With that many plugins, how do you know which are legit? And more importantly, how do you know which plugins you are missing out on in 2023?

Today we’re bringing you the most comprehensive list of the BEST WordPress plugins, crowdsourced from some of the most successful online entrepreneurs and bloggers we know.

No gimmick. No fluff. No unnecessary plugins you don’t need.

These are WordPress plugins to help you start, run, and grow your business, blog, or ecommerce website — categorized into:

But first, let’s define exactly what a plugin is (and how they work with a WordPress website).

What is a WordPress plugin, anyway?

A WordPress plugin is an app or a piece of software you can add to your WordPress site. It extends the functionality or adds a new feature to your existing website. The wide range of WordPress plugins helps WordPress stands out from other website builders like Squarespace.

WordPress will function on its own, but you can make it do exactly what you want it to do with plugins:

• Want to sell digital products on your blog? There’s a plugin for that.
• Want to make sure you never publish anything by accident again? There’s a plugin for that.
• Want to turn your shell of a WordPress theme into a thriving eCommerce store? There’s a plugin for that.

But like I said, there are more than 58,700 WordPress plugins out there. And just like the apps in the Apple App Store (or Shopify apps in the Shopify App Store), there are a few that stand out from the rest.

WordPress plugins for security and backup

It doesn’t seem important until your website is compromised or down. Trust me, it’s not fun. Here are some of the best WordPress plugins that protect your website.

1. Akismet anti-spam

Akismet is the must-have WordPress plugin to protect you from spam comments. In fact, it comes with WordPress CMS as you install WordPress into your hosting server.

You know you’re on a safe hand with Akismet because it’s built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. And it’s used by millions of websites filtering and blocking an average of 75 million spam comments per hour.

How does Akismet work?

Every time a visitor posts a comment, Akismet checks it against its database (collected from all participating websites since 2005). If it’s spam, it’s deleted automatically. If spam gets through and the user marks it as spam, it gets added to the database so Akismet can filter similar spam in the future.

It’s a piece of WordPress plugin that only gets smarter and better over time.

The BEST part? Akismet is free.

2. Wordfence

Wordfence protects your WordPress website from online hackers and attackers. It does this with an endpoint firewall that examines and blocks malicious traffic.

On top of that, the Wordfence security scanner acts as a powerful sidekick of the firewall. It looks for malware and compares core, theme, and plugin files with what is in the WordPress.org repository, checking their integrity and reporting any changes to you.

With Wordfence firewall and security scanner, your WordPress website is safe and you get alerts for security risks (like software vulnerabilities) so you can address them before your website gets attacked.

It also comes with login security features that allow you to enable two-factor authentication and reCAPTCHA on your website.

3. UpdraftPlus

Backing up a WordPress website is the last thing that comes to most people’s minds… Until they need a backup to restore their compromised websites.

And trust me, it’s a P.I.T.A process if you’re not prepared.

UpdraftPlus simplifies backup and restoration. With UpdraftPlus, you can back up your files and database into the cloud folder of your choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more), and restore them with a single click.

It’s free to use but you can upgrade to a premium plan for more features like:

• Incremental backups.
• Duplicate and migrate your WordPress website easily.
• More storage destinations (OneDrive, BackBlaze, Azure, SFTP).
• Database encryption.
• Advanced reporting, and more.

Alternative: BackUpWordPress is an excellent solution for backup and it’s free too.

WordPress plugins for design and performance

Now let’s look at some top plugins that turn the barebone WordPress CMS (content management system) into a beautiful, high-performance site.

4. Elementor Pro

With 3+ million active installs and 4.9 out of 5 stars rating, Elementor Page Builder is one of the most popular drag-and-drop WordPress page builders available.

Elementor offers:

• Best-in-class page editor
• 300+ designer-made templates and 90+ widgets
• Responsive editing, and more.

Simply put: you can build an entire WordPress website (that is beautiful, professional, and high-converting) visually and without writing a single line of code.

Its Pro plan is even more powerful — comes with more pro templates and widgets, Theme Builder (create global designs for header, footer, post type, etc.), WooCommerce Builder, and more.

Pro Tip: Amplify Elementor’s capabilities with WidgetKit, an advanced addons kit with unique elements, layouts, and widgets. Get WidgetKit on AppSumo.com.

5. WP Super Cache

Caching stores temporary web documents such as HTML pages, CSS files, and images of your website on the web browser of your recent visitors.

It helps improve the user experience of the returned visitors by increasing server load speed. As site speed and user experience improved, so do your website SEO and conversions.

WP Super Cache is a WordPress plugin that does just that. It generates static HTML files for your WordPress website and serves them to 99% of your website visitors.

It has 2+ million active installs thanks to its easy-to-use settings (and it’s free).

6. Insert Headers and Footers

As a marketer, online entrepreneur, and blogger, it’s not uncommon to add a piece of code or scripts to the header or footer of your website.

