly. Examples include bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, heat maps, scatter plots, and more.

8. Infographics

Infographics are standalone, sharable graphics that provide visual information on a topic. They often include multiple charts or graphs, along with text and images to provide an overview of a concept.

For instance, an infographic could explain the process of recycling. It could use various charts to show statistics, along with illustrations and text to guide the reader through the information. Usually, the infographic will include branding and source information, so you can encourage sharing and increase brand awareness.

5 Visual Storytelling Examples

Next, let’s take a look at some effective examples of visual storytelling. I’ve chosen a wide range of formats with varying degrees of complexity. That way, you can learn from them whether you’re a beginner or an experienced visual storyteller.

For each example, I’ll discuss its purpose, elements, and effectiveness. In fact, the final example is an email campaign that I created, and I’ll share the strategy, motivation, and tools behind the campaign.

1. 30-Year Timeline Video by Women for Women International

About the Brand: Women for Women International (WfWI)is a nonprofit that helps women survivors of war and conflict around the world.

Purpose of the Story: By outlining the organization’s 30-year history, WfWI demonstrates a long track record of advocacy and aid. This strategy helps build trust with prospective donors.

Visual Storytelling Elements: This video includes several elements: a timeline, maps, photos of people, data graphs, and animation.

What You Can Learn: Combine multiple visual elements to tell your full story. This video really shows the full scope of WfWI’s work:

1. The timeline shows their influence through time.
2. The map graphics illustrate their efforts around the world.
3. The photos of individual women highlight that WfWI improves the lives of real women.

2. Marmot’s Brand Story

About the Brand: Marmot is an outdoor gear company with a 50-year history.

Purpose of the Story: The “Our Story” page on Marmot’s website focuses on the history of their brand. It introduces the company’s founders and highlights some of the brand’s biggest innovations. This timeline establishes the company’s position as a leader in the outdoor gear industry.

Visual Storytelling Elements: Marmot uses a simple timeline format. The timeline features photos of their founders and of real people using their products.

What You Can Learn: Visual storytelling doesn’t have to be highly technical or complex. Even a simple layout with lots of photos can be enough to establish a strong narrative. That said, the text beneath each year could benefit from better formatting to improve readability.

3. Scrollytelling Journalism by NBC News

About the Brand: NBC News has been a leading U.S. news broadcaster since 1940.

Purpose of the Story: This piece of investigative journalism explains the history of segregation in Detroit, Michigan, including the construction of a physical wall.

Visual Storytelling Elements: This article uses scrollytelling to create an interactive experience. That experience includes historical photos, videos, and documents. There are several interactive maps, including one that moves forward in time as the user scrolls.

What You Can Learn: NBC News’ story shows the full power of scrollytelling and interactive visuals. You may not have the time or resources to create visual narratives this complex very often. But the effort can be worth it for your most important stories.

4. Year-in-Review Infographic by ACCEL Law Group

About the Brand: ACCEL Law Group is a law firm that focuses on insurance intermediaries.

Purpose of the Story: ACCEL’s Year in Review illustrates the firm’s success for its clients, its growth, and its pro bono work. Essentially, this infographic tells the story of what the company achieved in a single year.

Visual Storytelling Elements: This is an example of a simple and effective infographic with bold colors, easy-to-read text, and clean graphics.

What You Can Learn: Infographics are a great way to share data about your brand. Their strength comes in their versatility: you can use them on your website, in your email marketing, on social media, or even in printed promotional materials.

5. “Meet the Cast” Email from Tennessee Valley Art Association

About the Brand: The Tennessee Valley Art Association (TVAA) is a nonprofit dedicated to the visual and performing arts in northern Alabama. I once held the role of Marketing Director for TVAA.

Purpose of the Story: In this email marketing campaign, I wanted to build excitement for the final 3 performances of our production of The Drowsy Chaperone. The musical was part of TVAA’s SummerStock series, which provides training and performance opportunities for young adult performers.

I decided to send a series of “Meet the Cast” emails featuring interviews with performers. I designed each email to promote ticket sales and tell a story about TVAA’s impact on a real person in our community. In Larissa’s interview, she talked about how SummerStock gave her an opportunity to get back to her love of performing after several years away.

Visual Elements: I had access to some excellent photos from dress rehearsals and performances. These images were vital to telling the story of Larissa’s return to the stage. I used Canva to create the graphic above, which I placed at the top of the email. I wanted the graphic to feature an emotional pull quote and establish the email’s content. I also included more photos throughout the email, interspersed with Larissa’s interview answers.

What You Can Learn: Always look for opportunities to tell personal stories about your brand’s impact. And use high-quality photos to draw your audience into your story. This visual narrative didn’t require advanced technical skills. It just needed a compelling story and some beautiful, joyful photos.

6 Tips for Visual Storytellers

1. Know Your Audience

Before you begin crafting your visual storytelling content, you need to understand your target audience. You should know who they are, what they care about, and how they interact with your content. That way, you can create visuals that resonate and engage.

2. Craft a Compelling Narrative

Next, decide on the story you want to tell. A well-crafted narrative is the backbone of effective visual storytelling. Your story should be clear, consistent, and emotionally engaging to leave a lasting impact on your audience.

Let’s look at each of those elements more closely:

• Clear Message: Define the core message you want to express. What do you want your audience to remember? For example, your message could be showcasing a product’s benefits, highlighting your brand’s mission, or sharing a success story.
• Consistency: Make sure your narrative aligns with your brand’s voice and values. Stay consistent in your tone, style, and messaging across all visual elements. This reinforces your brand identity and builds trust with your audience.
• Emotional Connection: Use stories that evoke emotions relevant to your audience. People are more likely to remember and share content that makes them feel something, whether it’s joy, nostalgia, empathy, or inspiration. Craft your narrative to connect with these emotions and make your story memorable.

3. Use High-Quality Visuals

High-quality visuals are great for capturing attention. They’re also key to showcasing your company’s professionalism. When you invest in top-notch images, graphics, and videos, you’ll elevate your visual storytelling. Earlier, I shared one of my own email campaigns that featured professional photos of an actress performing in a musical. If those photos had been out-of-focus or poorly lit, my visual narrative wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact. They also wouldn’t have done justice to the musical’s production quality.

4. Combine Various Visual Elements

I’ve already gone over many of the different visual storytelling elements, such as photos, animations, videos, and infographics. By mixing and matching these formats, you can create a richer and more engaging narrative.

5. Optimize for Your Chosen Platforms

Different platforms require different approaches to visual storytelling. Tailor your visuals to the format and audience of each platform, so your content is seen and appreciated by as many people as possible.

• Social Media: Each social media platform has its own audience and content format requirements. For example, Instagram favors high-quality photos and short videos, while LinkedIn is more suited to infographics and professional visuals. Optimize your visuals for the platform to maximize engagement.
• Website: Ensure that your website’s visuals are optimized for fast loading and mobile compatibility. High-resolution images and videos can slow down your site, so use tools like Tinify to compress files without losing quality. Also, ensure that your visuals are responsive so they look great on any device.
• Email Marketing: Use visuals to enhance email content and increase engagement. Incorporate images, GIFs, and infographics to make your emails more visually appealing. However, be mindful of file sizes to avoid long loading times.

6. Test and Adjust

Visual storytelling is not a one-and-done effort. To truly succeed, you must continually test, analyze, and refine your visuals.

