17 Tested and Easy Ways to Grow Your Email List Faster

When we first started building our email list, we made the classic beginner mistake: adding a single “Subscribe” form and hoping for the best. Spoiler alert — it didn’t work.

It took years of testing and fine-tuning to figure out what actually drives email list growth. But once we nailed the right strategies, the results were game-changing.

At WPBeginner, simple tweaks like adding exit-intent popups boosted our signups by over 600%. Running a top commenter contest also made a big difference. Even on X (Twitter), sparking discussions has helped us grow our list and build a loyal community.

In this guide, we’re sharing the 17 most effective list-building techniques we’ve used at WPBeginner. These aren’t theories — they’re battle-tested strategies that work for blogs, online stores, and small businesses alike! 🙌

Getting Started

An email list is the ultimate asset for any small business as it’s a powerful way to drive new customers or increase the lifetime value of existing ones.

Beyond that, you’re relating to your customers and sending them personalized messages that help solve a pain point.

“Email gives marketers a creative outlet to prove that we understand a prospect’s problem, we can provide a solution and we can do it in a delightful way. Our team often rewrites emails and autoresponders a dozen times to get the wording just right, because every email is an opportunity to relate to your leads and to prove that you’re relevant.”

Corey Dilley – Marketing Manager at Unbounce

That said, before you start list-building, let’s talk about a few tools you’ll need to add new subscribers to your email newsletter.

First, you need to make sure that you are using a professional email marketing service so that your emails don’t end up in the spam folder. The service also provides you with the right set of tools to build and grow your email list.

We recommend Constant Contact, one of the largest and most popular email marketing service providers out there. For complete step-by-step instructions, see our guide on how to start an email newsletter the right way.

Next, you will need OptinMonster, the best lead generation software in the world. It helps you convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. For a complete rundown, see our guide on how to build your email list in WordPress using OptinMonster.

Now that you have the best tools, we will share some of the most effective list-building strategies. Here are the topics we will cover in this guide:

Ready? Let’s get started.

1. Use Multiple Signup Forms

We mentioned earlier that many beginners start with a simple newsletter signup form in their sidebar.

They work, but not very well.

If you want to get more email subscribers, then you need multiple signup forms. This gives your users more opportunities to join your email list.

At WPBeginner, we use multiple opt-ins ourselves, such as offering free website growth tips and free WordPress training.

We recommend combining your sidebar signup form with a sticky floating bar or a lightbox popup. These highly effective campaign types make your signup forms more noticeable.

Using OptinMonster’s Display Rules, you can set time and action-based triggers so your users don’t see all the opt-ins at once.

For example, you can set a display rule to only show the floating footer bar opt-in once the user has scrolled past the sidebar opt-in, and show a lightbox popup only when they’re about to leave your WordPress website.

2. Use an Exit-Intent Popup

Exit-Intent® is an advanced technology built by OptinMonster that tracks your user’s mouse behavior and shows them a targeted email signup form at the precise moment they are about to leave your website.

We use an exit-intent popup on WPBeginner, and it helped increase our subscribers by 600%.

Also, Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner used it to add over 250,000 new email subscribers.

You can use this technology in combination with full-screen welcome gates, lightbox popups, or other opt-in types to convert abandoning visitors into new email subscriptions.

3. Offer Content Upgrades

A content upgrade is a marketing technique where you offer users a chance to get exclusive bonus content by signing up for your email list.

For example:

• If you run a podcast, then you can offer show notes + transcription as a content upgrade.
• If you have a long-form blog post, then you can offer a downloadable PDF version as a content upgrade.
• You can turn your blog posts into a checklist or cheat sheet and offer it as a content upgrade.

Here are other content upgrade ideas that you can use.

Human psychology plays an important role in the effectiveness of content upgrades. The psychological principle known as the ‘Zeigarnik Effect’ says that people are most likely to complete a task if they initiate it themselves.

This means that when the user takes the initiative to click on the content upgrade, they are more likely to complete the task by subscribing to your list.

You can use lead magnet software like Beacon to easily create ebooks, checklists, workbooks, and other content upgrades. It comes with pre-made templates, a drag-and-drop builder, an automatic blog post recycler, and more.