Be it Google website verification, Facebook Pixel, or custom scripts from your email service provider…

The truth is, there’s never an easy way to do that on WordPress CMS.

Insert Headers and Footers is a simple plugin that helps you easily do that. Insert code like Google Analytics, custom CSS, Facebook Pixel, or more to the header or footer — without the need of messing with the WordPress theme.

A simple, straightforward solution to a BIG problem…

7. ShortPixel image optimizer

Slow websites are a big NO-NO in today’s world of internet. And one of the key contributors to a slow website is unoptimized images.

ShortPixel is a lightweight, set-it-and-forget-it image optimization plugin for your WordPress website. It improves your website performance (and SEO) by reducing image sizes — up to 85% — without losing the image quality.

With a few simple settings, ShortPixel can compress all your past images and PDF documents with a single click. Then, it optimizes your images automatically as you upload them, in the background.

You can use ShortPixel to optimize 100 images per month for free. If you need to compress more images, ShortPixel has paid monthly and one-time plans with additional bonuses.

WordPress plugins for marketing and SEO

Marketing and SEO are vital to your business. These WordPress plugins will help you grow your email list, optimize your website for search engines, and improve the engagement with your audience.

8. MonsterInsights

Imagine logging into your Google Analytics account and looking at a bunch of numbers and charts. What do they even mean?

Want someone who organizes the data for you? And presents it on the WordPress dashboard? Instead of you logging into multiple websites and tools.

MonsterInsights is the plugin you need.

Now imagine logging into your WordPress dashboard… with all the data you need to know how your website performs (and only those you need):

• Website visitors categorized based on age, gender, countries, interests, devices, and more.
• Top referral websites, search terms, and landing pages (with metrics like visits and bounce rate).
• Ecommerce data such as top products, conversion rates, average order value, and more.

MonsterInsights also comes with multiple add-ons that allow you to do things like forms integration, advanced ecommerce tracking, and EU compliance improvement.

9. Rank Math SEO

Optimize your website for search engine OR die… If you have a website and create content, repeat this every day before you do anything else.

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come with any SEO functionalities. This is where Rank Math SEO comes into play.

Rank Math lets you customize the search settings (focus keywords, post title, meta descriptions) of each blog post and helps you score every blog post with an SEO checklist. You can then preview how your pages and posts will look like in the SERPs, in rich snippets, and even when shared on social media.

Rank Math also comes with modular frameworks such as 404 monitor, redirections, AMP, sitemap, Google search console integration that you can toggle on and off.

It’s hands down the best SEO WordPress plugin you can find on the market. And it’s FREE.

Alternative: You can use Yoast SEO or Squirrly SEO (a former AppSumo Partner) as alternatives.

10. Sumo

Running a WordPress blog as an aspiring author (p.s. Check out this podcast episode where the Chief Sumo interviews Ryan Holiday)? Growing a SaaS startup? Starting a new ecommerce store?

You need an email list. And Sumo is the email capture tool to go.

With the Sumo WordPress plugin, you can integrate the email capture tool with your website seamlessly.

Sumo lets you build high-converting email opt-in forms and display them as a popup, inline form, click trigger, welcome mat, scroll box, and smart bar. The visibility rule also lets you target specific visitors based on the referring URL, landing page, location, and more.

You can get started with Sumo for free, and get the Pro plan later when you need extra features such as A/B testing, advanced email integrations, and advanced analytics.

Alternative: KingSumo is NOT a WordPress plugin but it’s an easy-to-use viral giveaway tool you can use to grow your email list.

11. HubSpot

The HubSpot WordPress plugin is an all-in-one CRM, sales, and marketing tool that adds some serious value to your WordPress website. What exactly can you do with the plugin?

You can set up your existing forms (like those created with Sumo) to automatically sync with the free HubSpot CRM, so you can easily start collecting and organizing your contact records. This entire CRM is available within WordPress — so you don’t even have to navigate out of your WordPress dashboard.

Once a contact is in your CRM, you can start segmenting your contacts into lists, track each contact’s interactions with your website, add contacts to lists, automate emails, and more!

The plugin also includes a powerful live chat tool that easily enables you to have real-time interactions with your site visitors as well as for analytics tools that give you a holistic overview of all of your marketing activities.

And the best part? All of this functionality is free and available from one plugin. Look no further than HubSpot’s WordPress plugin to jumpstart marketing on your WordPress site!

Alternative: Looking for a simpler, beginner-friendlier solution for email marketing (instead of a complete CRM suite)? Check out our review on MailPoet.

12. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a user-friendly WordPress plugin that lets you create everything from basic contact forms to complex multi-page forms with conditional logic, file uploads, and payment integrations.

You can create a contact form using its drag-and-drop form creator with a wide range of standard to advanced field options.

Gravity Forms also comes with add-ons that extend its functionality by integrating with email marketing tools, CRM software, and online payment platforms.

