How I gained 500 newsletter subscribers in a day with SumoMe List Builder

There is power in social media, but for bloggers, while we play the social media game, building a loyal following of people that subscribe to a newsletter is gold. So how did I gain more than 500 subscribers in a day? I used one of my very favorite tools on the web, SumoMe List Builder. But there’s more than just using this awesome plugin/code that helped me gain the followers. It’s all about playing the social media game and setting up SumoMe to be as effective as possible.

How to Do Social Media Right for your advantage

I spend much of my time promoting my links and articles that I write at ALLterNATIVElearning to sites that have an awesome following and are gracious enough to potentially share my content to their readership. I shared one of my already most popular posts about Parenting without Saying No to the QuirkyMomma Facebook page. In turn, they shared it where it subsequently got over 30,000 re-shares. While that is a great amount of re-shares, it actually did not produce a ton of traffic. But the traffic that did hop on over to my site were people that were truly interested in what I had to say. (That was the pay-off of sharing a picture that readers think they know what the article says vs sharing a different picture that might have encouraged more link clicks).

So while some bloggers would have loved more traffic, I was thrilled that I was getting authentic traffic and building my readership… Because a true following is one that can go with you anywhere like a newsletter. If for some reason Facebook or Twitter dropped off the face of the earth, there is no way to have contact information for those lost fans. However, having an email address is like gold. So getting so many interested readers to subscribe was the best gift I could have gotten! And it was all because I built a smart pop-up newsletter box with SumoMe to feed into my Mad Mimi Newsletter list.

How to set up a Customized Newsletter Box with Mad Mimi or Mail Chimp and SumoMe

The first thing you are going to want to do to try to capture a reader and bring them into your community is brainstorm ways that they might want to actually read your newsletter. So for instance, I give an optional box that allows me to know if a reader is interested in parenting, natural living, pregnancy, or tot school. It allows me to send a few customized newsletters on occasion to that audience.

Then you will want to give your readers an indication of when they can expect your email. It may sound silly, but think about it. If you’re really excited about a package that’s going to arrive, you want to know when it will be on your door step. Get your readers excited and ready to open your mail.

Next you’re going to actually set it up. (So if you have not signed up for a Mad Mimi or Mail Chimp Account, do so! I have used and love both.)

You will want to go in and create a form. In Mad Mimi, you will want to do that under “Webforms” And then you will find a choice to “embed”. In Mail Chimp, you will go to your list and find the “embedded forms” option. You can create a form to look how you would like for it to there. I personally recommend making it as simple as possible. I do not ask for names (even as an optional field) because I found that the fewer things a reader perceives needing to be done, the higher chances there are that they will take the time to enter their email.

Then, go into your SumoMe Settings, and click on “Advanced” after you are inside of your list builder. You can paste your embed code there. Everything else is the same. You can set up a smart pop up, or manually set when you want for the subscriber box to show up. I chose the smart option, because it seems to catch people right before they would skip out of the page.

And then… you’re all done! You are able to turn social shares into an engaged community readership by collecting newsletter emails with the SumoMe List builder tool.

P.S. I love SumoMe for more than just newsletter subscribers. They’re also my favorite social share counter and I always love a plugin or code that provides more than one service!