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By Phillip Smith

Back in 2004, I helped one of the early online environmental “blogs” undertake a big technical upgrade. At the time, this site had a staff of 10 people and their email newsletter list had about 60,000 subscribers. I remember thinking that was a sizeable list at the time, and much later learned how important it was to their non-profit business model.

Three years later I checked back in with them. They’d moved into a new office — a much bigger space to accommodate a staff that had grown to more than 20. I asked about their email newsletter list size: it was now 600,000+ subscribers strong, a growth of 10x. Their annual revenue, unsurprisingly, was much larger too.

In the years that followed, I kept a close eye on their business model because I felt like it provided a glimpse into the future of internet publishing and — more importantly — the strategies and tactics that might lead to sustainability for online journalism.

Case in point: this “blog” — Grist.org — has been publishing for 20 years now, employs 35 people and generates more than $3 million in annual revenue. In an industry where there’s stiff competition from corporate competitors like Discovery Communications and Gizmodo Group, they’ve become one of the most renowned voices in environmental media for their brand of  “Gloom and doom with a sense of humour.”

But the one detail of their story that I obsessed about the most was the exponential growth of their email list. And how they did that has lessons applicable to many news publishers.

In addition to helping the organization spread its coverage about climate change and environmental advice, their email list also drove substantial growth in revenue from donors, as well as sponsorship and advertising. It also increased the reach of their stories and engagement from their community.

There were many factors that drove that growth, but the one that surprised me the most was paid subscriber acquisition.

Here’s another fact that might surprise you: Today, many savvy digital-first newsrooms have seen this opportunity, too, and are investing thousands of dollars a month — sometimes tens of thousands — into paid acquisition campaigns.

And yet the second fact that surprised me all those years ago and still continues to is that so many publishers are choosing not to invest in this area, or simply aren’t even aware of it as an opportunity to grow their audience and membership. There are several reasons for this (detailed below), but the top two challenges are “resources to assist with campaign planning” and “available budget to invest.”

These challenges are particularly acute for news startups where it’s essential that these efforts are undertaken before their launch funds run out. It could quite literally be the difference between a journalism organization existing or not.

In this first report and in subsequent pieces I’ll share what I’m seeing as I attempt to answer the question: Can publishers who seek to grow their membership invest in paid lead acquisition tactics and predict with strong confidence the rate of return on their investment? [Editor’s note: Check out Spending Money to Make Money, Part II: Case Studies of Newsrooms Using Paid Acquisition.]

To answer this question, several organizations have worked together — the Membership Puzzle Project, Pico, and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism — with me, a 20-year veteran of the publishing industry, former CTO of an online news startup, and now entrepreneurship coach for journalists. Together, we’ve asked seven publishers across the United States to experiment with paid acquisition campaigns. These publishers cover a range that includes local news, regional news, and single-subject news. All but one are digital-first publishers:

  • Block Club Chicago (subscriptions): Block Club Chicago is a non-profit news organization dedicated to delivering reliable, nonpartisan, and essential coverage of Chicago’s diverse neighbourhoods.
  • BoiseDev (membership): BoiseDev is a community-focused journalism organization, bringing business news coverage to the Greater Boise area.
  • Brooklyn Eagle (engagement): The Brooklyn Eagle is journalism for curious, creative, and constructive Brooklynites.
  • Colorado Sun (membership): The Colorado Sun is a journalist-owned, award-winning news outlet based in Denver but which strives to cover all of Colorado.
  • Documented (patronage): Documented is a non-profit news site devoted solely to covering New York City’s immigrants and the policies that affect their lives.
  • The River (patronage): Real news for real people, in the Hudson Valley.
  • Sludge (patronage): Sludge produces investigative journalism on lobbying and money in politics.

Now, you have a front row seat to this research. Your questions will help guide where it goes next. And I hope that you’ll take these ideas back to your own newsroom, experiment, and contribute back your results to our growing community of “paid acquisition for news” nerds (you can find dozens of us in the #paidacquisition channel on the Let’s Gather Slack instance).

Let’s get to it, shall we?

The Opportunity for News Publishers and Journalism Funders

There’s an opportunity to simply fund email list growth and to walk away knowing that this is a leading indicator for subscriber, member, and donor growth, as well as increased revenue from sponsorships and advertising.

Larger email lists also mean more people reading an organization’s journalism, more people sharing, and more engagement with polls, surveys, letters to the editor, comments, and more. Email list size is a critical “North Star” metric for many digital-first news publishers, particularly because of the correlation between list size and audience revenue, a topic that we’ll explore below.

As demonstrated by government grant programs in Canada, this strategy is fairly obvious. However, it is not “sexy” per se and appears to be beneath the consideration of most of the larger journalism-focused foundations in the US. One possible reason for this might be funders’ distaste for operational scaling, something that is fairly common in other industries. But it’s not just the Canadian Government that believes this is a solid strategy. It’s also precisely the way that many venture capital investors work, too: They look for signs of a company’s early traction with users and then invest in helping that company find exponentially more users.

Growth these days is treated as a science with a profession of its own. This professionalization and the internet mean that never has it been easier to find people who might be interested in a product. Long-gone are the days of having to use the “spray and pray” approach offered by direct mail marketing. It’s now possible to micro-target just the right people, with just the right offer, and encourage them to take that first step of creating a relationship with a news brand. From there, it comes down — mostly — to math. A large number of cold leads in one end of the funnel, and a small number of paying customers out the other end … eventually.

And that is the one variable that is, perhaps, the most important thing to note: time.

It takes time to build a membership program, time to design the funnel that potential members will pass through, and time to test each step: to look at the data, to adjust, to iterate, to optimize. Most significantly, it takes time to build the relationship and trust needed to convert cold leads into regular readers, and then into paying community members.

Growth-oriented, tech-savvy funders and investors already understand this. In other industries, this idea isn’t verboten but embraced. I can only hope that the rest of the sector will come to the realization that investing in journalism is a long-term investment, and that underwriting activities like paid subscriber acquisition — activities that lead directly to growth — are far more important than finding the next shiny new thing.

The opportunity is significant: When I informally surveyed 20 American publishers with different coverage areas and list sizes, I found that only half are currently engaged in any kind of paid acquisition activities. And when looking at newsrooms with fewer than seven staffers, a size at which audience growth is often critical to survival, none were actively working on paid acquisition campaigns (more on this below). The majority of newsrooms with a staff of more than 20 staff people were engaged in this work, and yet — in most of those cases — the work was a subset of someone’s job, not a full position unto itself.