Alternative: Contact Form 7 is a free alternative to create and manage multiple contact forms on WordPress.

WordPress plugins for ecommerce and online course

Whether selling physical or digital products, these WordPress plugins turn your website into a revenue-generating machine.

13. WooCommerce

Shopify is great for ecommerce. But what if you want more customization? Want to run your store on WordPress? And don’t want to pay a monthly fee to do so?

WooCommerce is an open-source, completely customizable ecommerce solution for you. It turns your WordPress website into an ecommerce store with everything you need:

• Physical and digital product listing.
• Customer account and guest checkout.
• Inventory and order management.

When you’re ready to go beyond basic, WooCommerce offers premium ecommerce themes and extensions that help you further customize and level up your store.

14. Easy Digital Downloads

Like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads helps you sell online with a WordPress website.

But it focuses on digital products like an ebook, a piece of software, a PDF file, and anything digital that — like its name — a customer can download to use or consume.

Easy Digital Downloads turns your WordPress website into a complete digital store with shopping cart, customer account, and discount code. It also has a built-in reporting feature for easily viewing your stats and tracking your store’s download activity.

15. Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a complete solution that helps you create a membership site or online course on WordPress CMS.

It does this by giving you the ability to show some of the content and gate the rest. If a visitor wants to join your membership site OR see the entirety of your course, they have to sign up.

But there’s much, much more to like about this plugin.

They make it easy to create discount codes, pull reports, gather custom data on your members and accept payments with major integrations.

16. WPComplete

Ask any online course creator the biggest challenge of teaching online… And you’ll get this: low course engagement and completion.

WPComplete is a lightweight, easy-to-use plugin, built to solve this problem for WordPress users.

With WPComplete, you can make your online course fully interactive in a few clicks.

It adds a complete button in all of your course lessons so your students can mark lessons as complete as they go through them. You can then add a progress bar/chart on the student dashboard to help them track their progress.

You can customize WPComplete to match with the style of your website, and integrate it with the membership or course plugin you use (for example, Restrict Content Pro).

WordPress plugins for content management

WordPress is built as a CMS. Here are some of the best plugins to take the content management functionalities to the next level.

17. Classic Editor

Everyone raves about the new WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) when it first rolls out… but NOT me.

It wants to be Medium but it’s not. It adds more weights to the website (additional lines of codes). And it replaces the classic editor we have all used to and loved.

If you’re like me, Classic Editor is for you.

It disables the WordPress block editor and restores the classic editor when you create or edit a post. Period.

I have nothing against WordPress block editor… When it’s ready (has fewer bugs and doesn’t compromise website performance), I’ll give it a try again.

18. WP Scheduled Posts

WP Scheduled Posts streamlines your content strategy and productivity with an editorial calendar.

Managing a content calendar is challenging enough… Imagine working with multiple authors, making sure all the posts are up on time, and updating changes on moment’s notice.

WP Scheduled Posts comes with a schedule calendar that lets you:

• Add posts in queue to publish them automatically.
• Organize your content calendar with the drag-and-drop feature.
• Manage multiple posts and authors in one place.

It also integrates with Facebook and Twitter to share your latest post once it goes live.

WP Scheduled Posts is now on AppSumo with an exclusive lifetime deal (get it before it closes).

19. Custom Post Type UI

Have you ever wanted more than pages and posts on WordPress? What if you want to create a new post type for your portfolio? Or for reading notes like this?

Custom Post Type UI provides an easy solution for registering and managing new post types and taxonomies in the WordPress CMS.

While Custom Post Type UI helps you register a new post type, the free WordPress plugin doesn’t have the feature to display the new post type. This is where Custom Post Type UI Extended, a premium plugin by the same developer, comes in.

Use them to add and display any post types you like from your portfolio to your customer’s success stories.

20. Smart Podcast Player

Raise your hand if you run a podcast… I see you.

Smart Podcast Player makes it easy to design and integrate your podcasts into your WordPress website.

Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income developed the awesome Smart Podcast Player after struggling to find a podcast player that was not only functional but also looked nice, was mobile-friendly, and gave listeners the freedom to listen to his episodes at the speed they wanted.

The media player also comes with a custom call-to-action (CTA) button where you can use to grow your email subscribers.

Turn your WordPress website into a well-oiled machine in 2023

There’s a reason why WordPress powers 35.4% of the entire internet.^[*]

It’s an incredibly versatile platform and the gigantic variety of plugins WordPress supports means that you can tailor it exactly to your needs — no matter what type of business you run.

But where do you start?

In this post, we at Sumo put our heads together to come up with 60 ways to do just that.

In fact, we listed every available way to build your email list, so you don’t have to do any guesswork.

Let’s dive in!

1. Create a landing page

Landing pages are one of the most proven ways to build your list. They’re pages whose sole purpose is to accomplish one action — be it a purchase, a share, or, for our case, a sign-up.

