WordPress

How to Collect Emails on a WordPress Site and Use Them for Your LinkedIn Campaign

February 19, 2021

The truth is, people don’t really like giving out their emails just like that.

Sounds harsh and demoralizing, but don’t let it make you shift your course! The fact that they don’t *like* to do it refers to spamming with redundant, non-personalized emails they never wanted to receive in the first place.

That’s not what you’re gonna do. Instead, we’ll show you how to collect these emails successfully, by offering people something great in return. That way, they won’t feel pressured, and you won’t sound needy!
Dima Suponau of Number For Live Person notes that “While spammy, irrelevant messages irritate me, I’ll always value an excellent piece of content, and I’ll gladly give my email address. If it means that I could learn something new, sign me in!”.

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In this blog, you will learn how to collect emails on your WordPress website by:

Afterward, we’ll show you how to use those emails to create a true success story with your LinkedIn campaign (and automate most of it).

Make a Clear Connection to the LinkedIn Campaign

First things first — make sure all the parts of your strategy fall together like pieces of a puzzle:

  1. Take your LinkedIn campaign. What’s the objective? Keep the thing you want to achieve in mind
  2. Now, think of the people you want to target with that campaign. What are their pain points, wants and needs?
  3. Create that magic wand that solves the issues for them — and deliver it via email (which they’ll gladly provide)
  4. Be careful not to abuse their trust and load their inbox with spam and offers they’re not interested in; however, if they opted to receive the content you offered, they should have a natural interest in what your LinkedIn campaign showcases — that’s the connection!

Let’s go through this again, by using a simple example.

The campaign should sell your vegan cookbook. To reach out to vegans, you’ll need their emails. You know they need more vegan food ideas — so, you create a small PDF with 3 new, creative vegan lunch recipes. Send them those via the email they provide, and there you have it: an email list of people interested in your offer.
“Targeting the right people is arguably the most important thing here. You won’t gain much if your audience has a low chance of converting, which is your end goal. Make sure to do plenty of research so that you hit the spot with your offer.” remarks Milosz Krasinski

Now that we went through that part, let’s continue with email collection strategies.

Create Irresistible Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are also called “opt-in bribes” — quite literally, you offer something valuable to your visitors in exchange for their email address, which you later use for a campaign. However, it’s a good idea to use a bulk email finder before putting emails on your list to check email validity and therefore make sure you have relevant and active subscribers on your list. Once you have checked the validity, you can use a bulk mail service to kick-start your campaign.

This is one of the best ways to enrich and grow your email list, and there are tons of ways to come up with content for lead magnets. Marketers often use valuable content visitors can download and use offline, or provide them with something exclusive.

Below are some of the highest-converting lead magnet ideas you can use and make people gladly leave you their emails, in anticipation of something cool.

Educational materials

This is the biggest, most used lead magnet category. Whitepapers, eBooks, checklists, cheatsheets, research reports, resource lists, tutorials, infographics…
The list goes on, but it’s worth knowing that people prefer shorter content and condensed versions, with clearly sectioned topics. Bite-sized knowledge, so to speak.
Mike Sadowski, CEO of Brand24, a media monitoring and sentiment analysis tool mentions tutorials. “We found that tutorials work the best for us in terms of lead generation. People are more than happy to leave their email address in exchange for a valuable piece of information.”

Entertaining stuff

With quizzes, it’s the sillier, the better! They are the opportunity to show the playful side of your work. BuzzFeed is a good example — their quizzes are now well-known, with “What type of bread are you?” being a true standout. You can come up with something entertaining, yet still professional; there’s no reason those two can’t go hand in hand.

Utilize surveys as well, and place a form at the end where people can enter their email address so they receive the results. After they’ve spent some time clicking and invested themselves in answering the questions, they’ll be less likely to give up and exit the screen.

Exclusive content

These lead magnets offer something currently unavailable someplace else, hard to find or expensive.

Here you can apply some scarcity marketing tactics and get those emails faster if you’re in a rush. Limited quantities, time-constricted offers and countdowns induce FOMO and have a highly persuasive effect.

Editable forms and printables

Templates, scripts, planners, workbooks, calendars, Excel spreadsheets, and similar premade, ready-to-use resources are popular as well.

Letting people customize them is the way to go. With some effort, you can create a generator that allows them to use the basic elements you provide to their liking and then download the finished product.

Gated content

This tactic is mostly seen on membership sites, news and media websites, as a way to earn more with subscriptions. It is suitable for articles, research, or even comics and other artwork. The first part should intrigue them enough, and when they come to the crucial part – blur it and kindly ask people to leave their email to receive the full version.

Freebies and discounts

Samples, free trials, free consultations, coupons — because everybody likes free stuff.
This lets them get a taste of what you create without the commitment. On the other hand, you’ll have an opportunity to target them with your LinkedIn campaign.