Paid Acquisition in a Nutshell

Whether called performance marketing, direct response, or the gag-inducing “growth hacking,” we define paid acquisition for this experiment as any form of paid marketing that seeks permission to contact the person again. Whether that’s by asking directly for an email address, a mobile phone number for SMS engagement, or a social profile for messaging, or indirectly by providing a free product trial, a contest entry, or even an inexpensive sale like a $1 time-limited subscription — as long as a publisher pays to get that information from a potential customer (or member, subscriber, or donor) — we consider those activities “paid acquisition.”

Often, permission to contact the person again would be followed up in the short term with information that provides some value to this new person (whom we’ll now refer to as a lead), such as a no-cost newsletter subscription or a no-cost guide on a frequently read topic. Down the road, the new lead would likely receive information about products or services provided by the publisher, such as a subscription offer, premium membership benefits, a variety of information products, or, in the case of a non-profit publisher, an appeal for support.

The math is fairly simple and has its roots in direct-mail marketing from long ago. Once a publisher has enough information to calculate the average lifetime value of a customer (my fellow MPP researcher Joe Amditis has written more on this topic as it relates to membership), it becomes relatively straightforward to determine how much to invest in acquiring a new customer. The objective is to spend less than the estimated customer lifetime value minus cost of service. Be sure to include hard costs, as Alexandra Smith described in this article by WhereBy.Us’ Anika Anand.

From there, a savvy publisher will experiment to determine the average rate at which new leads convert into paying customers, thus answering the sometimes-tricky question of “how much should I pay to acquire a new lead?”

Both of these variables, average customer lifetime value, and average customer conversion rate, will vary by the source of the lead. But once a publisher has this data, growth can become more predictable and can justify greater investment.

Anecdotally, I used to spend a lot of time at conferences aimed at the magazine industry. These conferences were filled with direct-mail marketing experts and circulation gurus. Inevitably, a magazine publisher would ask the question, “How many direct mail campaigns should I send to the same mailing list?” And the answer to this question is surprisingly simple: They should keep sending direct mail until they’re paying more for a lead than they might recoup in future revenue (minus costs of producing the product and/or delivering the service).

The same formula holds with paid acquisition. As long as the cost per lead is low enough to predict over a specific period of time, and that revenue from leads that convert into members is likely to be higher than the marketing expense of acquiring all the leads, one should keep investing and work to scale that investment until the formula no longer works.

Here’s a simple graphic that puts this plainly:

For example, if 2% of leads convert into paying members, that would mean two new members for every 100 leads. And if those two new members, on average, resulted in $240 each, say, or $10/month for two years, that would result in $480 in revenue. Thus, as long as all the leads were acquired, on average, for less than $4.80/each, the publisher would grow their subscriber or member base and break even on the cash investment (cost of labour is not included in this simplified example). The same would hold true for 1,000 leads and 10,000 leads.

This approach to growing customers is so established at this point that there’s a whole category of software dedicated to helping companies design and visualize their paid acquisition sales funnel, to predict changes in revenue based on what is invested in acquiring new leads, as well as an abundance of tools to help with improving conversion rates. For example, Geru helps to visualize funnels and estimate costs and revenue, services like Unbounce help to build landing pages and improve conversion rates, and products like Ad Espresso help to manage cross-platform campaigns.

Screenshot of a popular “funnel planning” software Geru.

And, beyond software, there’s a whole industry of professionals, agencies, and certifications that have become established brands in the field of growth, performance marketing, and paid acquisition. To avoid sending you down a very large rabbit hole, I’ll simply point you to this free online guide to growth by Julian Shapiro as a good place to start diving deeper, as well as this excellent essay by Aubrey Bergauer on audience development.

Experiments with Paid Acquisition

Even though the math is straightforward and there’s a whole industry dedicated to the science of growth, the question remains: How well does it translate to the world of journalism at large, and journalism membership programs specifically?

To answer that question we teamed up with Pico, a newsroom software company that provides “smart pop-ups and landing pages to turn readers into customers,” and asked several publishers on Pico’s platform if they would be open to experimenting with paid acquisition campaigns and letting us detail the results. Funding by a grant to Pico from the Lenfest Institute covered the hard costs of the acquisition experiments: platform advertising fees and stock photos. These hard costs are a figure that curious publishers will need to think about in calculations toward their own efforts.

The experiment design is relatively straightforward and consistent across most publishers:

  • The campaign is always promoting the publisher’s free newsletter. In some cases that’s weekly, in some cases daily. The ad campaign objective is a subscription to the publisher’s newsletter.
  • Once subscribed, new leads receive a three-part automated email series. The first message is a simple welcome, the second a short survey, and the third a gentle ask for financial support. The language and length of these emails was kept similar across publishers.
  • At the end of the series, I calculate both engagement and conversions across those leads. Specifically, how many opened the email series emails? How many unsubscribed? How many took the survey? How many became a financial supporter?
  • Over time, we’ll also be looking at email newsletter engagement and engagement on the publisher’s website.

There are two outliers in the sites in this study. One publisher is experimenting with United States Postal Service (USPS) marketing to potential members in their city. There we’ll be looking at how many people made the leap from postcard to website and eventually to paying members of the site. Another publisher will be testing a different kind of membership ask. In this case, it will be voluntary membership in a locally-focused “insight network” for that city, similar to American Public Media’s Public Insight Network.

These are exciting questions to be asking, and I’m keen to answer them, in part, with data. As is said, “math don’t lie.” And yet math doesn’t always reveal the entire truth either. The limitation of this research is the very short window of time that we’ll be looking at: just a few short months between June 2019 and January 2020, far short of the time necessary to see the full picture.

The Facebook Local News Subscriptions Accelerator Program has been looking at a similar question for just over a year now and recently reported that they’re seeing promising results across the metro newspapers in their program. Specifically, they’ve reported that publishers might “expect to convert five to 10 percent of your email subscribers to paid,” and went on to share that “most Accelerator publishers saw that range of free newsletter readers converting to paid subscribers.” When I asked Facebook Journalism Project’s Program Manager for accelerators, David Grant, to expand on these findings in terms of how long it took to accomplish that conversion, he clarified that “for all of these titles, it’s taken years.”