When you’re asking for an email address, you’re usually giving something away called a content upgrade. These upgrades can be ebooks, guides, videos, or any piece of valuable content you don’t generally give away.

These landing pages generally stand on their own — they’re not accessible through your main navigation. You can use landing pages in very specific ways (some people create a landing page for every banner ad they create).

Services like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and more provide such features for their users to design landing pages aimed to collect emails.

The services mentioned are the more basic of the options as far as landing pages go. What you’re doing is creating a page then embedding a sign-up form directly into the body of the page.

The biggest advantage to this method is you’ll be forced to create a list in your ESP that the form will be tied to.

2. Create a homepage sign-up box

Most of your site’s page views start at the homepage.

And why shouldn’t they? It’s one of the most important pages on your site. It’s the storefront window into your business.

Since that’s where the action happens, you’ll want to make sure you’re capturing email addresses while those visitors are curious.

You can build on that curiosity and authority by asking the visitor for their email address right away:

Here’s what Brian Dean of Backlinko does to grow his list. The very first thing you see on his homepage is an opportunity to sign up for SEO tips.^[*]

Since Brian is a freaking wizard at the art of backlinking, this is a powerful offer right away. He’s giving his visitors the opportunity to get his proven SEO and traffic tips.

Since the first fold is the most-viewed section of a page, Brian ensures 100% of his homepage traffic has the chance to sign up.

3. Create a welcome mat

But maybe you’re happy with your current homepage design. Or, like many people, your homepage is set, and it’d be a huge hassle to redesign and recode it.

If that’s the case, there’s an easy solution that takes two minutes to set up and delivers the same results — all without having to change a single thing on your homepage.

It’s called Welcome Mat, and it’s going to be your new list-building lifesaver.

With Welcome Mat, you can turn your homepage (or any page) into an instant list-building opportunity. Here’s how Sumo.com uses Welcome Mat for the 401+ Ridiculously Useful Power Words To Increase Conversions blog post:

When you land on some of our blog posts, you’re slowly shown the Welcome Mat. No wholesale changes have to be made — they’ve instantly got a lead-generating page that visitors can see. The cool part of the Welcome Mat? You get to choose which visitor gets to see it depending on how recent they’ve seen the Welcome Mat.

Everything on the page is customizable — the background, headline, subheadline, forms, call to action, and even button color. And you can change it all without ever touching a single line of code.

The cool part is you can present this page two ways:

• Scrollable: Once the visitor sees the Welcome Mat, they can simply scroll past it and see your blog post. Once they do that, though, the Welcome Mat disappears and is inaccessible.
• Instant Landing Page: If you want to force a choice, however, you can turn the Welcome Mat into an instant landing page. To get to the blog post, the visitor either gives you their email address or clicks the No Thanks button. We’ve seen this option double conversion rates.

Welcome Mat helps you reap all the benefits of a list-building page without ever actually changing your page.

4. Create a smart bar

If those last three options didn’t entice you, then this one 100% will.

A Smart Bar sits at the top of a browser, no matter where you scroll. Here’s how Nick Vujicic uses it to build his list:^[*]

It looks as natural as anything else on the site and still provides tremendous value.

By clicking the Sign Up Today button, visitors are directed to a pop-up where they can register for his newsletter, which includes their email, and adds them to Nick’s list.

Smart Bar takes a few minutes to install, and it leaves the rest of your page open to featuring your products and services.

5. Create an exit-intent pop-up

An exit intent pop-up is a last-ditch effort to get your visitor to interact with your site. They’re already leaving, so it’s this pop-up’s job is to salvage the situation and collect an email address.

They may seem annoying, but they work like crazy. We’ve seen Sumo users harness pop-ups to increase conversions by over 60%!

You can see the pop-up appear as the cursor moves to close the page. You want people to stop and read the box, so your headline needs to be catchy and give them a reason to fill out the form.

You can give away a great deal, a valuable piece of content, or anything else you think might prompt a visitor to give their email address. If you nail this, it means you’ve turned a disinterested visitor into a potential customer.

6. Use a scroll box

If you know how long the average person stays on a page, you can create a scroll box to capture their address.

If you put this on a blog post, you can set it to a higher percentage scrolled (50+ percent) to give the reader enough time to be invested in the post.

You can also set a condition where the scroll box only appears after the reader has not seen it for a specific period (in the case of the example, a month). This way, your user won’t be seeing the same scroll box if they’re browsing your website throughout the day.

7. Use a static sign-up form

Chances are you’ve seen static (“sticky”) sign-up forms quite a bit on most blogs you visit.

The logic behind this tactic is if the sign-up box follows you down the page (without interrupting your reading) then you have that implicit, subtle nudge to opt-in the entire read.

Not only that, but it’s easily accessible. If you feel like the blog post provides value, you can opt-in to that content upgrade at any point.

It doesn’t have to be a content upgrade — it can be a simple ask to sign up for a newsletter:

This sort of ask is enhanced by the article it accompanies. You’re not just asking to sign up for a newsletter. You’re asking to sign up for a newsletter so they get more badass content like the kind they’re reading.