To learn more, you can see our step-by-step guide on how to add content upgrades in WordPress to grow your email list.

4. Add Fully or Partially Gated Content in WordPress

Gated content is the content on your website that can’t be accessed until the visitor enters their email address. You can use plugins to hide some of your content or hide the entire blog post until the user enters their email address.

In the old days, this used to have a negative impact on your SEO rankings. However, with modern JavaScript-based technology, this does not impact your SEO rankings.

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to add content locking to WordPress.

5. Run Giveaways and Contests

An easy way to quickly get a lot of new followers and subscribers is by running a viral giveaway or contest. You don’t need an expensive prize to launch a successful giveaway.

Users can join your contest by providing their email address, social sharing, or following you on social media. This creates a snowball effect and helps you reach many new users.

We recommend using RafflePress, the best WordPress giveaway plugin on the market. It comes with a drag-and-drop giveaway builder and tons of social actions to make your campaign a success.

At WPBeginner, we’ve run several giveaways to reward our readers for engaging and sharing their insightful thoughts on our content. We found that it made a big difference in boosting our engagement and helped grow our email list.

And we actually use RafflePress for all of our giveaways! Read our complete RafflePress review to see what it can do.

For details about the step-by-step, you can check out our guide on how to run a successful giveaway/contest in WordPress.

6. Create Multiple Lead Magnet Pages

A lead magnet (also known as an opt-in bribe) is an incentive you offer to potential buyers in exchange for their contact information, such as their name, email, and phone number.

Your blog posts with locked content, content upgrades, and premium content all fall into the lead magnet category.

Lead magnets must offer additional value to your target audience, such as checklists, case studies, and high-quality infographics. You could also offer a free ebook, webinar, resources newsletter, or workbook.

Feel free to go through these highly effective lead magnet ideas for inspiration.

7. Use Discounts and Deals

Sometimes, a discount or exclusive coupon is what encourages a potential customer to finally make a decision.

So why not use this opportunity to nudge them to join your email list?

If you are using WooCommerce, then you can simply go to the Marketing » Coupons page to create a coupon.

After that, you can use OptinMonster’s ‘Success’ view to reveal the discount code after users enter their email address.

For detailed instructions, you can read our guide on how to create one-time personalized coupon codes in WooCommerce.

8. Use Contact Form to Grow Your Email List

Contact forms offer another great opportunity to ask for a user’s email address. Users already need to enter their email address on the form, and you can add a tiny checkbox to allow them to subscribe without having to enter it again.

We use WPForms at WPBeginner, and we strongly recommend it as the best online form builder on the market. It allows you to connect your forms with top email marketing services and easily build forms with a simple drag-and-drop tool.

For more insights into the tool, check out our full WPForms review!

Then, to learn how to optimize your contact list for email subscriptions, refer to our guide on how to use the contact form to grow your email list.

9. Add Sign Up Call to Action on Your Facebook Page

Facebook has introduced call-to-action (CTA) buttons for business pages. These buttons are prominently displayed on top of your cover image and are visible without scrolling.

You can use those buttons to add a signup button as a call to action on your Facebook page and speed up the process of list building.

To do this, you’ll need to visit your Facebook page first and foremost. Once there, you should see a blue button labeled ‘Add a button.’

If you click on this button, it will bring up a popup with multiple choices.

You need to click ‘Sign Up’ and then provide a link to a landing page on your site where they can sign up for your email list.

Don’t forget to click ‘Save’ to add the CTA button to your page.

10. Use X / Twitter Lead Generation Cards

X / Twitter Ads offer another social platform you can use to boost your lead generation efforts.

In fact, the platform even allows you to run lead generation directly from X. This way, users can sign up for your email list without leaving X.

We’ve used X ads as a way to create discussion and drive more interest in our tutorials. X is known for its back-and-forth dialogue, which is a great way to grow and build a community of loyal followers.

You can also drive traffic to your website and use the email signup forms as a conversion tool. Additionally, you can create special offers for X users and tweet the links to your followers.

11. Use YouTube Call to Action Cards

YouTube is one of the largest social media platforms and the second most popular search engine in the world. If you are using YouTube videos as part of your marketing strategy, then you can use your YouTube channel for email list building.