Place a Popup Form Strategically (but Don’t Be Annoying)

Popups are good because you can be sure your email request is in the center of attention.

For that same reason — they can be annoying. Popups are pretty invasive as they are, as they are built to interrupt people’s activity and demand something from them.

Before you set to creating a popup form, this is how your course of action should look like:

  1. Create a page on your website that attracts people with a natural interest in what you plan to offer with your LinkedIn campaign (just like we mentioned in the first part)
  2. Perform head-to-toe SEO optimization of said page, to bring in as many visitors as you can with relevant and high-converting keywords (in fact, your whole site should be meticulously optimized). If your website has plenty of visitors, the homepage can be a perfectly fine landing page, acting as (or in addition to) popups and other email-collecting forms
  3. Place a well-made Popup to collect visitor emails

Well-made email capture popups work wonders, and below are the elements that make them… Pop!

Tidy, yet impactful design

You can go very minimal with design and opt for black and white. The monochromatic color scheme is also an option — or spice things up with branded font and colors, and leave the rest to the convincing copy.

However, you don’t have to be minimalistic, especially if it doesn’t align with your brand. Just be sure the text and buttons stand out while matching the imagery in the background.

One more thing — the X exit button should be discrete, NOT invisible or so tiny mobile users cannot click it!

Impeccable copy with a great offer in return

Copy sells the entire thing.

Again, depending on your brand, adjust your language and keep the message simple, easy to understand, or you can crack an “inside joke” your typical visitor will understand.

For example, if you’re a makeup retailer, you can go along the lines of:

We *know* all of your nude lipsticks aren’t the same.

That’s the magic of skin undertones.

Let us send you this illustrated cheatsheet about color theory in makeup, so you can learn the science behind the MLBB (My Lips But Better)!

This refers to nude lipstick hoarding phenomena in a funny way and provides the visitors with a handy guide to choosing one perfect shade for themselves — if they leave their email addresses. The part about Lead magnets above will provide you with plenty of offer ideas.

Don’t interrupt the visitors

It’s completely fine to put the popups in spots other than the very center of the page.

Some would argue that the bottom right corner works the best for CTA buttons; then, there are F-pattern and Z-pattern theories, relying on the way our eyes move.

See for yourself: A/B testing will tell you what works best with your audience.

Use Lead Generation Forms

Lead generation forms most commonly take the shape of newsletter signup forms, contact, or registration forms. Technically, all of the above are some types of Lead generation forms by definition, as their main purpose is to capture emails.

These Lead generation forms we’re thinking of aren’t focused on one exact campaign; rather than that, they serve as constant email collection points for broader marketing strategies. You’ll find them across the website in many shapes and sizes: above the fold, at the top/ bottom of the text posts, in the middle of them. The same rules apply as for the ones we’ve described.

Partner with Relevant Industry Players

A joint venture opens another pool of audience and can bring a lot more traffic (and with that, emails).

Contact respectable influencers in your niche and make the collaboration offer. Sponsored posts, ads, or other forms of influencer marketing = social media exposure, one thing you must not leave behind!
“Seeing that partnerships provide mutual benefits and that networking is one of the best ways of growth, influencers are more than happy to do it. Building your own brand on the already established personal brand of others works like a springboard for your business.” adds Gabriel Nightingale at Bon Accord Control

When in Doubt — Gamify It!

You can bet on people’s desire to be (pleasantly) surprised and have fun whatever they do — apply that principle when you try to get their emails and use some of these tactics:

  • Let them spin the wheel so they can win one of the prizes — and then enter their email to receive it
  • Create a challenge — this is an opportunity to use social media to boost your efforts. Fitness challenges are highly popular: followers can leave their emails to receive workout plans, and post images and videos of them working out, before/ after and similar with dedicated hashtags
  • Create a giveaway — use a random generator to pick the winning email, and use the rest for your campaign

How to Use These Emails for LinkedIn Campaign?

Don’t worry, the difficult part is done!

You can automate everything from here — without getting flagged for spam. LinkedIn message automation with a tool like Expandi takes care of personalization at the same time; these are all of the steps necessary:

  1. Create a CSV list of contacts with emails you have collected for the campaign;
  2. Upload the list to LinkedIn via Expandi — if the person left the email they used to register their LinkedIn account, Expandi will find them and send them a message
  3. Connect it to your campaign

And simple as that — you’re done.

We hope you’ll bookmark this article and get back to it for instructions and inspiration!

Check out our blog for more!

Stefan Smulders
Stefan Smulders is a SaaS Entrepreneur | Bootstrapped to €3M ARR in just 1year | Founder of Worlds safest software for LinkedIn Automation Expandi.io | Vegan | Father
Stefan Smulders
Stefan Smulders is a SaaS Entrepreneur | Bootstrapped to €3M ARR in just 1year | Founder of Worlds safest software for LinkedIn Automation Expandi.io | Vegan | Father