8. Use free trial periods

If you’re a service-based business, this will work really well for you.

You can offer a 30-day trial period for the paid tiers of your service and request an email address to register for an account.

By doing this, you can email them updates about your business and service, and keep them in the loop. If you do it right, you’ll be able to convert a significant percentage of your free trial users into paid users.

Here’s an example from Hootsuite:^[*]

Hootsuite offers a free 30-day trial for two of their paid tiers, and the user can use their service provided they create an account with Hootsuite.

Most times, the creation of the accounts requires an email address that automatically adds you to Hootsuite’s email list. You can do the same for your business.

9. Include an email field in your checkout process

If you have an ecommerce store, you have a great opportunity to ask for your customer’s email address during the checkout process.

If you’re not collecting your customer’s email addresses, you’re missing an opportunity to get in front of a highly engaged portion of your market.

Think about it — they’re already going through the motions to purchase something from you. Chances are, they’d also like to know about discounts, new products, and updates through your email list.

Usually, you can integrate your cart with your email service provider (like Aweber or MailChimp) to automate the collection and enrollment in autoresponder series.

Saxx includes an email field in their checkout process:^[*]

You can use a checkbox so your customer can give you permission to email them, or you can let them know in your call to action what they’ll receive when they enter their email.

10. Give a discount in exchange for an email address

Ah, good ol’ fashioned bribery.

Luckily, this strategy is ethical bribery, and it’s really effective. Instead of creating an opt-in offer (or maybe in tandem!), offer a discount or coupon code in exchange for the visitor’s email address.

Skincare brand, Bliss, does this with a 15% discount using a popup:^[*]

The best part? Sumo integrates with Shopify and WooCommerce to create UNIQUE discount codes for each sign up. Here’s how to do it for both Shopify and WooCommerce.

11. Give a freebie in exchange for an email address

Maybe your products don’t lend themselves well to discounts.

For example, if you have a small profit margin or the discount wouldn’t be enticing enough to draw in much interest.

In this case, you can still reap the benefits of ethical bribery: give a freebie in exchange for the visitor’s email address.

A while back, Warby Parker had grown their email list by offering a free Home-Try-On program:^[*]

The eyewear company allows their potential customers to select different frames to be shipped to them — all for free!

After the potential customer requests for the Home Try-On program, Warby Parker then ships the frames to the customer’s house, where they have five days to try on the frames, test them out, and send them back.

If the customer fails to send back the pairs they ordered in perfect condition, Warby Parker then charges the customers for the damages caused.

12. Pre-sell a product

Most business owners wait until a product is finished and ready to sell before they unveil it, which is a huge mistake.

If you’ve got a product idea, make it work for you before it ever makes a single dollar by pre-selling.

Pre-selling has been around for a while, but started picking up traction as SaaS companies rose to the forefront. Since then, it’s been a staple for collecting email addresses AND creating hype for a new product.

The cool thing is SaaS folks refined it so anyone with a product can use a pre-sell strategy to build a list.

Pre-selling works like this:

1. Brainstorm products you could create.
2. Vet those ideas by asking your customers what product they’d like best.
3. Put together the framework for the product they want most.
4. Create a landing page for that product describing what it is, what it will do, and when it’ll be available.
5. Collect emails (and potentially money) by putting people on a waiting list.

You’d be surprised how many people want to “Be the first to know when this product goes live” or “Get updates on the product.”

It doesn’t take much more than a one-fold landing page to pre-sell something. All you need is a headline that promised a product, a paragraph or two saying what it is and a call to action that asks for an email address.

Being the first person to hear about or have a product is a huge motivator. Turn that motivation into email addresses with pre-selling.

13. Put a gated entrance to paid content

Check out what Mark Manson did with his premium articles for his blog:^[*]

When you click on the “subscribers only” post, here’s what you’ll see:

To read the full blog post, you need to log in as a paid subscriber. If you’re not and you scroll down further, you can see a pitch of becoming one.

If you create content (whether it be written, video, or audio) that’ll have your prospect’s tongue wagging, then this could be a game-changing tip for your business.

14. Set up a closed course sign-up

You have an online course but it’s closed at the moment? Instead of letting the course sit around collecting dust, use it to grow your email list.

Take Ramit Sethi’s course as an example. He creates a landing page that tells visitors that the course is currently closed.^[*]

The simple optin form allows visitors who are interested in the course to join the waitlist. When the course opens, Ramit will send an email to notify subscribers in the waitlist.

Note: You can also email your subscribers to build rapport before opening your course.

15. Host an event

Unlike HubSpot’s multi-thousand person event, we’re going smaller here.

Let’s focus on smaller events. See, the easiest way to collect and manage registrations is through Eventbrite. That’s a universal truth.

You know what they ask for during the registration process? An email address.

