Having thousands of people on your email list has a lot of benefits. It can not only help you drive thousands of targeted visitors to your product sales pages, it also helps you get free traffic to every post you publish. When you have an email list, none of your posts go unread. And the bigger your email list, the more people will read your posts.

But here’s the thing. Not everyone is able to get to thousands of subscribers.Why? Because most people are doing things wrong.They unknowingly make these three mistakes and hinder the growth of their blogs. And guess what?Chances are you are probably making the same mistakes.

So, if you want to be able to get to more than five figures in subscriber numbers, you need to stop making these three mistakes.

Mistake #1: Generic Offer

Most people display a generic offer like “Join 5000 other people on our list” or “Subscribe to our newsletter”. Both of these are super generic and don’t offer an incentive to the user. Now, the offer “Join 5000 other people on our list” shows social proof which is good for improving conversion rate. But is there other reason for the user to join your email list? If you want more and more people to sign up to your mailing list, you need to offer an incentive. A good example of incentive is a free eBook or a PDF report.When you offer an incentive to your visitors, they are more likely to subscribe to your email list.For example, if you own a blog in the Fashion industry, don’t use a generic offer like “Subscribe to our email list”. Instead offer an incentive in exchange for your visitors
Email address. Offering an eBook titled “5 Style Mistakes 99% Men Make” will make a better incentive than a simple “Subscribe to our email newsletter.”

But what if you don’t (or can’t) offer an incentive? If that is the case, you should at least try to make your offer more compelling. Instead of displaying a generic offer, display an offer that lets your subscribers know the value they will get out of it.For example, if you own a blog in the Fashion industry, your offer should be something like “Get The Best of My Fashion Tips Delivered Directly To Your Inbox.” Now, in this example, the reader will know exactly what they get when they subscribe.

Mistake #2: Asking For Too Much Information

Here’s the deal: No one likes to fill a dozen of fields just to subscribe to an email list. The easier you make it for people to subscribe, the better.If you ever try downloading a free report or an eBook from Hubspot, you will have to fill out a dozen of fields:And maybe this many fields do work for them. But that might not be the case for you. The more fields you add to an opt-in form, the more friction it will create.A good rule is to strip down all the fields you think are unnecessary.You probably don’t need to know the subscriber’s country, gender or even their name.

Those days are gone when you would use the subscriber’s name to personalize the email. You don’t need to do it anymore. All your subscribers know that they are receiving automated emails sent to thousands of people at once.
The bottom line?Strip down your opt-in forms to the bare minimum.In my experience, email subscription opt-in forms with a maximum of two fields work the best.

Mistake #3: Displaying Only One or Two Opt-in Forms

Most blogs only display a single opt-in form throughout the page or at most two. But here’s the problem: A reader might decide to opt-in any time when reading your content. And when they do, if they don’t find a way to sign up within a few seconds, they will leave the page and never come back.
So, here’s the bottom line: If you want more and more people to subscribe, give them infinity plus one ways to sign up.Now, I am not saying you should go crazy about it and slap a sign up form every few paragraphs
But at a minimum, you should have an exit-intent popup, an after content opt-in form and a sidebar opt-in form.

I know that sounds like a lot.But believe me, it’s not.Once you start offering more than just one or two opt-in opportunities on your website, your subscription numbers will literally skyrocket overnight.

Conclusion

If you are making these mistakes, you are leaving a lot of subscribers on the table. The longer you take to fix these three mistakes, the more subscribers you will lose. I myself am guilty of making all of these mistakes. But when I found out about them, my email subscription rate almost doubled.
I learned these mistakes the hard way and lost probably thousands of subscribers because of these mistakes.

Which of these mistakes have you been making or still make ?

Let us know in the comments below.