• A/B Testing: Experiment with different visuals to see what resonates best with your audience. A/B testing allows you to compare two versions of a visual element to determine which one performs better. Use these insights to regularly optimize your visual content.
• Analyze Performance: Use analytics to measure the success of your visual storytelling. Track metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge how well your visuals are performing.
• Continuous Improvement: Regularly update and refine your visuals based on performance data. Trends and audience preferences can change over time, so it’s important to stay flexible and adapt your visual storytelling strategy as needed.

Use Visual Storytelling to Get More Leads

Once you’ve created some outstanding visual narratives, you’ll drive more engaged visitors to your website. Your evocative storytelling will have them interested in your brand and ready to learn more. What next?

OptinMonster is the most effective tool for turning website visitors into customers and subscribers. You can use our popups, floating bars, and other onsite campaigns to show visitors your best offers. Our robust display rules let you target your most engaged visitors right when they’re ready to act.

With our 700+ templates and easy drag-and-drop builder, you can have a high-converting campaign running on your site in minutes. Sign up for OptinMonster today, with our 14-day money-back guarantee.

Related Resources:

• 38 Free Visual Content Creation Tools To Make Marketing Easy
• 27 Important Video Marketing Statistics
• Which Is the Best CTA Button Color? 3 Proven Ways to Get More Clicks
• 11 Web Design Principles That Can Boost Your Conversion Rate

Wondering what is IndexNow and whether you need it for your site? IndexNow is a new way that helps you index your content instantly to rank fast in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

In this article, we’ll help you understand what exactly IndexNow is and everything else you’ll need to know about it.

Before that, let’s take a look at what indexing means.

What is Indexing?

Indexing is the process followed by search engines, that store and organize information in order to enable super-fast responses to user queries.

Without indexing, delivering a relevant result for a search query would be an inefficient and time-consuming process.

With indexing, since information is stored in an index, a database, search engines can rank the pages based on relevancy and offer better and faster results when someone performs a search.

What Is IndexNow for SEO and How It Works?

IndexNow is a technology that instantly alerts search engines about new or updated website content. This speeds up the process of getting your content discovered, compared to traditional methods that rely on search engines to find your content on their own.

It means that search engines can now prioritize crawling for these updated URLs while limiting organic crawling to discover new content.

Currently, the IndexNow feature is supported by Bing and Yandex search engines. And a Google spokesperson confirmed that they’re testing IndexNow to check its overall sustainability.

As a website owner, IndexNow allows you to index content faster so it appears in the relevant search results as soon as you publish it.

Now that you know what IndexNow is, you might be wondering, “How can I add IndexNow to my site?“.

How to Add IndexNow to Your Website

Adding IndexNow to your WordPress site can be intimidating if you’re not a developer.

In order to enable Index on your site, you’ll need to generate an API key and host the key manually by adding it to your public_html folder in the form of a text file.

However, adding IndexNow shouldn’t be that hard.

Thankfully, there’s a more straightforward method available, and that is to use a plugin.

For a detailed guide, check out how to enable IndexNow in WordPress.

Add IndexNow with AIOSEO Plugin

One of the easiest ways to add IndexNow to your website is to use the All in One SEO plugin. It’s one of the best SEO plugins trusted by over 3 million websites.

All in One SEO is built to make search engine optimization easy for every WordPress user. Some of the popular features of the AIOSEO plugin are:

• SEO Audit: AIOSEO comes with an SEO audit feature that performs technical analysis and shows you the areas for improving your website SEO.
• TruSEO: Optimize the posts, pages, and products using AIOSEO’s TruSEO feature and improve the on-page SEO of your content.
• Link Assistant: With the link assistant tool, you get a clear view of all your website’s internal and external links.
• Search Appearance: It helps you create a business knowledge graph and display your business details in the search results.
• Local SEO: You can rank your business higher in the local business search results.

And many more.

Let’s dive into the steps for implementing IndexNow using the All in One SEO plugin.

But before we start, note that AIOSEO introduced the IndexNow feature in version 4.1.7. So, you’ll need to update the plugin to the recent version.

Once you’ve updated the plugin, navigate to the Feature Manager menu.

Now, activate the IndexNow feature.

The next step is to verify the API key by going to the General Settings» Webmaster tools.

Select the IndexNow box and click on the Save Changes button.

That’s it!

You’ve successfully enabled IndexNow on your website using the All in One SEO plugin.

While using the AIOSEO plugin is the best way to add the IndexNow feature, there’s also another method available that you might want to check out.

Add IndexNow with Bing’s IndexNow Plugin

Since Microsoft initiated IndexNow for the Bing search engine, they’ve created a plugin for adding the IndexNow feature to WordPress websites.

You can find the IndexNow plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.

Install the plugin just like you install any other plugin.

Navigate to Settings » IndexNow from the dashboard and click on the Get Started button.

The plugin automatically generates the host API key and ping search engines when you update the content.

You can check the IndexNow stats for successful and failed URLs within the plugin dashboard.

However, the most important reason for using AIOSEO over the Bing IndexNow plugin is that AIOSEO is a dedicated SEO plugin and comes with many crucial SEO features.

We hope this guide helped you learn how what IndexNow is and why it’s needed.

If you liked this article, consider checking out some similar topics to improve your website’s overall SEO performance:

• All in One SEO (AIOSEO) Review
• How to Add IndexNow in WordPress for Fast Content Indexing
• 15 Best SEO Plugins You Need to Have to Get More Traffic

What are you waiting for? Get started with All in One SEO Today!

If you liked this article, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more free WordPress articles.

1000 is the number of subscribers you need to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program and start making money from your video content.

If you just started a YouTube channel, building a following from scratch can be frustrating. It may be tempting to take the shortcut and simply buy YouTube subs from a subscription purchasing site.

Don’t worry, though. We’re here to give you concrete tips on how to grow your subscriber count and reach your channel’s goals.

You don’t have to buy YouTube subscribers to get your channel going. There are many easy ways you can get more YouTube subscribers for free. Plus, you can use low-cost tools and software that will not only grow your YouTube following but will also improve your overall digital marketing.

In this article, we’ll share 13 steps to get your first 1000 YouTube subscribers, plus 1 bonus suggestion.

How to Get Subscribers on Youtube

1. Add a Video Feed to Your Homepage
2. Promote Your Channel With Website Popups
3. Keep Content Consistent
4. Customize Your YouTube Channel
5. Upload Videos on a Schedule
6. Make Eye-Catching Thumbnails
7. Create Searchable Titles
8. Create Playlists
9. Ask Viewers to Subscribe
10. Promote on Social Media
11. Join Online Communities
12. Comment on Other Videos
13. Host a Giveaway
14. BONUS: Use YouTube Analytics

Benefits of Reaching 1000 YouTube Subscriptions

Is monetization a goal for your YouTube channel? If so, then you must join the YouTube Partner Program (YPP).

The program has 2 main requirements:

• Your channel must reach a subscriber count of 1000
  AND
• Your channel must have either
  • 4000 watch time hours over the last year
    OR
  • 10 million views of YouTube Shorts

Once you’ve reached these milestones, you can apply for YPP. The average time for YouTube to review an application is 1 month. If approved, you’ll have access to these features and benefits:

• Make money off YouTube ads.
• Promote products directly to viewers through YouTube Shopping.
• Unlock Fan Funding features, such as Super Thanks and Channel Memberships. Fan funding lets viewers pay you money directly.
• Get better tech support with access to the Creator Support team

YPP is the only way you can use YouTube to earn revenue, so reaching 1000 subscribers is crucial.

Why You Should Earn Subscribers Organically (and Not Buy Them)

Sure, you can get subscribers fast if you simply buy them from a service. But there are 3 primary reasons why you should opt to earn free YouTube subscribers.