YouTube action cards allow you to add interactive information cards to your videos. You can use them to add calls to action and link them to lead magnets on your website.

To learn more about it, here’s how to add YouTube action cards to your videos.

YouTube gives you plenty of opportunities to promote your email list. For more ideas, see this tutorial on how to build your email list using YouTube videos.

12. Use After Post and In-Line Opt-In Forms

After the post-opt-in, forms appear when a user has already scrolled down an entire article. This means that they are already interested in your content and are much more likely to sign up.

You can also use in-line opt-in forms within your blog posts. Users are most engaged with your long-form content when they’ve reached the middle.

Reminding them to sign up at that point works like a charm!

13. Add Polite Slide-in Scroll Box Forms

We mentioned earlier that users simply ignore most static signup forms. The goal is to divert the user’s attention to your offer and signup form.

Slide-in scroll box forms do that beautifully.

They stay out of the way so that users can look at the content and then slide in from the bottom right corner of the web page when users scroll down. This slide-in animation will grab your readers’ attention and encourage them to sign up.

14. Use Prominent Headers With Call to Action

The header area of your website is most prominently visible to visitors when they first arrive on your homepage. This makes it the most effective spot to place your call to action.

You will need a WordPress theme that comes with a large or full-screen header.

Using a page builder like SeedProd is a good idea, too. In fact, it’s often more beginner-friendly.

Some of our partners use SeedProd to build their websites, and we’ve seen how well these websites perform. You can learn more about the platform in our in-depth SeedProd review.

SeedProd lets you create custom pages with ease – you can start with a template and personalize it to fit your style. It even lets you build custom WordPress themes, all without needing any code.

15. Use Social Proof to Encourage More Sign-Ups

Social proof is a psychological effect used to describe a social behavior where people feel more comfortable following other people. Marketers use social proof as a tactic to ease the minds of worried customers and increase conversion rates.

As you can see, we added social sharing buttons on our site to encourage readers to follow us on social media. This way, they can stay up-to-date with our latest content and partnerships.

There are many ways you can use social proof to get more subscribers. You can use testimonials on your landing pages, add reviews, and show the number of registered users.

You can also use bubble notifications like TrustPulse to increase newsletter signups and eCommerce conversions. Check out our full TrustPulse review to see why we recommend it

Then, you can go through our guide on how to use FOMO on your WordPress site to increase conversions for detailed instructions.

16. Use Gamified Campaigns

Experts agree that gamification helps boost user engagement. Did you know that you can use gamified campaigns to boost newsletter conversions as well?

We use a ‘Spin a Wheel‘ gamified campaign on the MonsterInsights blog to grow our email list and boost eCommerce conversions.

Not convinced it’s the best tool? Feel free to refer to our extensive MonsterInsights review for more information.

To learn how to create a similar email marketing campaign, you can simply follow the coupon wheel guide on the OptinMonster website.

17. A/B Test Your Opt-In Forms

Many beginners continue to rely on guesswork to understand what works on their website. You need to understand how your audience reacts to different calls to action, opt-in placements, colors, design, and copy.

With A/B testing, you can find out which opt-ins work better on your website. You can use these A/B testing tips to continuously test and improve your email opt-ins.

Bonus Tip 💡 : Automate Your Email List Growth

Once you’ve set up a few high-converting opt-ins, the next step is automation. By setting up email marketing automation, your email list can keep growing even when you’re not actively promoting it.

Email automation lets you send targeted messages based on user actions, like signing up, making a purchase, or abandoning a cart.

Instead of sending emails manually, you write them once and set triggers. From welcome emails to drip campaigns, automation helps you stay connected and drive more conversions.

It’s a proven strategy, too: 80% of businesses use automated emails, and they generate 77% of all email marketing ROI.

Some popular email marketing automation tools include Constant Contact and FunnelKit.

For small businesses, nonprofits, and bloggers, Constant Contact is the perfect option. That said, if you run a WooCommerce store, then FunnelKit is a better fit.

For details, you can check out our ultimate beginner’s guide to WordPress email marketing automation.

We hope this article helped you find the best ways to grow your email list. You may also want to see our expert list of email marketing mistakes WordPress users must avoid and our guide on how to add beautiful email templates in WordPress.

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