What I am hopeful to document objectively, however, are some starting points for publishers that are thinking about this route: what works, and what doesn’t in terms of ad copywriting and images, ad formats, and audience reach. And what to expect in the days, weeks, and months after new leads join a newsletter list. What to expect to pay for new leads across platforms. What to expect in terms of performance. And what signals to look for toward a longer-term outcome of a conversion to paid membership.

Early Results, Promising Signs

With funding through January 2020, it’s still early days for this research. And paid acquisition work requires an investment of time and attention that is challenging for many smaller publishers (more on that below). That said, I’m happy to report out some early results.

We are currently running paid subscriber acquisition campaigns on two platforms, Care2 and Facebook. The aim is to expand on these experiments and to investigate other lead-acquisition platforms, including the earlier mentioned USPS, as well as Google Adwords, LinkedIn, Quora, and Reddit.

Facebook’s “boosted posts,” a form of advertising with the purpose of getting people to react, share, and comment, are a relatively well-known commodity to most publishers. However, many publishers I’ve spoken with outside of our research group are not aware of the key differences between the various ad types that Facebook offers, which currently number more than 10. Our research focuses exclusively on the “Lead” ad type, which optimizes for subscriptions that take place on Facebook directly.

This is unique from the other types of ads that would typically require a publisher to direct the user to a landing page of some kind off of Facebook.

An example of a Facebook “lead” ad.

Care2 is relatively unknown to many publishers. It describes itself as a 21-year-old “network of millions of people around the globe, dedicated to building a better world.” Its core product is essentially an online petition service that is used by anyone from neighbours to global NGOs. The network boasts 45 million users with most of those in the US. To support itself financially, Care2 provides a pay-per-lead campaign service, which is what we’re testing with the publishers in this study. We are testing both issue-focused campaigns (environmental reporting) and geo-targeted (state-wide reporting) campaigns on the platform.

A Care2 petition for Sludge.

To date, these campaigns have delivered thousands of new email newsletter subscribers to some of the participating publishers. And, 12 weeks in, this is what we’re seeing across the subset of publishers who have undertaken Facebook and Care2 campaigns:

  • Engagement via open rate: Open rates for the email series range from 26% to 36%, and the average open rate across all emails and all publishers for new leads is 29%. This is higher than the MailChimp-reported industry average for “media and publishing” of 14%.
  • Engagement via survey: The rate of new leads who completed the short survey ranged from 2.7% to 7.8%, with an average across publishers of 4.7%.
  • Retention and churn: The unsubscribe rate, so far, has been between 0.8% to 6.4%, with an average across emails and publishers of 2.8%. In future updates, we’ll unpack how this compares to industry averages.

We’re also observing a consistent cost per lead of less than $3 across the two platforms we’ve tested. Care2’s pricing is set in advance, unlike Facebook’s, and varies based on how specific the audience criteria is. On Facebook, we’re seeing a range of scenarios play out, in some cases the average cost per lead is consistently below $1, in others it’s between $1.50 and $2.50, and we’ve yet to learn if these costs will stay consistent across tens of thousands of leads.

What we’re also still assessing is the quality of those leads, their engagement with the journalism, likelihood to stay subscribed and, eventually, to convert. Lead quality will likely vary by lead source, as will the cost per lead. For example, platforms like LinkedIn will be more expensive to advertise on, but we might find that they deliver a lead quality that justifies the larger investment. There’s still a lot to learn.

However, if Facebook’s own observations hold true — that news publishers are seeing conversion rates between 5 to 10% from free newsletter subscribers to a paid digital subscriptions and memberships — then these lead acquisition costs are a promising signal for publishers to take note of. At a 5% conversion rate, using the most basic of calculations like the one above, the prediction is that a publisher would generate a tidy 2.5x return on ad spend (ROAS). At 10%, that would jump to a 5x return, a number that would be the envy of many people in publishing and growth science, too.

My own observations from over a decade of working as a staffer and consultant for publishers in South America, North America, and the United Kingdom have led me to be more conservative in my predictions. And, having spent many years managing projects like this at The Tyee, I understand what it’s like to work in a resource-constrained newsroom. My hope is that this research will eventually provide the detailed data necessary for publishers to determine their own estimates of what they can reasonably achieve within a certain timeframe and with reasonable investments of time, energy, and money.

Resources, Staffing, and Budget

Three of the biggest challenges ahead for small-to-medium sized news publishers who are interested in setting up a paid subscriber acquisition effort are:

  1. The budget to invest;
  2. Availability of staff time and skill sets;
  3. And curated resources to assist with campaign planning.

Of the seven publishers in this research, less than half had invested in paid acquisition efforts over the last two years. And, combining the efforts of all of those that had invested, the total dollar amount invested was still very small. This highlights the first problem: many early-stage publishers simply don’t have the budget to invest in growth, which is a Catch-22.

More established publishers, with larger teams, struggled less with available budget and more with freeing up staff time. My observation is that publishers with six or more staff people or freelancers start to experience increased complexity in the work environment, leading to less nimbleness. In my experience this is usually due to the requirement of more clearly defined roles and management structures that are needed as team and audience size increases. This is another difficulty for those seeking to grow a digital news startup, where constant innovation is a likely part of the recipe for financial sustainability. (As Matt Thompson and Emily Goligoski wrote for this project, “membership cannot scale beyond an organization’s ability to serve its members. In some cases organizations are strategically limiting their growth to support members and ensure member value is not diluted. We think this has important ramifications for restoring the ‘human element’ to news.”)

The third big challenge lies in having knowledge or access to knowledge about where to start when trying to build effective paid subscriber acquisition campaigns. Most publishers in the study are actively engaged in using paid marketing to promote their content on platforms, but none had active paid acquisition campaigns underway when the research started.

This challenge was clear in a recent informal survey of 20 newsrooms, and the question “what do you believe to be the main challenges for your organization in committing resources to paid acquisition campaigns?” to which 70% of respondents answered “resources to assist with campaign planning.”

This isn’t entirely surprising given how quickly the landscape of lead generation advertising options shifts and how frequently the algorithms behind these systems change. It can be a full-time job staying on top of all of these shifts and changes: changes that can significantly impact campaign performance. That is perhaps the largest challenge here. Only the largest publishers have a dedicated resource focused on this; most others make do with this expertise being just a part of larger job description.

A related research question that we’ve surfaced is: how can early-stage, small, and mid-sized digital-first news publishers take advantage of the opportunities that paid acquisition presents?

So far we have clear patterns emerging in both the data that is being collected directly from participating publishers and from less formal data we’re gathering via literature reviews, interviews, and surveys.

