Collected 15,000 Emails on Autopilot
I have a blog where I provide educational materials for Indian high school students. I have not actively worked on the blog for more than a year but recently I realized that I have collected more than 15,000 students' emails — all on autopilot.
Currently, the site receives more than 80,000 page views every month. I haven't even published anything new for over a year.
How did I collect the emails?
I created several free PDFs, or more like cheat sheets, for students that would save them hours of valuable time. I created a simple system that allowed students to download the PDFs by providing their email addresses – they would provide their email addresses, and the materials would automatically be sent to them.
Initially, I tested by showing pop-ups on the site but later, I embedded the email capture system below the best performing posts. And, then I became sure that pop-ups don't work that well.
For this automated system, I used Mailerlite as an email marketing solution and it turned out to be really good for me. I collected 15,000 emails to date.
Why did it work so well?
Because I understood what the students needed and created a robust PDF that students couldn't resist downloading.
Lovely emails from students who downloaded the PDFs recently
You can see various emails from happy students who downloaded the PDF. By the way, if you're wondering, I use Zoho for hosting emails for my websites.
If you just show a newsletter subscription box on the site, no one is going to subscribe. They will only put their emails if they're getting something really valuable.
That's it.