1. YouTube has a Fake Engagement Policy that prohibits artificially inflating your subscription, likes, or other metrics. When you buy subscribers, you risk having your channel banned.
2. When you’ve truly earned your subscribers, they’ll be more engaged with your video content. Free YouTube subscribers have chosen to give you a spot on their subscription feed because they WANT to see more of your content.
3. When you buy YouTube subscriptions, sure, you can reach 1000 followers quickly. But then what? You won’t have any of the groundwork in place to continue to grow. When you do the work to gain your first 1000 subscribers organically, you’ll be well-positioned to build a successful channel.

But how do you get started gaining free subscribers for YouTube channels? Thankfully, we’re here to share some great ideas to get more subscriptions fast.

How to Get Subscribers on Youtube

Before we dive into our list, let’s answer 1 important question:

Why should you listen to us?

OptinMonster is the world’s best lead generation software. Over 1.2 million users have chosen our software to create popups and signup forms on their websites.

Generating leads is our business, and new subscribers are the ultimate lead for a YouTube channel.

Video marketing has been part of our digital marketing plan since the beginning. In fact, we created our YouTube channel in 2013, the very year that we launched our product.

That means we have 10 years of experience in maintaining and growing a YouTube channel. But we have a confession:

We weren’t very successful at first.

A few years ago, we increased our focus on growing our YouTube subs. After a bit of trial and error, we finally cracked the code and started seeing real success.

In 2022, we grew our subscriber count by 33%. And you can see in the chart below that our YouTube subscriptions have continued to skyrocket in 2023.

These are huge jumps for a channel that’s been around for a decade.

We’ve had time to see what works and what doesn’t. We not only know how to get YouTube subscribers, but we also know how to position your channel for long-term success.

We’re excited to share the strategies we’ve used to increase our subscribers by 25.54% over the last 365 days.

Now, let’s explore the best ways to get those first 1000 YouTube subscriptions!

1. Add a Video Feed On Your Website’s Homepage

If you already have a website that gets some consistent traffic each month, then you’ve got the perfect solution to finding your first few subscribers.

In other words, promote your YouTube channel in a way that lets you leverage the traffic you already have. The best tool for displaying your YouTube feed on a website is Smash Balloon:

Smash Balloon is the world’s leading social media feed plugin for WordPress. It allows you to display a customizable feed for:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube

This means that you can quickly and easily embed a feed of your YouTube content on your website. Every time someone visits your site, they’ll see the kind of content you create and how high-quality it is.

Not only will this grow your channel’s subscribers, but it will also increase the amount of time visitors spend on your website. That can help boost your domain authority and ultimately help with your SEO efforts.

Pricing for Smash Balloon’s YouTube feed plugin starts at just $49/year.

Instead of buying YouTube subs, you can invest in a tool that will provide for long-term growth AND improve your website.

Get started with Smash Balloon today!

2. Use Website Popups to Promote Your Channel

You don’t have to change the layout of your homepage to promote your YouTube channel on your website. With OptinMonster, you can create popups that catch your users’ attention and show them relevant video content.

Using OptinMonster, you can create a lightbox popup and use our Show a Video template to add a YouTube video to your popup.

The image above is exactly what this template looks like right out of the box. You simply change which video you want to feature.

The popup defaults to including an email optin form. You can easily change this to a bold call-to-action (CTA) button that links to your YouTube channel. Your CTA button text could read “See More Videos,” “Watch More Tutorials,” or whatever message best describes your channel.

With our drag-and-drop builder, you can easily have a video popup up and running on your website in just 5 minutes. No coding required!

Since the visitors to your website are already aware of you and your content, they’ll be more likely to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

With OptinMonster’s robust targeting and triggering options, you can be strategic in which videos you show and when.

Here are a few examples of smart popup campaigns to help you get more YouTube subscribers:

• Use our Page-Level Targeting to show the most relevant videos to each website visitor. For instance, you can create popups that feature videos that are related to the blog post, product page, or tutorial that your visitor is looking at.
• Show new visitors a welcome message that features a friendly greeting video. You can use this video to establish a friendly brand voice, introduce users to your offerings, and illustrate the helpfulness of your YouTube channel.
• Instead of using a traditional popup, create a floating bar campaign that encourages visitors to subscribe to your YouTube channel. A floating bar will keep your CTA accessible as the user continues to browse your website.

And these are just examples of promoting your video content. OptinMonster can also transform your email marketing by helping you build a strong email list. You can use our popups to showcase coupons, offer lead magnets, and reduce site and cart abandonment.

With plans starting at just $9 a month, OptinMonster is an inexpensive way to help you reach 1000 YouTube subscribers while skyrocketing your overall lead generation.

3. Keep Your Content Consistent

None of your promotion efforts will matter if you don’t have a strong vision for your channel.

As you’re creating new videos, you need to make sure they fit with your target niche.

If you upload a random vlog one day, a gaming video the next, and a cooking video right after, users won’t know what to expect from your channel. And if they don’t know what your YouTube channel is about, they’ll be less likely to subscribe.

In the end, you may get a bunch of random page views, but you won’t have any long-term subscribers.

Instead, you need to give viewers a reason to subscribe to your channel by choosing a channel theme.

For example, subscribers to our YouTube channel at OptinMonster know that we’ll consistently post videos on how to increase leads and conversions:

As a result, when viewers want to learn how to grow their email list or get more sales from their website, they know they can come to our channel. We’re casting a specific net with our videos. We want subscribers who already use our product or who are interested in learning more about it.

Choosing a niche for your YouTube channel will give your channel more focus and help you find your target audience more easily.

There are many different types of YouTube channels you can create. Some of the most popular YouTube genres are:

• Vlogging
• Cooking
• Gaming
• Tech
• Comedy
• Travel
• Beauty and Fashion
• Reactions and Commentary

Of course, don’t let this list limit you. You can create a successful YouTube channel on just about anything you’re passionate about.

Take this channel, Clean My Space, for example. It’s a whole video series dedicated to cleaning:

When you choose a channel topic you enjoy, your passion will shine through, and viewers will rush to subscribe.

If you need help finding a niche for your channel, you may want to read this article: YouTube for Business: How to Start and Optimize Your Channel.

4. Customize Your YouTube Channel Page

Once you choose a channel topic, you need to attract your first subscribers by completing your profile and customizing your channel page. A fully customized page communicates your brand image. It also demonstrates a level of professionalism. That’s especially important for new pages that don’t have many subscribers yet.

Here are a few ways to customize your page:

• Upload a high-quality profile image and banner image for your channel art
• Once you’ve reached 100 subscribers, create a custom URL
• Complete your About section with a concise description of your video content
• Create a channel trailer

A channel trailer is a short video that you can upload to help viewers quickly understand what your channel is about.

Plus, channel trailers are set to auto-play for users who aren’t subscribed to your channel, so it’s a powerful way to turn viewers into subscribers.

And remember, these trailers don’t have to be Hollywood-style big-budget productions. They can be simple, engaging videos that explain your niche or core product.

On our channel, we try to help users with a general video, What Does OptinMonster Do?

This helps first-time users get a sense of what our product is and what our content will be about. If it’s something of interest to them, they’ll be more likely to check out other videos on our channel and subscribe.

But what if people aren’t totally convinced based on your trailer? How can you give them a nudge toward subscribing?

That’s where an awesome About section comes in handy.

Your About section allows you to tell users about yourself and why they should subscribe to your channel. You can also add keywords to your channel description. That will help users find your channel more easily.