Paid lead acquisition is an established path to new customers that is being leveraged by many growth-oriented businesses. It’s not just tech startups, online mattress firms, and companies that sell online courses; it’s being used by many small-to-medium sized businesses across the country, including everything from car dealerships, to plumbers, to real estate agents and more.

There are signs that larger, more digitally-savvy newsrooms are increasingly investing in paid growth of their email newsletter lists. Case studies are surfacing that report promising results toward converting free newsletter readers into paying supporters, like WhereByUs and the Seattle Times. And the data we’ve collected in this research so far indicates that new leads can be acquired for a low enough cost to provide a positive return on that investment over time.

I believe the question “can publishers who seek to grow their membership invest in paid lead acquisition tactics and predict with strong confidence the rate of return on their investment?” can be answered with “most likely; more data forthcoming.” It is clear that the tactics of paid lead acquisition do translate to the world of journalism — people do respond positively to the advertising campaigns, subscribe from social platforms, and stay engaged. And these strategies can be useful even if you have a paywall or patronage model.

To fully take advantage of these opportunities, I think the sector needs to further develop the following:

  • An easy-to-use spreadsheet template, or calculator, that does that math for publishers who are trying to justify the investment (to themselves, to investors, and/or to funders). It should quickly provide a detailed prediction for a range of possible outcomes based on a small number of inputs. And it should make the investment case clear, as well as defining the metrics that publishers will need to keep an eye on.
  • A playbook for how to get started with paid acquisition in the context of journalism and local news. This should be a resource that is frequently updated to stay current with the field, and it should aim to surface the best bets in the moment for publishers who are just getting started. Ideally, it would also provide detailed case studies from publishers who’ve led the way.
  • Most importantly, funding to help publishers get underway with this work, knowing that audience growth has the potential for exponential returns across several indicators. And for publishers who’ve already established their paid acquisition strategy, there’s a need for funding to scale their campaigns. The would ideally be in the form of “no strings attached” operational money, where a funder might say, “Show us you’ve got an acquisition model that works — money in equals more money out — and we’ll give you a grant to scale it.”

The simple act of getting started with these campaigns helps to deepen the publisher’s understanding of how it works. We’re seeing it boost their confidence in being able to continue the work independently. In the words of one of the publishers in the study, “It has been incredibly successful in terms of getting us new subscribers [and] a lot of insight on how to run a successful campaign. We’ll be interested to see the quality of these subscribers going forward, but it definitely proves that investment in lead acquisition can pay off if done correctly.”

Feature image credit: Margaux Savey / Momkai

This story originally appeared on the website of The Membership Puzzle Project, a public research project into membership models by the Dutch journalism platform De Correspondent and New York University’s Studio 20 Program.

By Phillip Smith

Phillip Smith is a veteran digital publishing consultantonline advocacy specialist, and strategic convener. He is the founder of the Journalism Entrepreneurship Boot Camp. If you enjoyed reading this, you can find him on Twitter.

Note: Jason Bade, Jessica Best, Burt Herman, Emily Goligoski, Ariel Zirulnick, and Margaux Savey contributed to this post.

Sourced from Global Investigative Journalism Network 

By Jonathan Herrick, Edited by Chelsea Brown

Here’s a step-by-step system for startup founders to build their first 1,000 engaged email subscribers — without guesswork or gimmicks.

he digital world is saturated with social algorithms, pay-to-play platforms and constantly changing SEO strategies. However, one channel remains consistently consequential, direct and owned: email.

Building an email list early on in your business development isn’t just a marketing move for startup founders and business leaders; it’s a smart growth strategy. Yet many wait until too late, focusing instead on social media followers or one-off ad campaigns. Email is where genuine relationships are nurtured, conversions happen and loyal communities are built.

The magic number? Your first 1,000 subscribers. This isn’t a vanity milestone or one I simply pulled out of nowhere — it’s the start of a high-value, compounding asset. Here’s a framework to get you there faster and smarter.

1. Define who you’re talking to (and why it matters)

Before writing a single email or designing a signup form, answer this: Who are your ideal subscribers, and what do they want from you?

You’re not collecting email addresses to simply just collect them. You’re doing so to start a conversation. Getting hyper-specific with your audience will be the best thing you can do to ensure those conversations are valuable. For example:

  • A productivity app may target remote tech workers struggling with distractions.
  • A wellness brand may target millennial parents looking for five-minute self-care tips.

Once you’re clear on your ideal audience, define your unique value proposition. It should answer the following questions: Why should someone join your list? What will they get in return?

2. Create an irresistible lead magnet

In 2025, people won’t give away their email for just a “newsletter.” They want value, and they want it now.

lead magnet is a free, high-value offer that your target subscriber can receive instantly in exchange for their email. Effective lead magnets typically include:

  • Checklists or cheat sheets
  • Industry trend reports or whitepapers
  • Templates or toolkits
  • Short video tutorials or mini-courses
  • Quizzes with personalized results
  • Discount codes or early access (for product-led businesses)

Your lead magnet should be hyper-relevant to your offer and audience. Make it:

  • Easy to consume (no 50-page PDFs)
  • Immediately actionable
  • Aligned with what you plan to sell later

3. Optimize your signup experience

You’ve got attention. Now, remove friction.

Place your opt-in form or landing page where it matters most:

  • Website homepage
  • Blog posts with relevant content
  • Top bar or exit-intent popups
  • Product pages
  • Social bios and link trees
  • Partner content (guest blogs, webinars, etc.)

Make the form frictionless:

  • Ask only for what’s essential (usually just name + email)
  • Use persuasive microcopy (“Get the free guide” instead of “Submit”)
  • Add social proof if possible (“Join 850+ founders getting weekly growth tips”)

And make sure the design is clean, mobile-friendly and aligned with your brand voice.

4. Launch a welcome series that converts

Your first few emails set the tone. A welcome series isn’t just polite — it’s strategic.

Here’s a simple three-email sequence to start:

  • Email 1: Deliver the lead magnet and set expectations
    Introduce yourself. Explain what they’ll get from your emails and how often.
  • Email 2: Your origin story and value add
    Share why you started this business and how it helps them. Include a helpful tip or insight.
  • Email 3: Social proof and soft CTA
    Highlight a testimonial, case study or popular product. Include a light-touch call to action (visit your website, book a call, check out your offer).

This sequence helps build trust before selling — the key to sustainable growth.

5. Drive targeted traffic to fuel growth

Now that your system is ready, it’s time to get eyes on it. Don’t wait for organic search to work; get proactive.

