5 Tips for Growing Your Financial Institution's Newsletter

So you have an email newsletter. You send it to your subscribers weekly, monthly, quarterly, or just whenever you have time to throw one together. 

Subscribers seem to like your content, and many of them follow through on your irresistible CTAs. But your email list isn’t growing. You’re sending to the same people every month and can’t figure out why new people aren’t subscribing. 

Here are 5 ways to grow your financial institution’s newsletter. 

1. Put clear subscribe buttons on your website

The first step to growing your email newsletter is making it easy to subscribe! Your website visitors don’t have the time or the desire to hunt around your website for a subscribe button. So put that sucker somewhere easily accessible and very visible. This may mean having a subscribe button on every page of your website or just on the blog pages. 

And don’t hide the CTA under cutesy copy or hard-to-read text. A simple “Subscribe to the newsletter” will do just fine. 

By making your subscribe button clearly visible, more people will see it and have the chance to sign up.

2. Post on social media

Most banks and credit unions have some sort of social media account. And you can use this account to grow your email newsletter. 

In addition to posting about institution fundraisers, community events, employees of the month, and how to spot a scam, try asking your social media followers to subscribe to your newsletter. This direct call to action is bound to pull in some new subscribers, especially when you show them exactly how your newsletter is different from the hundreds of other emails they get every week. 

3. Ask subscribers to refer a friend

You know who might be a great resource for growing your email list? Your current subscribers! 

In your next newsletter, try asking your subscribers to refer a friend. You can include a share button that will help them forward it or take their friend to your subscribe page. 

If you do try this approach, make sure your content is really valuable. Nobody’s going to recommend something to their friends unless they love your content and believe it will help. 

You might try offering some sort of incentive as well. Maybe send a prize to anyone who successfully refers 5 friends this week. You never know, asking your subscribers to refer a friend may be just the campaign you need to grow your audience!

4. Offer an incentive

Speaking of incentives, your email list is more likely to grow if new subscribers get something out of it right away. 

This may mean offering a downloadable guide or some other exclusive content that they only get by subscribing to your newsletter. This guide should prove how valuable your content is and make them want more. You don’t want them downloading the guide and then immediately unsubscribing. Although don’t feel too bad if someone does this. You also don’t want people on your email list who don’t care to be there. 

Another way to offer an incentive is by holding a monthly drawing for all new subscribers. Advertise this drawing in the subscribe box and on your website so people see it. Depending on the prize, you’re likely to get quite a few new subscribers out of this campaign. Just remember that chances are several people are likely only there for the prize, so they may unsubscribe after the drawing is complete. But many more people may stay on and become loyal subscribers.

Offering an incentive is a fun way to grow your newsletter and get subscribers excited to be there. 

5. Create remarkable content

This may go without saying, but make sure the content in your email newsletter is remarkable. If your newsletter is just like all the others, it may be more difficult to grow and keep your audience. You don’t want to gain new subscribers using these other tactics only to have them leave two weeks later because they don’t care about your content.  

Part of creating remarkable content is learning what your audience wants from your newsletter. Do they want more blog articles? Tips and quizzes? Advice on how to avoid scams? Cute animal pictures that have very little to do with banking? You won’t know unless you ask them, so don’t hesitate to send out a quarterly survey or post a poll on social media. The more you know about your audience, the more remarkable you can be. 

And the more remarkable your content is, the more likely your current subscribers are to share it with friends. And the faster your newsletter will grow.

Check out this article to learn about the 5Ws of email marketing.

While we’re on the subject, don’t forget to subscribe to the Kadince blog. You’ll get bi-monthly updates on new blog articles so you never miss any of our awesome content again. (You can’t blame us for asking, can you?)

Subscribe

And if you’re looking for a way to streamline your institution’s marketing compliance approval process, Kadince can help! When marketing projects need approval, simply upload them to Kadince and let the automatic approval workflow do the rest. Learn more here.

None of Kadince, Inc., its affiliates, or its respective employees, directors, officers, and agents (collectively, “Kadince”) are responsible or liable for any content or information incorporated herein. Read full disclosure.