You know what happens after a registrant gives their email address? It gets automatically passed off to a list in your email service provider.

Pretty. Freaking. Slick.

Host something that provides value to a community, and collect their email addresses. You can initially use those emails to communicate about the event and transition those emails (with permission) into marketing other products and events of your choice.

Plus, you get the bonus of strengthening the relationships at the event. If you host a killer event, those attendees will be more likely to interact with you in the future.

16. Ask on the phone

Be it a sales call, a customer support call or any call, you can ask people to sign up for a newsletter.

If you’ve got a valuable piece of content, just ask people to sign up for it.

It’s as simple as asking this at the end of a call:

Boom. Just like that, you’ve gotten yourself a sign-up on the call you were already having.

17. Update your email signature

How many people do you email every week?

If you’re a blogger, entrepreneur, or solopreneur, you’d probably email a lot of people — likely dozens every week (if not every day). Those are people you could be driving to your email list.

Replace your email signature with a call to action that prompts readers to sign up for your email list, like how the Chief Sumo, Noah himself, has done below:

In his email signature, Noah includes a “P.s.” where he then attaches a link to his podcast.

You can do the same as well but instead of linking to a podcast like how Noah did, link it to your opt-in page for readers to subscribe to your email list.

This is a simple way to convert people who you otherwise would already be communicating with.

18. Add an autoresponder email with a call to action

The method above for growing your email list works great for the people you email.

What about the people who email you?

You can set up a vacation autoresponder to respond to emails with a link back to your landing page.

Write a short email with a call to action sending people to a landing page back to your site. You don’t even have to take this off if you’re not on vacation!

19. Conduct a survey

Surveys help you kill two birds with one stone from a list-building perspective:

• They help you gain insight into your audience’s psychographics and demographics.
• They collect email addresses.

You’ll have to think of a way to provide value for someone to take a survey. You can always ask for free on your social media channels, but when was the last time you took a survey just for fun?

Exactly.

Look at providing an incentive to take the survey. Punch Pizza, an awesome Neapolitan pizza joint in Minneapolis, once offered a free pizza to the first 250 people who took their survey.

The survey was closed 20 minutes after they posted it on Facebook. Within that short period of time, they managed to attract 250 people to fill up their survey.

I highly recommend using Typeform for your survey needs. Their forms are beautiful and they’re incredibly easy to use.

You can tailor the surveys to provide value to the user like this example. If you want to promote the survey for free, just embed it on a blog post and let that act as your call to action.

20. Include a CTA in your social media bios

Instead of using your bio on social media to describe who you are, use that valuable real estate to drive followers to sign up for your email list with a compelling call to action.

You can do this on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or wherever you can include a bio.

21. Pin a Tweet with a CTA to join your list

On Twitter, you can “pin” a Tweet to the top of your profile so that it remains static at the top of your page. This is prime real estate on your Twitter profile, as it’s the first Tweet anybody will see when they land on your profile page.

Pin a Tweet with a call to action to get your followers to join your email list, like what Joe Hall has done:^[*]

22. Reply performing Tweet with an email list CTA Tweet

If you’re on Twitter, check this method out.

Whenever your tweets gain traction and start receiving decent engagement levels, add another tweet below your original tweet.

In that tweet, prompt your readers to follow your email list to receive more content from you.

Here’s an example from Jose Rosado:^[*]

In his original tweet, he lists down steps on how to raise kids successfully and follows up to that tweet with a prompt to subscribe to his email list.

23. Do a call-to-action post on Instagram

Instagram is still a great platform for driving followers to your email list, with a comparatively high level of engagement.

Create an image of your opt-in offer or content upgrade with a call to action in the caption of your post to sign up for your email list.

Foundr has done this to grow their email list significantly:^[*]

24. Facebook page cover image

Your Facebook page has one piece of prime real estate with the opportunity for a great call to action to join your email list:

Your cover image.

Here’s an example from Joshua Giuliani:^[*]

Use an image with a call to action to click your cover photo. In the cover photo caption, include the URL to your email list opt-in.

25. Set your Facebook page’s call to action button

On your website’s Facebook page, you have the opportunity to have a call to action button:

Hover on the button and select the “Edit Button” option.

Use that opportunity to drive visitors to your page and your Facebook fans to a landing page with button copy calling the visitor to “Sign Up” or “Join”.

26. Set your email sign-up tab on Facebook

You can collect emails straight from Facebook — provided you’ve got an email service provider.

If you do, you can make a tab on your Facebook page and embed a form to sign up for anything — newsletters, deals, courses.

RawMunchies.org uses its page to ask for email sign-ups. You can get a similar feature from ESPs like Mailchimp, Active Campaign, and HubSpot.

27. Schedule Facebook post with email CTAS

Here’s another thing you can do on Facebook.

Schedule a few Facebook posts that encourage your followers to subscribe to your email list.

In your caption, offer a freebie to entice your followers to subscribe to your email list.