This is just like optimizing your on-page content for search engines like Google and for searches within YouTube. With just a bit of keyword research, you can help more people find your channel.

When a user types in a keyword like “yoga” into the YouTube search bar, channels that optimize the word “yoga” in the About page will be more likely to appear in the results.

Use your channel trailer and your About section to help users find your channel, connect with your target audience, and get more subscribers.

Check out this article to learn how to create a killer About page on your website!

5. Make an Upload Schedule and Stick to It

If a user finds your channel and sees that your last video was uploaded 2 months ago, they’re probably not going to subscribe.

YouTube users want consistency. When you upload videos on a regular schedule, you show new viewers that you’re worth a subscription.

So, if you want to gain subscribers fast, your YouTube channel should be consistent. You need to train your audience to know (and look out for) when a new video will be launched.

But how often should you be posting new videos?

Start by uploading 1 video every week. 4 videos per month is enough content to attract new subscribers. It also shouldn’t be too overwhelming for you to produce.

When you choose an upload schedule, make sure you stick to it. The last thing you want to do is disappoint users by not uploading when you said you would. That’s because inconsistent posting will never allow you to build a loyal audience.

To help you stick to your YouTube schedule, you can create a simple content calendar using Google Sheets. Or, you can make a pre-made template with a software like Canva:

A content calendar helps you organize all of your video ideas, film and edit your videos in a timely manner, and schedule your uploads weeks in advance.

6. Make Eye-Catching Video Thumbnails

The thumbnail of your video is the first thing YouTube users will see. So, you need to create eye-catching thumbnails if you want people to click on your video and watch.

After all, if no one watches your videos, you won’t get any subscribers.

Many of the best YouTube thumbnails follow a similar formula:

• Quality, eye-catching image
• Title text
• Contrasting colors
• 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall (minimum width of 640 pixels)

For example, take a look at these thumbnails from our recent holiday videos:

With just 1 look at these thumbnails, users can tell exactly what the videos are about. Our video host is dressed for the holidays, and there are decorations in the background.

Each thumbnail also includes bold text that creates a strong call-to-action:

• Increase Holiday Sales By 1600%
• The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide

People browsing YouTube will immediately know how these videos will help them.

Not a designer? Don’t worry, you can easily create stunning thumbnails for your YouTube videos using free visual content creation tools.

You can also create a thumbnail by pulling a screenshot from your YouTube video. This is a good solution if you’re in a pinch, but you really should take a few extra minutes to create a custom thumbnail.

Now that you know how to create a click-worthy thumbnail, let’s move on to creating searchable video titles.

7. Create Searchable Video Titles

Ok, you’ve got an awesome video. But why is no one watching it?

Often, the problem is with the title. If you have a boring, generic title for your video, no one clicks.

And if no one clicks, no one subscribes.

So how do you create clickable titles for your YouTube videos that show up in the search results?

One helpful strategy is to type the subject of your video into YouTube to see what comes up:

As you see the results, you’ll start getting an idea of the type of content your audience is looking for. This is like YouTube giving you suggestions for more searchable titles.

It’s also a good idea to keep your titles to 60-70 characters, so they aren’t truncated in search results. If you must have a longer title, make sure to add your main keywords toward the beginning.

Want to set up your YouTube channel for success? Check out our guide to YouTube SEO to rank higher and get more views.

8. Create Video Playlists

One underused YouTube subscribers hack is the playlist. This allows you to put groups of individual videos together as they’re part of a larger series.

Then, viewers are more likely to binge-watch your videos in the order that they’re intended to be viewed.

Plus, playlists show up in YouTube search results, just like single videos do.

For instance, we created a playlist for our tutorials so users could learn how to add various elements to their lead-generating campaigns:

Playlists should get updated each time you create a new video for the series. Users who enjoy your video playlist are likely to subscribe, so they’ll get a notification when the next video in the series is released.

9. Ask Your Viewers to Subscribe

You know how you add calls to action (CTAs) in blog posts, social media posts, landing pages, and pretty much everywhere else in your digital marketing strategy?

You should do the same for YouTube! If you want to get more YouTube subscribers for free, just ask!

For example, in the intro of your YouTube videos, you can say something like:

“Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. Don’t forget to click Subscribe if you want more weekly updates on [whatever your niche is].”

You should remind viewers to subscribe at the end of your video, as well. After all, if they liked your video enough to watch until the end, they likely want to see more.

It’s as simple as that.

You can also add a subscribe watermark to your YouTube videos. A subscribe watermark is a small icon that displays in the bottom corner of your videos to remind viewers to hit the Subscribe button.

As you start getting those subscribers, you’ll see your channel grow even more. That’s thanks to the psychological phenomenon FOMO or “fear of missing out.” The more subscribers you have, the easier it is to get even more.

But everything starts by simply asking people to subscribe.

10. Promote Your YouTube Channel on Social Media Sites

Let’s say you’ve mastered all of the YouTube basics like choosing a channel theme, creating eye-catching thumbnails, and using searchable titles. Now it’s time to start promoting your videos.

Instead of waiting for your videos to be discovered on YouTube, why not bring the content directly to your followers?

X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook are some of the best platforms to help you get more YouTube subscribers.

Plus, they’re totally free.

Whenever you publish a new video, create a social media post to get more YouTube views and subscribers. Here’s an example of a post we did on Facebook to drive traffic to a YouTube video:

Make sure you include an eye-catching image relevant to the video, a short description of what your video is about (make it exciting), and a CTA with a link to the video.

Try using hashtags to widen your reach, too. Check out the social media posts of other YouTubers to see what hashtags work well.

11. Join Online Communities

If you want to get more YouTube subscribers, you can join online communities and groups. By regularly participating in these communities, you can create relationships with other users and build your online presence as a YouTube content creator.

There are tons of online communities specifically created for YouTubers to have conversations and support each other.

For example, Reddit has a dedicated subreddit for YouTube, with over 1 million members.

You can also search Reddit, Quora, and other online forums for conversations about the topic of your YouTube videos.

If you contribute to online communities regularly, users will be able to get to know you. If they want to see more of what you have to offer, they’ll be sure to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

Just read the posting policies of these communities before you start promoting your video. Many online communities block self-promotion pretty strictly.

However, they often give more leeway to people who participate in the community regularly. Make sure you’re varying your posts with other valuable content not related to your YouTube channel, too.

Then, every so often, you can slip in a self-promotional post to get more subscribers.

12. Comment on Other YouTube Videos

Another easy way to promote your YouTube channel and get more subscribers is by commenting on other videos.

But let’s be clear. This doesn’t mean you should start spamming a bunch of YouTube videos with comments saying, “Watch my video!” or “Subscribe to my channel!”

All that will do is turn people away from your content.

Instead, just leave a funny comment or start a conversation by saying something interesting about the video you just watched. Viewers who engage with you in conversation will often click on your profile. Then, they’ll see that you have an awesome channel, too.

13. Host a Giveaway

A great way to draw a lot of attention to your YouTube channel is by hosting a giveaway.

You might think that you have to be a large channel to host an exciting giveaway with an awesome prize.

But even small channels can hold giveaways with a simple prize to gain subscribers fast. You could run a giveaway with a $50 gift card as a prize and get a ton of contest entries.

Just be sure to create giveaway rules that will help you get more YouTube subscribers.

For instance, let viewers know that they have to be subscribed to your channel to enter the contest. You can even boost engagement by requiring users to leave a comment to enter the giveaway too.

To make building, promoting, and managing a giveaway easier, use a giveaway tool like RafflePress.

With RafflePress, you can quickly build a giveaway landing page using their drag and drop giveaway builder.

