One of the things that I love about WordPress are the plugins that allow you to extend the features and functionality of your site.  One plugin in particular that I had been looking for (but had never used) allowed you to automatically follow up with your blog comment authors after their first comment on your site.  Developed by Justin Shattuck, this is a great way to quickly touch base with those who are interacting with your blog, thank them for their time, or encourage them to take additional action on something.

Justin describes the plugin and what it does, on his site:

Comment relish is a Wordpress plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment, ETC.). More thoroughly, it allows you to send out a genuine thank-you style / relishing message that informs your readers of what else is going on.

Using Comment Relish

The plugin itself is fairly simple and straightforward to use.  Simply upload it to your site, activate it, and then customize the email.  Below is a screenshot of what the plugin looks like in the admin area:

You have the ability to create an email that is automatically sent to a blog commenter, the first time they leave a comment on your post.  You can customize it to include a variety of different fields that create a personalized email.  The fields included are:

• Author’s Name
• Author’s Website
• Author’s Email
• Author’s Comment
• Comment ID
• Post URL
• Post Name
• RSS Feed
• Short Date (or Short Date & Time)
• Long Date (or Long Date & Time)

A few tips on using the plugin

This plugin is quite powerful in what it is able to do.  While it’s a great way to bring visitors back to your site or encourage them to do something, you want to be sincere and overly promotional.  However, including a reminder to subscribe to your RSS feed, sign up for your newsletter, or view their post can be a great way to build a dialogue.  It is also great for reminding them where and what they posted – if you’re at all like me, you sometimes to forget to follow up on comments.

Download Comment Relish

This WordPress plugin is completely free – and you can download Comment Relish on Justin’s site.

Related posts:

1. 14 Strategies to Get More Blog Comments
2. How to Create a Gravatar: So an Image Appears Next to Your Blog Comments
3. Do You Delete Blog Comments That Have an Opposing View of Your Own?

I know it’s a sensationalist headline, and I intended for it to be that way.  But the truth is that I actually increased my daily newsletter subscribers from about 5-10 new people per day to 50-60 by simply testing how the visitors to my site signed up.  There were no extra incentives, giveaways, or contests being held, and the subscribers didn’t drop off after a few months – the increase in newsletter subscribers stayed consistent from the first day the changes were made and continued to increase in proportion to the traffic.

How did I increase subscribers by 1400%?

It was a very deliberate and intentional action on my part to see what I could do to increase the number of subscribers to the newsletter.  My plan of attack was simple and straightforward – test where the subscriber box was located on the page and test the way visitors actually signed up.

Testing the way visitors signed up

The first step was to test exactly how visitors were signing up for the newsletter.  Although it may be something we don’t really give much thought to, whether your visitors sign up via a form, click on a link, or click on an image to sign up – they can have dramatic results on the number of people that subscribe to your newsletter.  There are several ways that you should test to see how effective the results are:

• By a text link – Your visitors can sign up by a text link on your page that takes them to a specific page (or pop-up window) where they can then fill in their information.
• With a button or image – Instead of a text link, your visitors sign up by clicking on an image that then takes them to the sign-up page or opens a window.
• On-page form – Your site visitors can type in their name and email directly on the page and click your “Subscribe” button.
• A window prompt – When your visitors visit your site or come across a certain page you display a pop-up window that they must close to view the site.
• Footer sign-up – A bar that stays across the bottom of the visitors screen as they are browsing asking them to join your newsletter.

While I did not use the window prompt or footer sign-up method (as I felt they were too intrusive for the site) I did test the other three ways.  The winner (by far) was the on-page form and it caused an immediate increase of about 25 subscribers per day, while the text link performed slightly better than the button image.  I should also note that the text and color of the form was also tested to find the combination that performed best.

