III. Before You Launch

How to build an email list

Your subscription form

Every blog post and landing page you create should have a call to action. Before you launch your product, your primary CTA will be to have people subscribe to your email list.

Your sign-up form is a way of saying:

Did you find this content helpful? Let me send you more stuff like this!

Where should you put your subscription form?

The positioning of your subscription form is important. There are many approaches; test each option to see if one converts better for you.

Inline

Traditionally, email forms were put in the right-hand sidebar at the top. Here’s the challenge: when the visitor is finished reading, they’re at the bottom of the page (and unlikely to scroll back up).

Nowadays, it’s much more common to place the subscription form inline, in the content block. This could be at the top of the blog post, in the middle, or at the end.

Paul Jarvis puts his subscription form at the end of each post.

Modal

Another option is to show a pop-up modal.

While the reader scrolls, you can have some JavaScript fire to show a pop-up. These can be shown on the side of the page (so as not to interfere with reading) or they can cover the content (so they can’t be missed). Another option is to display the modal after a certain amount of time has passed. While some people find these annoying, they can result in high opt-ins.

ConvertKit allows you to choose how you’d like the modal to fire

The final option is to show the pop-up during “exit intent.” When the reader finishes the article and moves their cursor to close the tab, you fire some JavaScript that shows a pop-up.

This can be effective because the reader is already finished viewing the page and allows you to catch them before they leave. Ouibounce is an open source library (available on GitHub) for creating this type of modal.¹

Send email regularly

How many times have you received an email that says, “We’ve launched!” but you can’t remember who the company is, what they’re building, or why you signed up?

Once someone signs up, you need to keep in regular contact with them. This serves three purposes:

1. Helps your subscribers remember who you are, and what you’re building.
2. Provides immediate value.
3. Builds anticipation for your launch.

The best way to provide value is to share what you’re learning as you make your product. Did you write a JavaScript library that’s been helpful? Share it with your list!

Footnotes

1. github.com/carlsednaoui/ouibounce ↩