Plus, RafflePress offers verified bonus actions to help you reach your giveaway goals. Bonus actions give users extra contest entries for completing certain tasks like subscribing to your email list, following you on Pinterest, and yep, subscribing to your YouTube channel.

Running an online contest is a surefire way to generate a lot of buzz around your YouTube channel.

Try out RafflePress today!

BONUS TIP: Track Your YouTube Analytics

To grow your channel, take advantage of the valuable insights provided by your YouTube Analytics.

You can find out exactly how you got your first subscribers with YouTube Analytics. In the Audience report, you can see the sources where viewers subscribed to your channel, such as:

• Your YouTube channel: Subscriptions directly from the Subscribe button on your channel
• Interactive features: Subscriptions from interactive video features like end-screens or subscribe watermarks
• YouTube search: Subscriptions from users who found your video in the search results of a query
• Other YouTube channels: Subscriptions from other YouTube channels that feature your channel
• External: Subscriptions from videos or subscribe buttons embedded on websites other than YouTube

If you find that you’re getting a lot of subscribers through YouTube search, continue to create searchable video titles to bring in more of those subscribers.

With YouTube Analytics, you’ll also get information like your click-through rate, video retention, what content is most popular with viewers, and more.

By tracking your YouTube Analytics, you’ll find out what’s working on your channel and what isn’t. Then, you can make improvements to help you get more YouTube subscribers and more views.

Get 1000 YouTube Subscribers (And Beyond) Fast

While you may not be able to get your first 1000 YouTube subscribers in a day, with these tips, you can reach that benchmark in no time.

And once people head to your YouTube channel, they’ll likely click a link to your website. That’s where having a good lead conversion strategy comes into play.

If you’re looking for a tool that helps you drive more sitewide traffic, grow your email list, and increase sales, then OptinMonster is the way to go.

Just check out this post: How Does OptinMonster Work? (8 Benefits + 12 Case Studies)

Ready to take significant action to improve your business? Sign up for a risk-free OptinMonster account today!

Summary:

Email Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of recipients who clicked on one or more links in your email. It’s calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of delivered emails and multiplying by 100. For example, if you sent 1,000 emails and 50 recipients clicked on a link, your CTR would be 5%.

Here are 13 tips on how to improve email click-through rate:

1. Craft Compelling Subject Lines
2. Personalize Your Emails
3. Optimize Email Design
4. Segment Your Audience
5. Create Clear and Strong CTAs
6. A/B Test Your Emails
7. Use Engaging Visuals
8. Keep Content Relevant and Valuable
9. Send Emails at the Right Time
10. Utilize Interactive Elements
11. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
12. Leverage Social Proof
13. Monitor and Analyze Performance

The click-through rate metric is more than just a number; it’s a powerful indicator of how well your audience engages with your content and a critical factor in driving conversions and boosting your digital marketing ROI.

Naturally, among the many email marketing metrics available to check the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, the one that stands out in particular is email click-through rate.

This article explains email click-through rate and teaches you how to improve it.

So, let’s dive in and unlock the full potential of your email campaigns!

• What Is Email Click-Through Rate
• Why Is Email CTR Important
• Average Email Click-Through Rate
• What Is a Good Click Through Rate for Email
• Why Is My Email Campaign Click Through Rate so Low
• How To Increase Email Click-Through Rate

What Is a Good Click Through Rate for Email

A good click-through rate for email marketing can depend on various factors, such as the industry, the type of email, and the campaign’s specific goals. Here are some general benchmarks:

Industry-Specific CTR Benchmarks

• Technology: 5% to 7%
• Nonprofits: 4% to 6%
• E-commerce/Retail: 2% to 4%
• Healthcare: 3% to 5%
• Media and Publishing: 4% to 6%

Type of Email

• Newsletters: 3% to 5%
• Promotional Emails: 1% to 3%
• Transactional Emails: 5% and higher

Why Is My Email Campaign Click Through Rate so Low

Below are some common causes why your email campaign click through rate could be low:

1. Irrelevant Content:
   • Mismatched audience: Ensure your content aligns with your subscribers’ interests and needs.
   • Weak value proposition: Clearly communicate the benefits of clicking the link.
2. Poor Subject Lines:
   • Lack of clarity: Be specific and intriguing.
   • Misleading promises: Avoid clickbait.
   • Ignoring mobile optimization: Short subject lines are crucial for mobile.
3. Email Design Issues:
   • Poor readability: Use clear fonts, sufficient contrast, and proper spacing.
   • Slow loading times: Optimize images and code.
   • Mobile unfriendliness: Ensure your email looks good on all devices.
4. Timing and Frequency:
   • Wrong send time: Experiment with different times to find optimal engagement.
   • Excessive frequency: Overwhelming subscribers can lead to unsubscribes.
5. Technical Problems:
   • Email deliverability issues: Check for spam filters and sender reputation.
   • Broken links: Ensure all links are functional

How to Improve Your Email CTR: 13 Tips

1. Craft Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line is the first impression recipients get of your email. An enticing and relevant subject line increases the chances of your email being opened and clicked. Use action verbs, create urgency, and be clear about the email’s value. Personalization in the subject line, such as including the recipient’s name, can also boost open rates.

2. Personalize Your Emails

Personalization goes beyond using the recipient’s name. Tailor the email content based on the recipient’s preferences, past behaviors, or demographic information. Use dynamic content to show personalized product recommendations or relevant offers.

3. Optimize Email Design

Your emails should be visually appealing and easy to read. A clean, responsive design that adapts to various devices ensures a better user experience. Use a single-column layout, ample white space, and clear fonts. Ensure that your email is not cluttered and that the most important elements stand out.

4. Segment Your Audience

Segmentation allows you to send more relevant content to different groups within your audience. You can segment based on demographics, purchase history, engagement level, or interests. This targeted approach increases the relevance of your emails, leading to higher engagement and CTR.

5. Create Clear and Strong CTAs

Your call-to-action (CTA) should be prominent, clear, and compelling. Use action-oriented language that tells recipients exactly what you want them to do, such as “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” or “Get Started.” Make your CTA buttons stand out with contrasting colors and ensure they are easy to click on both desktop and mobile devices.

6. A/B Test Your Emails

A/B testing involves sending two variations of an email to a small segment of your audience to see which performs better. Test different elements such as subject lines, CTAs, images, and email copy. Use the results to optimize your emails for better performance.

7. Use Engaging Visuals

Incorporate high-quality images, videos, or GIFs to make your emails more visually appealing. Visual content can convey your message quickly and effectively, capturing the reader’s attention and encouraging clicks.

8. Keep Content Relevant and Valuable

Ensure that your email content is relevant and valuable to your audience. Avoid generic messages and focus on delivering useful information, such as tips, guides, or exclusive offers. The more value you provide, the more likely recipients are to engage with your emails.

9. Send Emails at the Right Time

The timing of your emails can significantly impact your CTR. Test different days of the week and times of day to determine when your audience is most likely to engage. Consider time zones and the typical daily routines of your recipients.

10. Utilize Interactive Elements

Interactive elements like polls, quizzes, or carousels can increase engagement and encourage clicks. These elements make your emails more dynamic and can capture the reader’s attention more effectively than static content.

11. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness

With many people reading emails on mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure your emails are mobile-friendly. Use a responsive design that adjusts to different screen sizes, and make sure your links and buttons are easy to tap on smaller screens.

12. Leverage Social Proof

Including testimonials, reviews, or user-generated content can build trust and encourage clicks. Social proof reassures recipients that others have had positive experiences with your product or service, making them more likely to engage.