Testing the text used to prompt them to join

As I said earlier, there were no incentives or promotional material that they gained other than staying up-to-date with what the site offered, so the only thing we could test was the text that persuaded them to join.  There are thousands of different things that you could say, but here are a few different variations as an example:

• “Join our newsletter”
• “Join our monthly newsletter”
• “Join our free newsletter”
• “Join our free monthly newsletter”

You can see that the list can go on and on, however, for this particular site it ended up being along the lines of “Join our monthly newsletter.” This particular variation caused an increase of about 10 more subscribers per day after testing the various text used.

Testing the location of the sign-up box

The last thing (and one of the most important) thing that was tested, was where the sign-up box was located.  There are several major places that you can test to find the most successful location:

• Sidebar
• Header
• Footer
• Navigation
• In the content

In my case, the most successful location was when the newsletter sign-up form was put directly below a page’s/post’s content and located above the copyright and privacy policy area in the footer.  This increased the number of subscribers an additional 10-20 per day.

Wrapping Up

As you can see from my little story above, it is imperative that you test your site constantly to get the most from the visitors to your site.  Email subscribers were extremely important to the site, so it was a big goal to get as many people as we could to sign up.  It’s amazing how even the smallest changes can have a huge impact on the performance of your site and the increase in newsletter subscribers was due to testing and no additional incentives or promotions to entice people to sign up.

Related posts:

1. Display Your RSS Icon Prominently in Order to Gain New Subscribers
2. 8 Display URL Variations That Can Increase Your Click-Through Rate in PPC Campaigns
3. MailChimp – A Powerful Email Marketing Solution

These blogs will help you stay up-to-date with emerging trends in email marketing.  In addition, you will also find some great tips to help you succeed at marketing by email.

Related posts:

1. Affiliate Marketing Blogs
2. SEO Blogs
3. MailChimp – A Powerful Email Marketing Solution

One of the secrets of success online is to build a list of people who have subscribed to your newsletter.  These tools will help you get started building a list and help you create newsletters that are professional and convert into sales.

Email Marketing Companies

• Constant Contact
• MailChimp – MailChimp is an email marketing solution that allows you to build a subscriber list, send email newsletters, create autoresponders, and more. (check it out…)
• AWeber
• iContact

Related posts:

1. MailChimp – A Powerful Email Marketing Solution
2. Email Marketing Blogs
3. Comment Relish: Automatically Follow-Up with Blog Comments by Email

What is MailChimp?

MailChimp is a powerful and robust solution for sending email newsletters, managing your email subscribers, setting up autoresponders, and tracking the results of your email marketing efforts.  I use MailChimp on many different sites and have found them to be perfect for all of my email marketing.  Their services are more self-serve than their competitors, however, they do have a great knowledge base and video tutorials that walk you through and show you how to use their different features.

What does MailChimp do?

Their services allow you to build a list of subscribers, send email newsletters, set up autoresponders, and several other features.  I honestly feel that they have one of the most complete and powerful email marketing solutions available and they’re worth checking into if you are wanting to enhance (or start) marketing by email.

What features are included?

One of the greatest things about MailChimp is the large number of features that are included with their plans.  In addition, they have several features and services that I have not seen with any other email marketing company.

• Create professional-quality emails
• Advanced coding features for developers
• Integration with other applications via an open-source API
• RSS-to-Email
• Free image hosting
• Autoresponders
• Integrates with Google Analytics
• Segmentation of lists
• Service & support

These are just some of the big features that are included with MailChimp, there are dozens of others that you can check out on their website.

MailChimp Overview

If you are wanting to get started email marketing, or simply want to transfer over from your existing email marketing solution – I would highly recommend MailChimp.  If you’re just starting out, they offer a completely free plan so you can get started – it’s not a trial, it’s completely free until you reach over 500 subscribers.  If you already have an existing list, their pricing is very competitive and actually one of the more inexpensive email marketing options available.

Check out MailChimp

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing Tools
2. Tell A Friend King – An Easy & Powerful Tell A Friend Solution
3. Email Marketing Blogs