Here’s an example from musician Jason Becker:^[*]

In his post, he encourages his followers to sign up for his email list while offering them a freebie when they do.

28. Post in Facebook groups

98% of the people you know use Facebook.

That means that a gigantic portion of your target audience is also using Facebook. There is also a Facebook group for almost everything under the sun.

Posting high-value posts that link to my opt-in offer is how I grew my list quickly.

If done in a value-added way as opposed to spamming, this can be a great way to grow your list with a group of highly engaged members of your target audience.

Always give more than you take and remember to add value before you post your opt-in offer.

29. Start a subscribers-only Facebook group

Facebook Groups have a ton of benefits for your business, but they can also grow your email list.

Create a private Facebook Group with the entry requirement that you need to be a subscriber of your email list to join.

Here’s what Sherouk & Co. did: [*]

When requesting to join their Facebook group, they ask a few questions, one of which is to request for your email address. By inserting your email address, you are added to their email list. Most of the time, they would make it mandatory to add your email address to join the group.

Do the same for your Facebook group. As your group grows, so will your email list — the larger the number, the more social proof, and the more people will want to be a part of it.

30. Use Instagram stories swipe up feature

If you’re on Instagram, head over to your Stories and browse for the Swipe Up feature. If you can’t find it, don’t worry.

You need to qualify for it.

The requirements for having the Swipe Up feature are:

1. Have a business account
2. Have more than 10,000 followers

If you fulfill both requirements, you can start using the feature.

When you use that feature, include the link to your email list. This way, when your followers view your story and swipe up, they will instantly be directed to your email list subscription page.

31. Add a link to your landing page on LinkedIn

Create a compelling call to action and include a link to your landing page directly in your LinkedIn profile in your “Experience” section:

LinkedIn will import the image from the landing page, allowing you to display your call to action in a visual format as well.

This can convert visitors who are visiting your LinkedIn profile.

32. Share in LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn Groups work much like Facebook Groups.

Join active groups in your industry:

Then, contribute and add value to the group members before sharing your opt-in offer or call to action to join your email list.

You can find groups on LinkedIn by searching for them in the search bar. There will be an option to filter your search results to groups only.

Type in the keywords of the kind of groups you plan to join and get going!

33. Create a Youtube video CTA

Two ways you can build your list from YouTube’s call to action.

First, you can add a callout link over the top the video link below:

They’ve got a call to action at the bottom of their video to see more from Callaway. That link leads to a page where they collect email addresses to update subscribers with Callaway info.

Second, they include links in the description of every video. Here’s an example from Gary Vaynerchuk:^[*]

Talk about too many choices. Still, if you focus on one call to action in your description — preferably to a newsletter sign-up — you increase your odds of a subscription.

34. Pin your call to action to your own board on Pinterest

Besides adding a call to action to join your list in your bio, there is another way to drive subscribers from Pinterest.

Create a Pinnable image for your newsletter or landing page and Pin to a relevant board with a link directly to your landing page.

Use tools like Canva to create the image, and collect email addresses from there.

35. Pin your call to action to a group board on Pinterest

It’s true that Pinterest can be a highly engaging platform and can drive a lot of traffic, even more so with group boards.

Group boards are contributed to by groups of people and tend to have huge followings — usually tens of thousands of people.

How would you like to get your content upgrade, opt-in offer or call to action in front of 30,000+ members of your target audience?

That’s what I’m doing when I contribute my own content to this group board I am a part of:

Become a contributor to the popular group boards in your industry and then contribute not your Pinnable image, but also other relevant content. You don’t want to only contribute your own calls to action.

36. Start your own group Pinterest board

See how the call to action in the group Pinterest board above is to follow the owner of the board and email her to join?

As more people catch on to the power of group boards and request to contribute to the board, Michelle’s (the owner) following will grow. You can grow your email list too by creating a group board, and instead of asking potential contributors to follow you, make it a prerequisite for the contributors to subscribe to your email list.

37. Share an opt-in offer on Reddit

Be careful with this one, because Reddit can be a sink or swim environment.

But if your opt-in offer is extremely high in value (as it should be) and your call to action is compelling and contributory, sometimes you can get away with this.

To increase the chances of Reddit success, comment on relevant posts and use permission-marketing techniques.

For example, after writing the benefits of your website, you want to ask for permission to share the link to your website.

After a few Redditors start asking for the link to your website, you should edit your original post to include a link.

Reddit is a great source of high converting traffic. Just look at the conversion rates and email subscribers from ONE comment that made it to the top.

When Reddit works, it really works and can send thousands of engaged members of your target audience to your link.

38. Answer questions on Quora

Here’s the thing. Quora ranks.

The questions asked on Quora can rank just as high (or higher) on search engines than a 3,000-word blog post you wrote.

People respect great answers on Quora, too. Look how many views an answer from Dean Yeong had in three months:

Just one of his answers was viewed 54,000 times in three months!