Here are five scalable traffic sources:

  • Organic social: Share lead magnet snippets on LinkedIn, Instagram and X. Use storytelling and pain-point content.
  • Partnerships: Do email swaps or joint webinars with complementary businesses.
  • Paid ads: Run low-budget tests on Meta or Google Ads with lead magnet landing pages.
  • Communities: Engage in relevant Slack groups, subreddits and forums — share value and link to your opt-in.
  • Content marketing: Blog posts optimized for long-tail keywords that tie into your lead magnet.

Pro tip: Use UTM parameters to track which channels bring the highest-quality subscribers.

6. Segment and engage (even with a small list)

You don’t need 10,000 subscribers to start segmenting — you just need an intelligent system.

Tag or segment based on:

  • Source: where they signed up
  • Behaviour: what they clicked or downloaded
  • Interest: what content they engage with

Then, personalize future content, send relevant offers and nurture based on behaviour. The more relevant your emails, the faster your list will grow because people will start sharing them.

7. Don’t just build — engage

Your email list is not a vault; it’s a living asset. Keep it warm.

  • Show up consistently — whether it’s weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
  • Deliver value more often than you pitch
  • Encourage replies (and read them)
  • Test different types of content: behind-the-scenes stories, how-tos, Q&As, curated lists

When people feel heard and helped, they stay. And they share.

Reaching 1,000 subscribers isn’t about overnight success. It’s about setting up a repeatable, value-driven system that compounds. Once you have it, every new partnership, blog post or campaign fuels a growing engine.

Email marketing isn’t just a channel — it’s your direct line to the people most likely to become loyal customers, fans and ambassadors. Start building that line early, and your future self (and business) will thank you.

By Jonathan Herrick 

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Jonathan Herrick is CEO and chief high-fiver at Benchmark Email, BenchmarkONE and Contacts+, bringing together 150 employees serving over 25,000 customers and 1 million users in 15 countries and nine languages worldwide.

Edited by Chelsea Brown

Sourced from Entrepreneur

By Charu Mitra Dubey

More followers on Pinterest could mean a boost in subscribers, sign-ups, sales, brand awareness, and more. Here are 20 practical tips you can start using today.

It might not be the most obvious social media platform choice when it comes to building your brand as a creator or business.

But, when used right, Pinterest could become the most effective platform in your social media toolbox.

A bold statement, but I stand by it. That’s because Pinterest has what many other social media sites don’t — the ability to include links in every single post.

Of course, there’s more to Pinterest than just clickable posts. Unlike other social platforms, where content tends to disappear quickly, Pinterest acts more like a visual search engine — meaning the pins you post today can continue driving traffic weeks, months, or even years from now.

With all that in mind, getting more followers on Pinterest isn’t just about vanity metrics. A bigger, engaged audience means more people discovering and saving your content — which translates into more subscribers, sign-ups, sales, and brand awareness over time. Pretty neat, right?

But… how do you get more followers on Pinterest, exactly?

Let’s break it down. Here are 20 practical tips to help you get more Pinterest followers and move the needle right away.

Optimize your profile

Your profile is the first impression. Here’s what you need to do and how to do it to optimize your Pinterest profile.

1. Convert your Pinterest profile to a business account

Pinterest has two kinds of accounts: personal and business. If you have a Pinterest Personal account, I’d recommend switching to a Pinterest Business account. Why? Because business accounts have access to:

Pinterest itself recommends converting to a business account to access helpful growth features. Here’s how you can convert your Pinterest Personal account to a business profile:

1. Log in to your Pinterest account

2. Click the arrow next to your profile icon

3. Click on the ‘Convert to Business’ option and then the  ‘Upgrade’ button (don’t worry, it won’t cost you anything)

screenshot showing how to switch to a pinterest business account

2. Brand your Pinterest profile to make it recognizable

Optimizing your profile is a must for growing on Pinterest. Imagine someone clicking on your pin, going to your Pinterest profile to learn more, and having no clue who you are or what you do. They won’t hit that follow button.

Here’s how to give some personality to your Pinterest profile page:

1. Add your name and profile name to your profile. If you have a brand name or username that you’re already using on your website and other social media accounts, use the same one here.

⚡ Pro-tip: Pinterest also recommends adding searchable keywords along with your name to make it easy for people to discover you. You can use the search option to find relevant keywords and add the relevant ones to your name.

For example, Micah has used keywords like ‘DIY’, ‘décor,’ and ‘content creator’ to make her profile more discoverable. This helps her appear in searches when users look for DIY inspiration, home décor ideas, or content creators in her niche.

screenshot of make it with Micah's pinterest profile

2. Add a clear profile photo so people can put a face to your name. If you’re a brand, put your logo in the profile photo.

3. Use your ‘About’ section to describe what you post on Pinterest and how it can benefit your audience. Keep it short and sweet.

4. Add a cover photo telling people what you do or what you represent. This isn’t necessary, but it’s a good addition!

Shreya Dalela, creator of The Creatives Hour, is the perfect example of how you can brand your account and make it easy for people to click follow.

screenshot of Shreya Dalela's pinterest profile

If you’re a small business, you can also apply for Pinterest’s verified merchant program to get a blue checkmark, which gives you that extra badge of authenticity and some coveted features (like shopping experiences).

And remember: Branding isn’t just for your profile. Pinterest actively encourages its users to put a logo on every pin they share:

“Put a logo on every pin that you make, but keep it subtle. Avoid the lower-right corner, since that spot gets covered up by our product icons.”

3. Verify your website

Pinterest lets you claim your website, linking it directly to your profile. This ensures your profile picture appears on every pin saved from your site, making it easy for people to find and follow you.

Claiming your website also gives you insights into how often your content is shared. You’ll get advanced analytics and a direct link on every saved pin, helping users discover more from you.

Whenever someone saves an image from your site:

  • Your profile picture appears on the pin.
  • The pin links to your Pinterest profile.
  • Viewers see an option to follow you.

Claiming your website also unlocks rich pins. Rich pins are a type of pin that automatically sync information from your website and display extra details like titles and descriptions.

It’s fairly simple to do, if you know the ins and outs of your website. This step-by-step video shows you how.

Create content that engages your audience

Just like other social media platforms, Pinterest’s growth thrives on content. Here’s how you can make yours more Pin-teresting. 😉

4. Create fresh pins consistently

All social networks want you to post consistently on their platform. The minimum frequency for Pinterest is at least one pin a week, though posting more often is generally a good idea.