13. Monitor and Analyze Performance

Regularly track your email metrics and analyze performance. Look at which emails have higher CTRs and analyze what they have in common. Use these insights to inform future campaigns and continually improve your email strategy. Tools like Google Analytics and email marketing platforms’ built-in analytics can provide valuable data.

Implementing these strategies can help you create more engaging emails that encourage recipients to click through and interact with your content.

A low email click-through rate often indicates irrelevant content, poor subject lines, or suboptimal timing. To improve your CTR, focus on highly targeted audience segmentation, compelling subject lines, and clear, compelling calls to action. Additionally, optimize your email content for mobile devices and test different send times to find what works best for your audience.

More on Email Marketing:

• How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Strategy
• 15 Email Marketing Best Practices to Build a Killer List
• 10 Brilliant Email Marketing Examples and Why We Love Them
• Small Business Email Marketing: 7 (Easy) Tips for Growth
• 6 Free Email Marketing Templates You Need To Try Right Now!
• 29 Best Email Automation Tools to Transform Your Business

Email marketing is sending emails to people who want to hear from you to tell them about your products or services. It can be used to help educate leads who aren’t quite ready to buy, to make specific offers to those who are, and to increase referrals and repeat business from existing customers. Given that 95% of internet users aged between 25 and 44 years in the United States report they use email daily, it’s worth your time to understand how to do email marketing in 2024.

I’m Syed Balkhi, one of the co-founders of OptinMonster. Here at OptinMonster, over 1.2 million small businesses use us to help grow their email marketing lists.

I know a thing or two about how to grow and market a business. I’ve written this guide to email marketing as your step-by-step plan, complete with strategies, tactics, and my insider secrets.

• What is Email Marketing?
• What Are the Advantages of Email Marketing?
• What Are the Disadvantages of Email Marketing?
• How to Do Email Marketing Successfully: A 5 Step Guide
  • Step 1: Define Your Goals
  • Step 2: Choose an Email Service Provider
  • Step 3: Create an Optin Form to Build Your Email List
  • Step 4: Select the Type of Email Marketing Campaign To Send
  • Step 5: Track Email Marketing Metrics
• 6 Biggest Email Marketing Challenges (And How to Solve Them)
  1. How to Build an Email List
  2. How to Ensure Emails Are Delivered
  3. How to Improve Email Open Rates
  4. How to Boost Email Conversion Rates
  5. How to Scale Your Email Marketing Efforts
• Frequently Asked Questions About Email Marketing (FAQs)
• Email Marketing Case Studies

What Are the Advantages of Email Marketing?

• For eCommerce businesses, email marketing lets you sell products, recover abandoned carts, and increase lifetime value.
• Small business owners can use email marketing to maintain brand awareness and build relationships over time.
• Email marketing is great for SaaS companies to turn subscribers into free trial users, and free trials into paying customers.
• Bloggers and publishers use email marketing to drive traffic to their websites and affiliate links, which means more revenue.
• Enterprise clients can scale their email marketing plan to reach thousands or even millions of customers at once.

There are many benefits of email marketing:

• People check their email a lot, up to 20 times a day.
• You own your email list and can email them whenever you’d like. This is unlike social media where algorithms control your reach and engagement.
• Emails can be personalized at scale.
• Email has an extremely high ROI (return on investment) of around 3600%. Calculate the ROI of email marketing and see for yourself.
• Email is 55 times more effective at customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter put together.
• Shoppers who receive email marketing convert 3x more than those who don’t.

While the case for email is strong, there are a few downsides. I want to make sure you have a full understanding of email marketing, so I’ll go over these disadvantages next.

What Are the Disadvantages of Email Marketing?

Email marketing, despite its effectiveness, has several disadvantages:

• Spam: Emails marked as spam can lower open rates over time and hurt deliverability. Learn how to prevent emails from going to spam.
• Inbox overwhelm: Marketing emails can get lost in an inbox filled with marketing emails. Segment your list by their engagement, and maintain a consistent by not excessive mailing schedule to combat this.
• Design challenges: Emails that display inconsistently across devices or email clients can hurt the reader’s experience. Using your ESP’s responsive templates will usually prevent these challenges. Services like Litmus Email Tester can show how your emails perform on various devices and clients, too.
• Regulations and compliance: Privacy regulations like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA require ongoing attention to avoid legal conflicts. Double opt-ins, and unsubscribe links in every email will help you comply with these regulations.
• List maintenance: Inactive and unengaged subscribers must be regularly removed from email lists.
• Cost: Email marketing service providers typically charge by subscriber, which means your cost increase as your list grows. Maintaining your list, and engaging with subscribers will help ensure every subscriber is worth your investment.

How to Do Email Marketing Successfully: A 5-Step Guide

There are five things I want you to do when you’re just getting started with email marketing:

1. Define Your Goals
2. Choose an Email Service Provider
3. Create an Optin Form to Build Your Email List
4. Select the Type of Email Marketing Campaign To Send
5. Track Email Marketing Metrics

Step 1: Define Your Goals

Before you spend money on an email marketing tool or type out that first email, you must identify your goals. Ask yourself:

• What do I want these subscribers to ultimately do after joining my list?
• What will convince them to join your list?
• What will you share on a regular basis to keep them interested?
• What will convince them to buy what you’re selling?

To write effective marketing emails, you need to know who you’re talking to. Are you reaching out to loyal customers or trying to win over new prospects? Understanding your audience’s age, location, interests, and buying habits will affect how you approach them in your messages. Once you know your target audience, tailor your message to them.

With these goals in mind, you can choose the tools you’ll use to implement your strategy.

Step 2: Choose an Email Service Provider

The first thing you need is an email service provider (ESP). An ESP will provide the tools you need to create, send, and manage email campaigns to your audience. Choosing the right email marketing software with the features you need can keep costs manageable. I’ll go over some cost-effective options for email marketing software below:

1. Constant Contact

Best for: I think it’s the best email service provider for small businesses.

Constant Contact’s user-friendly and powerful features help small businesses engage their audience with easy to use templates and automations.

Check out our full Constant Contact review or our tutorial for building a Constant Contact email form.

2. Brevo

Best for: I think it’s the best marketing automation creator for small businesses.

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a versatile email service provider offers an all-in-one solution for small businesses. With Brevo, you can create beautiful email and SMS campaigns. Not every email platform offers SMS, so if text marketing is something you’re interested exploring, Brevo would be a good option.

Read our Brevo review for more details and learn how to create a Brevo (Sendinblue) popup.

3. Hubspot

Best for: I think it’s the best email service provider for B2B businesses.

Hubspot offers a comprehensive suite of marketing tools to help small businesses grow their audience and drive conversions. Hubspot’s CRM is also integrated with their email marketing service. This makes Hubspot a great choice for B2B and service-based businesses that have a longer sales process.

See the full Hubspot review to decide if Hubspot is right for you. If it is, we have a tutorial for how to add a Hubspot popup and other signup forms.

4. Omnisend

Best for: I think it’s the best multichannel marketing for small businesses.

Omnisend understands the needs of eCommerce businesses uniquely. Omnisend helps you create email campaigns, push notifications, and SMS messages that drive sales.

5. Drip

Best for: I think it’s the best email service provider for eCommerce store owners.

Drip was designed for eCommerce with advanced automation features that allow you to personalize your customer purchase journeys.

Read our full review of Drip and learn how to add an eye-catching Drip popup.

6. ConvertKit

Best for: I think it’s the best email service provider for bloggers and digital content creators.