“While you can determine the best schedule for you, posting on a weekly basis is a good rule of thumb,” Catie Marques Teles, a Product Marketing Manager at Pinterest says.  “Because content is evergreen, your hard work works harder, and people will keep seeing your ideas over time.”

.If even one post a week feels a little intimidating, it might help to draw inspiration from the various content types

Pinterest recommends:

1. Instructional

2. Quick tip

3. Comparison

4. Storyteller

5. Conversation

Food and recipe creator Lindsey Baruch is a great example of step-by-step guide-style Pinterest content.

screenshot of Lindsey Baruch's pinterest profile

Pro tip: You’re not limited to static images! Pinterest allows short-form video content, too, which is a great way to present tutorials and how-to content.

On the other hand, Brian S. Stone, founder of Adaptive Communities, creates marketing-focused Pinterest content, such as infographics and tool stacks with a clear goal: driving Pinterest users to his page, where he sells Notion templates.

screenshot of brain s stone's pinterest profile

⚠️ NoteDon’t compromise on the quality of your Pinterest pins to meet a certain number. Pinterest content has a longer shelf life — meaning the pins you create today can generate traffic for weeks.

Invest time in creating thoughtful, quality content that is actually relevant to your target audience.

Now, creating and posting multiple pins weekly, especially if you’re a part-time creator or small business owner, might sound exhausting. Who has the time to write the title, the description, and edit posts every single day?

Which is why it’s a great idea to work smarter, not harder. You might want to try batch-creating content and scheduling pins using Buffer. You can create pins in advance and queue them into relevant boards.

a screenshot of composing a pinterest pin in Buffer

The best part? If you add a destination link, Buffer will automatically pull through the available images on your website. So, if you’re adding Pinterest-worthy photos on your website already, you don’t even need to upload the image if you use Buffer.

5. Publish high-quality vertical images and videos

Pinterest is a visual platform. Quality matters on Pinterest — whether it’s for infographics or videos. The ideal image size is 1000 x 1500 pixels in a 2:3 aspect ratio. 

Pinterest says other ratios can negatively impact your performance because the image’s text is half-visible. The ratio is also ideal because most Pinterest users use the app on their mobile.

A great example is Melisza Mcfierce‘s Pinterest profile. Each and every pin she posts is of extremely high-quality and stands out as clean, clear, and crisp on the home feed.

Melisza Mcfierce's Pinterest profile

6. Select a strong, relevant image for your pins

It probably goes without saying that Pinterest is first and foremost, a visual platform. When Pinterest users search for something, they’re more likely to click on the pin with the most relevant, visually appealing image.

According to Pinterest Creators, being strategic with your pin’s image and text can significantly improve engagement. For example, if you’re sharing a lasagne recipe, a pin featuring a delicious, well-cooked lasagne is far more likely to attract clicks than one showing just the raw ingredients.

Pinterest users engage visually first — your pin should instantly communicate the value of your content. Using high-quality images, clear text overlays, and an engaging design will make your content more likely to stand out in a sea of aesthetic visuals users will find on their feeds.

But image relevance is just as important as the quality.

For one thing, the Pinterest algorithm scans your images to understand whether or not they match your pin description and overall profile niche. So, your Pinterest cover images should contextualize what you’re discussing in the pin.

Let’s say you’re a travel creator and are creating a pin on the best coworking cafes in Prague. Don’t use a generic picture of a latte as the cover image for this pin — use a photo of the relevant café instead.

When I type “best coworking cafes in Prague” into the Pinterest search bar, it displays various relevant café images with overlay text. However, the ones that catch my attention aren’t just snaps of coffee or food, no matter how aesthetic — they’re high-quality photos of the cafes, showcasing the ambiance, workspace setup, and overall vibe.

a screenshot of search results for "best coworking cafes in Prague” in Pinterest

7. Level up your content using music, duration settings, stickers, and more

Pinterest has developed a ton of native editing features — like editing music, syncing text to video, adding stickers, and more. Use all of these features to create more engaging content.

Academia Central Fitness is an excellent example of how to use Pinterest’s various features to create scroll-stopping pins. They align the text to the videos they share, use Pinterest’s native font, and add stickers and music to all their pins.

Academia Central Fitness pinterest content, a video showing how to do wall pilates

8. Use Pinterest Boards to organize your Pins

Pinterest Boards are a way to categorize your various content pillars into different folders. This advice comes straight from Pinterest

“Because we know pinners are planners, it’s important to focus on your board strategy.”

Pinterest also suggests keeping your board names straightforward rather than overly clever to make them search engine optimized (SEO-friendly). This means using clear, keyword-rich titles that describe exactly what the board is about.

For example, if you’re creating a board about makeup recommendations, name your board something simple and direct, such as “Makeup products recommendations,” instead of using an informal term such as “makeup products that slap.”

The fashNcurious Pinterest profile is an A+ example. The mother-daughter duo creates fashion content on Pinterest and organizes it in boards such as “nail content” and “fashion inspiration for all occasions.”

fashNcurious Pinterest profile

Categorizing your content into boards also helps new followers navigate your profile and get similar content in one window. Here’s how to create a board:

1. Go to your Pinterest profile

2. Click on ‘Saved

3. Click on the ‘➕’ plus icon on the right-hand side

4. Choose ‘Board

5. Name your board and start adding pins to it

If you want to take it up a notch, you can also create sections within your boards. For example, if one of your Pinterest boards is about “winter recipes,” you can break it down further into sections like “winter beverages” or “winter desserts.”

9. Add a call-to-action (CTA) to every pin

What should your target audience do after they come across a pin from you?

Adding a call-to-action to every pin you create ensures your audience takes that next step of following you or visiting your website. For example, in this pin, fitness creator Jacquelyn has a clear CTA to watch her YouTube video.

fitness creator Jacquelyn's pinterest content, a promo for her glute workout

 

Some other call-to-action phrases you can use:

  • Read the full blog on my website
  • Follow me for more [your niche] content
  • Save this for later
  • What do you think of [topic of your pin]?
  • Comment your favourite [something relevant to your pin] below.

You can also add a voiceover for your CTA if you share a video on Pinterest.

10. Tailor your repurposed content to the Pinterest platform

Since the Pinterest algorithm scans your image content for contextual cues, it’s a great idea to edit your content within the platform.

So, for example, if you’re repurposing a TikTok video for Pinterest, remove the accompanying text and add text within the Pinterest app instead. TikTok, Instagram, and Shorts watermarks are a no-go, too, so be sure to save a ‘clean’ version of your content.

With that, you can use the platform’s native editing abilities as much as possible to publish more Pinterest-friendly content — and boost your follower count by extension.

11. Craft multiple pins for the same post

Shreya Dalela used Pinterest to grow the website Elite Content Marketer’s traffic by a whopping 829% (!) in just three months. One of her top tips is creating multiple pin designs for the same topic.

For example, she suggested varying the designs for the same header or splitting one long-form post into mini infographics.

Elite Content Marketer's multiple pins for the same article

This is an excellent way to get the most out of every piece of content you create and also an A+ Pinterest strategy to pin more without burning yourself out. But it comes with two caveats:

  • Shreya suggests avoiding pinning multiple posts with the same URL in one day, as this might come across as spam. Instead, spread it out over a few days or weeks.
  • Shreya also recommends testing the performance of five pins on one topic, first. If it performs well, create more pins for it. If not, don’t design more pins for it.

12. Create content your audience would want to save

The Pinterest algorithm prioritizes content that users save.

“If there’s a pin with a lot of saves, the system will recommend it across the platform’s main pages over other less inspiring, less engaging content,” Pinterest says.

A save signals to Pinterest that your post has meaningful engagement and that your idea resonates with people. Ask yourself: “What kind of content would my target audience want to bookmark?” and create more and more of it.

Creating saveable content should be your top Pinterest marketing strategy. People often return to their saved content, increasing your engagement and website traffic even further.

Make your pins discoverable

There’s no point in creating perfect pins if your ideal followers can’t find them. Below are the best tips for improving the visibility and reach of your pins.

13. Optimize your images, pin descriptions, and text overlays for SEO

If you pick the right keywords on Pinterest, you’ll improve your discoverability and increase your number of followers. Pinterest also highlights that using the right keywords for SEO positively affects the distribution of your content.

Use keywords in three spaces on Pinterest:

  • Text overlays
  • Title
  • Pin description

⚠️ Note: In text overlays, ensure your image is as easy to read as possible. Remember people are scrolling on their phones. Small fonts are easy to miss. Use header fonts to show what your image is about.

This pin by Cassey Ho of Blogilates on “how to do a split” is an excellent example of how to sprinkle keywords into your Pinterest content.

Cassey Ho of Blogilates pin on “how to do a split”

How do you find relevant keywords related to your pin? You can search for your topic on Pinterest, see the suggested keywords that pop up, and monitor what your competitors are using.

You can also use the Pinterest trends tool to search for your topic and find what your audience is searching for.

screenshot of the Pinterest trends tool

14. Use topic tags instead of hashtags

Topic tags are the new hashtags on Pinterest. Although you might still see many creators using hashtags, Pinterest says they rely on topic tags to categorize your content.

You can add up to 10 topic tags for each pin you post. Pinterest gives you the option to “tag related topics” while you’re posting your pin.

screenshot showing how to add topic tags on pinterest

Pinterest users can’t see your tagged topics — which is another benefit since it doesn’t appear spammy like hashtags.

15. Engage with others

If I had a penny for every time I saw a creator posting and ghosting on Pinterest, I’d be swimming in cash. Social media marketing is a two-way street.

This is especially true for Pinterest. It encourages active users to respond to comments, pin frequently, and share ideas with each other.

If you want to grow on Pinterest, you have to build a community. This means following others in your niche, commenting on other people’s content, and responding to comments and direct messages (DMs) you receive. For example, Suman replies to questions and comments on her Pinterest videos to help her audience.

screenshot showing how Suman replies to questions and comments on Pinterest

Engaging on Pinterest doesn’t have to be complicated. Take 10–20 minutes every day to respond to any notifications you receive. When you reply to someone, you increase engagement and also prompt them to check your pin again.

Also, scroll Pinterest for the kind of content you like. If you find another creator in a relevant niche with useful content, follow them and engage with their profile. They might follow you back or start saving your pins on their boards.

16. Join relevant group boards

Group boards are Pinterest boards with multiple collaborators. You can create your own group board by inviting collaborators and giving them various levels of permissions.

There are popular group boards in every niche that aid in providing an additional reach to your Pinterest content. You can request to join these boards and participate in pinning content consistently.

Use pingroupie to search for popular group boards in your niche. Most group boards will also use the description to share guidelines on joining the board and set up some ground rules.

a shared pinterest board for the best recipes

Pinterest users love seasonal content more than any other social media platform. And Pinterest capitalizes on it by giving you tons of resources to find the latest trends on the social network:

1. Pinterest trends tool

2. A monthly trends report

3. A Pinterest predicts series to help you ace future trends today

4. A theme to organize your content for the whole year and inspire your content calendar

Use these resources to create trending content in advance (as much as possible). Some trends — like the holidays — allow you to prepare pins early because you already know that spike is coming.

Cross-promote your pins

Any marketing strategy is incomplete without a promotion strategy. To get the most out of your Pinterest content, you need to actively share and distribute your pins for greater visibility.

Here are some effective ways to promote your pins:

18. Advertise your pins

While we’re fans of organic growth here at Buffer, giving your pins a little nudge (if you can afford to) hurt no one.

If you have some budget for Pinterest Ads, consider promoting your Pinterest pins to reach potential followers. How do you create a Pinterest ad? It might seem a little complicated, but the platform will guide you through the process, step-by-step. Here’s an overview:

  • Click on the three horizontal lines at the top left corner of your Pinterest profile and select ‘Create Campaign’ under the Ads section.
  • Choose a campaign objective (e.g. brand awareness, traffic, conversions, or catalogue sales).
  • Set a daily or lifetime budget and define the campaign duration.
  • Select the target audience based on demographics, interests, keywords, and behaviours.
  • Choose an existing pin from your boards or upload a new one with a strong, relevant title, description, and destination URL.
  • Set a bid strategy (manual or automatic bidding) and select ad placements (search results, home feed, or related pins).
  • Review all settings and click ‘Launch’ to start your promoted pin campaign.
  • Monitor ad performance through Pinterest Analytics and optimize based on engagement, clicks, and conversions.
screenshot showing how to create an ad on Pinterest

And you’re done!

Try Pinterest ads for yourself and see if promoted pins give you enough return on investment (ROI) to become a regular part of your Pinterest marketing strategy.