Built specifically for bloggers and creatives, ConvertKit makes it easy to build and nurture your audience. With its intuitive interface and powerful automation capabilities, ConvertKit helps you deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. You can even use ConvertKit to sell simple digital products straight from the ESP dashboard.

For more details, check out our ConvertKit review and see how easy it is to create a ConvertKit popup form.

7. MailerLite

Best for: I think it’s the best free email service provider for small businesses, bloggers, and startups on a budget.

MailerLite is a user-friendly email service provider helps small businesses start using email marketing fast. They have a generous free plan and their paid upgrades are affordable.

Read more in our MailerLite review and check out how to make a MailerLite popup in minutes.

8. Mailchimp

Best for: It’s the most popular email service provider, best for almost all types of businesses and content creators.

Mailchimp has been a go-to email service provider for small businesses for years. Mailchimp allows you to create email campaigns, automate your marketing efforts, and analyze your results.

Explore our in-depth Mailchimp review or learn how to create a MailChimp popup.

Once you pick an ESP, the next step is to create your first optin form.

Step 3: Create an Optin Form to Build Your Email List

An optin form is the place where visitors can subscribe to your email list. Optin forms are also known as signup forms or lead generation forms.

Every email marketing service offers basic optin forms, usually a popup and an inline form, with limited customization options. You can extend the functionality of those optin forms with OptinMonster. This is especially helpful when you use Lead Magnets like an ebook, discount code, or cheat sheet to encourage your visitors to subscribe to your email list.

Offering lead magnets in exchange for an email is a great way to overcome that “Inbox Overwhelm” I mentioned earlier. That’s because they help you segment your email list by the visitor’s interests. Once your visitor tells you what they’re interested in by subscribing to receive a specific lead magnet, you can send them emails and offers about those interests.

We built OptinMonster for that exact reason! I needed software for WPBeginner.com that would let me treat each of my subscribers as the individual person they are, rather than just one of thousands on an email list, but it didn’t exist at the time.

At OptinMonster, we offer robust email optin forms with 1-click integrations to every major email marketing service on the market.

We offer different styles of forms, including:

• Inline forms embedded within your content
• Popup forms that appear over your main page content
• Widget optin forms in the header, footer, or sidebar of your WordPress site
• Floating bar forms that float over the top or bottom of your site
• Slide-in forms that scroll in from a bottom corner
• Coupon spin wheels and other gamified forms

All this without needing a coder or graphic designer, too.

Not only is it easy to create optin forms, we make sure that your forms show up in front of the right audience at the right time. With OptinMonster you can…

• catch abandoning visitors before they leave
• target users by the page they’re visiting
• generate leads based based on geographic location
• and much more!

We built the tool we needed to grow an email marketing list the right way. Try OptinMonster today see for yourself!

Enough about OptinMonster – let’s move on to what you’ll send after someone subscribes to your email list.

Step 4: Select the Type of Email Marketing Campaign To Send

Every email marketing service provider comes with an email editor you can use to send emails to your subscribers. I’ve outlined seven types of email marketing campaigns you can send below. I use all of these throughout my businesses.

I’ve also included links to more in depth examples of each type of email marketing campaign in case you want to dive deep.

1. Welcome Emails

Send welcome emails to new subscribers or customers as soon as they join your list. Use these emails to introduce your business and thank the reader for engaging with your brand. All this helps begin the relationship with your brand on a positive note.

This is an example of the first few paragraphs of the welcome email we send ourselves here at OptinMonster:

It includes a personal welcome from my co-founder, Thomas Griffin. It also includes links to documentation and directions for how to reach support. Likewise, your Welcome email should include the most important next steps a new subscriber should take after joining your list.

To learn more about how to write the perfect welcome email, check out the video below.

2. Newsletter Emails

Newsletter emails are regular communications sent to subscribers. Newsletter contain news, updates, tips, promotions, or curated information related to your business or industry. The goal of an email newsletter is to keep your audience engaged.

Here are some newsletter ideas you can use for your own list.

3. Lead Nurturing Emails

Lead nurturing emails are sent to potential customers who have shown interest in your offer, but haven’t bought yet. The goal is to build trust, educate, and overcome objections. Ultimately, you want to guide leads towards making a purchase decision.

Learn how to nurture leads with an email marketing funnel.

4. Promotional Emails

Promotional emails highlight new products, sales, or special events from your business. They create a sense of urgency and encourage recipients to take advantage of the promotion. You can send these one campaign at a time or automate a whole series of promotional emails.

Check out these promotional email examples if you need some ideas.

5. Seasonal Marketing Emails

Seasonal marketing emails include special offers, promotions, or content tailored to a holiday or season. The aim is to use the festive spirit to increase urgency and engagement.

Take a look at these seasonal marketing emails for Black Friday, Halloween, or Mother’s Day.

6. Transactional Emails

Specific actions or events trigger transactional emails. Customers might receive transactional emails for account updates, shipping notifications, or password resets. They provide information related to the transaction and ensure a smooth customer experience.

Learn more about how to write transactional emails that can grow your business.

7. Confirmation Emails

Confirmation emails verify or confirm an action taken by the recipient. You can send confirmations for subscribing to a newsletter, registering for an event, or buying a product. Confirmation emails typically contain details of the action. They may also provide other instructions or information.

Read about best practices and examples of outstanding confirmation emails.

No matter what type of email campaign you choose to send, there are a four important elements of an email campaign you should include.

1. Subject Line and Pre-header Text

This subject line appears first in your subscriber’s inbox and should give the reader a reason to open the email.

The pre-header text sometimes appears next to the subject line in the subscriber’s inbox. It is shown even before the reader opens the email, and is another opportunity for you to persuade your reader to open the email.

2. Content

Most email marketing services provide a selection of ready-to-use, easily customizable templates. Or, you can choose a plain-text template if you’d like your email to appear more like it came from a single person, rather than a brand. We often use plain-text emails at OptinMonster to build relationships with our readers.

3. Call to Action (CTA)

Every email should share an action you’d like your reader to take after reading your email, called a “Call To Action” or “CTA.”

Some common CTAs include:

• Make a purchase
• Download a freebie
• Read a blog post
• Follow your brand on social media
• Forward this email to a friend

A good Call To Action can often make or break the success of an individual email. We teach how to create the perfect call to action in OptinMonster University (free with any OptinMonster subscription).

4. Subscription Management

At the bottom of every email, you should have a link to unsubscribe. Email marketing is a consent-based channel. It’s better to let uninterested subscribers leave your list than risk them sending your emails to the spam folder.

One way to reduce unsubscribe rates is to also include a link where people can manage their own subscriptions. Giving them a way to opt out of certain topics or hear from you less often shows that you value their experience.

This brings us to the last step in our guide: monitoring your progress.

5. Track Email Marketing Metrics

After sending your email, track and analyze key email metrics such as:

• Open rate: how many subscribers opened the email
• Click-through rates: how many subscribers clicked links in the email
• Conversion rate: how many subscribers made a purchase, filled out a form, or did some other conversion you want to track
• Unsubscribe rates: how many subscribers unsubscribed from an email
• Deliverability rate: how many subscribers received your email in their main inbox

Use this data to refine your future email campaigns and optimize your strategies.

I also recommend that you regularly clean your email list. Removing invalid or inactive email addresses improves deliverability. Keeping your list clean also ensures that you’re targeting an engaged audience.

Now that you know how to do email marketing, let’s take a look at some common challenges you might face and how to overcome them. I’m sharing these to help you not make the same mistakes I’ve made over the years.

6 Biggest Email Marketing Challenges (And How to Solve Them)

Effective email marketing is relatively simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There are a lot of different factors involved and, unfortunately, writing good emails isn’t always enough.

We have a full list of email marketing best practices you can read for more detail, but here are some of the most common challenges you might encounter, along with the solutions I used myself.

1. How to Build an Email List

The first challenge is finding people to whom to send emails. Fortunately, this is perhaps the easiest problem to solve!

Even if you have no subscribers, you can build an email list from scratch with email signup forms on your website.

Solution: To get more signups, make sure that visitors clearly understand the benefits of joining your list.

• Adjust your call to action to focus on the benefits, such as “Get your free guide now!”
• Use social proof by showing off how many people have already signed up for your list.
• Add your optin forms to these high-converting places for email signups for best results.
• Take inspiration from high-performing email signup forms.

For more ideas, check out our top list-building tools and ways to build your email list for free.

2. How to Make Sure Emails are Delivered

If getting people on your list is the FIRST challenge, making sure the emails you’re sending actually land in their inbox is the hardest. Average deliverability rates hover around 81%, which means up to 20% of your emails may never even make it to your subscriber’s email client! This is especially relevant with Gmail’s updated requirements for bulk sending in 2024.

Solution: Follow email deliverability best practices to make sure your emails make it into the right inbox.

• Avoid spammy words that trigger spam filters. These might include words like “click,” “free,” “trial,” “cost,” “cheap,” “prize,” or unusual capitalization and punctuation.
• Clean your email list regularly to remove inactive subscribers.
• Segment your emails so that subscribers get content they actually care about.
• Provide ways for users to manage their own subscriptions instead of unsubscribing or reporting as spam.
• Ensure you’re following Gmail’s advice for bulk sending.

I highly encourage you to review the email deliverability best practices above. It’s a painful feeling to find out your hard-work crafting the perfect email was wasted when your emails didn’t land in the inbox (trust me, I learned this lesson the hard way!)

3. How to Improve Email Open Rates

The average open rate for emails is around 21%. There are plenty of ways that you can improve your email open rates.

Solution: Write and send high-quality emails. Everything from the email subject line to the email template design should be a valuable, pleasant experience for subscribers. If you can convince them to open one email, they’ll be more likely to open future emails.

• Make your subject line exciting and informative enough for people to click on. Remember that the job of the subject line is to get readers interested enough to open the email.
• Keep your subject line length short and easy to understand.
• Use preview text to provide extra insight into what’s in your email content.
• Improve your email copy by thinking back to your goal-setting. What information, skills, or products do your customers need to solve their problems? Deliver content that helps address those issues.
• Optimize your email design, especially for mobile devices. Use visuals wisely and make sure they show up well on different screen sizes. You can also make mobile optins that show up well on smaller device sizes.

4. How to Boost Email Conversion Rates

Let’s say you’re getting a healthy number of signups. Subscribers are receiving and opening your emails. But no one is clicking or buying.

You aren’t alone. The average email conversion rate in a study by Klaviyo ranged from just 0.1% to over 3%.

Solution: Improve your conversion rates by tuning into what your audience needs and wants.

• List segmentation means dividing your list into different groups. You can then send each group more targeted messaging that should improve your conversion rates. Learn about different ways to segment your email list and see what works best for your business.
• Personalized email content goes beyond saying, “Hey, FIRST NAME!” You could send product recommendations based on past purchases. Other personalization techniques include sending location-specific offers or content based on demographics. When subscribers receive personalized emails, customer loyalty is likely to increase.
• A/B testing your email newsletters can help you find the most effective subject lines, content, email templates, and CTAs. Many email service providers have split testing functionality built in.

5. How to Scale Email Marketing

So what if your email marketing strategy is working pretty well, but takes more time than you have?

Creating personalized content for a few segments is one thing. But as you add more subscribers, offers, and promotions, your email marketing will get more complex. Fortunately, we have strategies and resources to help you scale.

Solution: Work smarter, not harder. Build on what already works in your own email marketing or strategies that others have proven.

• Add or expand email automation. For example, you could set up an abandoned cart email series that encourages shoppers to finish their purchases. There are plenty of email marketing automation tools to make this easier. Check out our complete guide to eCommerce email marketing automation for more information.
• Use templates, examples, and best practices. Use these email marketing templates, copywriting templates and formulas, and best sales email subject lines for inspiration.

6. How to Run Email Campaigns in Multiple Languages

We are living in a more globalized world than ever before. This presents many opportunities to tap into foreign markets and expand your business activities. Since we recognize the amazing growth potential that email marketing campaigns present, why not multiply that potential by reaching a global audience in their native languages? 

The “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C” study, which surveyed over 8,000 consumers in over 29 countries, revealed that 65% of respondents prefer content in their native language. Moreover, 40% of respondents said that they would not purchase a product or service if it was not offered in their language.

So how do you make sure you don’t miss out on such a large percentage of your potential customers?

Solution: Collect and segment your multilingual leads for multilingual campaigns.

• By using OptinMonster with WPML, you can display popups in multiple languages and collect leads with data about their language preferences. 
• Segment your leads based on language and target them in culturally appropriate multilingual campaigns using your preferred email marketing integration. 

As a result, you will expand your campaign reach, enhance customer engagement, improve customer loyalty, and have an advantage over competitors who don’t employ multilingual strategies.

Frequently Asked Questions About Email Marketing (FAQs)

When is the best time to send a marketing email?

The best time to send a marketing email is between 9 AM to 12 PM on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, according to a HubSpot study. Test different times to find when your audience is most active and engaged. I’ve found these times to be true for our companies, too.

What is a good open rate for email marketing?

A good open rate is between 15% and 25%, but it varies by industry. Focus on improving engagement and personalization. I like to tell people a good open rate is the one that’s better than the one you’re getting now – there is always room to improve!

How often should I send marketing emails?

Send emails at a consistent frequency without overwhelming subscribers. Start with once a week or bi-weekly and adjust the timing and number of emails based on feedback and engagement metrics.

What email metrics should I track?

Track open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates. You should also track deliverability, spam complaints, and list growth rate.

What is the difference between single opt-in and double opt-in?

Single opt-in immediately adds subscribers to the list. Double opt-in requires confirmation via a verification email. Double opt-in ensures higher quality but may result in fewer subscribers. Consider your business goals, customer preferences, and local regulations such as GDPR.

Email Marketing Case Studies

Now you have all the knowledge you need to use email to grow your business! I’ve gone over:

• basic email marketing vocabulary and definitions
• different email marketing platforms you can use
• a step-by-step guide for how to do email marketing
• pro tips to take your email marketing to the next level

Email marketing isn’t something you set and forget, even with the power of automated workflows. You always want to be testing and refining your strategy. So I recommend bookmarking this page so you can come back later whenever you need to explore the resources I’ve shared.

I want to leave you with some encouraging case studies of companies just like yours who grew their email lists using the principles shared in this Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing. They have been nice enough to share their entire strategy, complete with screenshots of their email optins, and data about how they improved. You’ll learn how you make money from email marketing in every case study.

• How Nick Gray Increased Conversions by up to 1000% With Smart Opt-in Popups
• How PortraitFlip Converts Over 3% of Its Mobile Traffic into Leads
• How Medstar Media Increased Their Clients’ Conversions by 500%

There’s a lot of money to be made with email marketing. Whether you’re a blogger, affiliate marketer, an eCommerce store, or an online business, I and my team here at OptinMonster are here to help you win every step of the way.

Best wishes for your success,

Syed Balkhi