19. Add a Pinterest follow button to your website, newsletter, and other social media

Encourage the followers, fans, and email subscribers you already have to follow you on Pinterest.

For example, in your email newsletter or Instagram Stories, you can share a regular “What we’re pinning” update to remind your existing followers to check you out on Pinterest, too.

Etsy links its Pinterest profile in the footer of its website — along with other social accounts.

But remember: Your target audience needs a reason to follow you on Pinterest. Perhaps you create exclusive content, or maybe organize all your existing content neatly into boards and sections your audience can refer back to easily.

Whatever it is, craft a compelling offer that will entice people to click the follow button.

Measure your success

Here’s a social media strategy step often missed by creators and brands alike: analysing their content performance.

20. Use Pinterest Analytics to guide your content strategy

Once you switch to a business account, you get in-depth insights into how your content is performing. You get details like saves, outbound clicks, pin clicks, profile visits, and more.

The metrics you should focus on will depend on your goals. For example, if you want to grow website traffic via Pinterest, the outbound click rate is the most important.

Spend some time each week or month identifying your best-performing pins. Maybe you noticed how-to video content gets the highest number of saves and click-through rates, so you can double down on it when you start creating new pins.

There’s more to Pinterest than Pinterest followers

Pinterest is known as the social network to drive more traffic to your website. It encourages its users to leave the platform — an anomaly in the social media marketing world.

So, while Pinterest followers are a good metric to look at to evaluate your growth on Pinterest, remember it’s not the only one. If you’re getting decent traffic, enough saves, and impressions, and engaged comments, you’re doing Pinterest right!

Don’t focus on gaining new Pinterest followers in a silo — look at the big picture and focus on building a community on the platform.

Feature Image Credit: Ebru Dogan, Pexels

By Charu Mitra Dubey

Sourced from Buffer

By

Triggered emails can help to build long-lasting relationships with prospects and customers alike. According to GetResponse, these emails show a 38.03% open rate and a 6.76% click-through rate.

One of the biggest advantages of triggered emails is their longevity. It is quite possible that visitors who receive these emails engage with them some months later. According to statistics, around 18 to 23% of engagement is noticed after 24 hours of deployment.

Email-Engagement-Timeline

So, how will you make your triggered email campaigns more impactful for readers?

Here is a detailed article to help.

#1. Segment your audience according to the customer journey

The spray-and-pray technique of email marketing is no longer effective. Instead, marketing professionals must take a customer-centric approach and try to send triggered emails that are relevant for the readers.

According to a 2017 report by Mailchimp, segmented campaigns exhibit better performance when compared to non-segmented ones.

They show:

  • 31% higher open rates
  • 64% higher unique open rates
  • 37% lower unsubscribes

While segmenting, you can start with basic customer journey parameters like:

  • New subscribers
  • New customers
  • Active subscribers or customers
  • Inactive subscribers or customers
  • Re-engaged subscribers or customers

If you want to go for complex segmentation criteria, you can consider demographics, geographical location, purchase history, products browsed for, and resources downloaded.

#2. Send relevant emails based on user behaviour

Your triggered emails must be aligned with the trigger event. In other words, if a customer has placed an order, he or she will expect a confirmation email with all the necessary order details. No wonder, these emails have a 60% open rate.

Let me share an example with you.

A few days back, I searched for plus-size products on an eCommerce store. They sent me a triggered email promoting their “Plus Size Store”.

Plus-Sized-Store

#3. Use data to create a personalized experience

The key to sending impactful triggered emails is data. If you collect more data about the customer’s interests, purchase preferences, and behaviours, you will be able to target them better. After all, 71% of customers believe that personalized experiences will affect their decision to interact with emails.

Having enough data will help you set engaging triggers that are more appealing for your customers. For example, if you are in the banking and finance sector, you can send out triggered emails whenever an EMI payment is due or there has been an update to the credit report.

Executing triggered emails at different stages of the buyer’s journey

First Stage: Brand New Subscribers

Visitors who have filled out your sign-up form in the expectation of getting a freebie or discount can be categorized as new subscribers.

Optimove suggests that 80% of prospects complete the first purchase on the day they register. 7% of them do so within the first week of registration. You must aim to crack the purchase within the first seven days.

Welcome emails help to build a strong relationship with the new subscriber. Through these emails, you can let your subscribers know about your offerings and encourage them to make their first purchase from you.

Take a look at this welcome email by Moo in which they have offered a discount coupon code and featured their unique selling points (USPs).

First-Email-First-Freebie

Image Source

Second Stage: New Customers

Leads who make their first purchase on your website will be considered new customers.

According to research, only 15% of first-time online customers will become repeat buyers. Repeat buyers contribute to one-third of online shopping revenue and spend three times more than one-time shoppers.

Use triggered emails to nurture these customers and make them purchase yet again. You can even incentivize them with an exciting offer.

eCommerce email marketers can trigger a post-purchase feedback email to increase subscriber engagement.

Similarly, SaaS business owners can ask customers for their input about how they liked the services.

See how HubSpot has sent out a short, yet engaging feedback email to interact with their customers.

Hubspot

Image Source

Third Stage: Active Customers

When a customer downloads several resources from your website and makes repeat purchases, you can categorize them as active customers. They are likely to be brand evangelists who will help you acquire new customers.

You can make loyal customers feel special by sending out VIP offers and bonuses. In addition, you can also invite them for exclusive interviews and then include their responses on your website testimonials or blog posts.

The BuzzSumo team, in partnership with Mantis Research, sent a survey invitation email to their loyal audience asking them to participate in it and invite their friends and family too.

Buzzsumo

Fourth Stage: Dormant Subscribers and Inactive Customers

Subscribers who have not engaged with your emails in the last few months are considered to be dormant. Lost customers, on the other hand, are the ones who have not purchased from you in quite some time.

As obvious as it may seem, the longer the inactive time, the tougher it becomes to revive them.

You can reactivate such users with the help of re-engagement emails. Remind them that you are grateful for their association with your brand. You can also share all the USPs that make you stand out from the competitors.

Take a look at this re-engagement email by Noom that works like a charm to bring back inactive customers.

Noom

                                                     Image Source

Wrapping up

Hitting the marketing triad of delivering the right content to the right person at the right time has become a breeze by setting up triggered email workflows. They not only help to engage prospective and existing customers but also assist customer retention.

If you have not started investing in triggered email workflows just yet, now is the right time.

Tools like Salesforce and Marketo can prove to be extremely useful for this.

By

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.

Sourced from Jeffbullas.com