2% of that traffic visits his blog. And you better believe that the answer had links to a blog post with a content upgrade in it.

Think of Quora as a free, highly tailored advertising medium. You’re essentially leading people to areas on your site that build your email list.

Most good answers on Quora are long, detailed and rich with knowledge. Find a question that one of your high-converting blog posts can answer and use that information.

Pretty soon, the traffic will roll into your page like it did for Dean.

39. Share an opt-in offer in Slack communities

If you’ve been building your online business for some time now, you’ve probably heard of Slack.

Slack is quickly becoming one of the most popular team communication platforms available, and people are using it within their workflows and to communicate about events and specific topics.

Since Slack hosts large groups of people around a common interest, that makes it a great place where huge portions of your target audience inevitably hang out.

Use a tool like Slofile to find communities around your topic, and then (as usual) add a ton of value and interact with the members before posting a useful piece of content that includes a call to action to join your list, or linking directly to your landing page.

40. Submit your opt-in offer to community sites

Most people share content on community sites.

Sites like GrowthHackers, Triberr, and FoodGawker are usually a collection of the most popular content in your industry. But you can also submit either teaser content to your opt-in offer or your opt-in offer itself.

Don’t spam these websites; obviously, your offer should be extremely high value and enticing for your target audience to trade their email addresses for.

41. Host a webinar

Webinars can be a great way to grow your email list and can convert a ton of your traffic.

Even people who didn’t know about you before hearing about your webinar can be your new email subscribers.

Whether you’re hosting a webinar with the intent to sell or to build your list, both are effective. The reason they help grow your list quickly is that attendees register for the webinar with their email addresses, growing your list by leaps and bounds.

Amy Porterfield grew her email list from 600 to 250,000+ email subscribers by using webinars.^[*]

Webinars have a high perceived value, as they are like miniature courses, so they are enticing — they drive more sign-ups than a regular content upgrade.

42. Be a podcast guest

This might be surprising because podcasts are audio, but being a guest on a popular podcast can drive a ton of email subscribers.

You can gain subscribers by creating a high-value content upgrade for the audience. Mention it at the end of the interview on the podcast with an easy-to-remember URL to your landing page.

Pitch yourself to the popular podcasts in your industry, creating a content upgrade for each.

43. Start a podcast

You probably listen to podcasts — and maybe you’ve even wanted to be a guest on one.

But have you ever considered starting your own?

Starting a podcast can be one of the best ways to grow your email list right now. Podcasts reach a whole new audience you wouldn’t otherwise reach — those who consume content via audio rather than written or visual.

To grow your email list with a podcast, include a call to action in your intro and outro to join an email list, driving the traffic to a landing page.

You can also mention your opt-in offer or content upgrade naturally within your show.

Amy Porterfield uses a content upgrade for every episode she publishes, creating high value, relevant content upgrades that the listener visits the show notes page to opt in for:

This drives her listeners to her email list.

44. Guest post on other sites

Guest posting is hands down one of the best ways to begin to grow your email list. It’s the strategy that almost everyone starts with, for one reason:

It works.

Grow your email list through guest posting by contributing high-quality, highly relevant articles to popular publications and blogs in your industry.

Create a content upgrade for every guest post for your author bio to maximize the number of emails you can collect.

45. Republish your content

Chances are you knew that guest posting was an effective way to grow your email list. And there’s probably a reason you haven’t reaped the guest posting benefits just yet…

You don’t have the time.

Guest posting does take a lot of time and effort, and it can be difficult to figure whether you should be writing content for your blog or for guest posting.

That’s where republishing comes in. Republishing content from your website on larger publications can be one of the next best ways to grow your email list.

Find websites that are larger than yours who accept republished content and include a specific call to action or content upgrade in your author bio or (better yet) within the body of the content to drive readers to sign up for your email list.

46. Add opt-in box in Medium post

Medium is a great way to repurpose your long-form content. All you have to do is summarize the key points of your long-form content into a short piece. At the end of the Medium article, make sure you have a call-to-action so readers can visit your blog for the full in-depth guide.

Once the readers are on your website, use a Welcome Mat, or content upgrade to collect their emails.

47. Host a giveaway

Using a giveaway to grow your list is not only effective, but it’s one of the methods with the highest return for your time.

Dean used giveaways to grow his list by ~500 subscribers.

Choose a highly relevant product to give away and not just a product that everybody wants.

If you choose a product everybody wants — like an iPad or an Amazon gift card — you risk driving unqualified leads to your list. You don’t want to end up having to pay to have a bunch of unengaged people on your email list who aren’t interested in your topic and who will just unsubscribe the second you send them the next email and they haven’t won the giveaway.

You can use KingSumo to set up your giveaway where visitors are required to join your email list to enter. With KingSumo, you can also select bonus entries as a reward to encourage participants to share the giveaway.

Remember: don’t give your participants too many entry options. Too much choice most often leads to choosing to do nothing at all. Also share your giveaway in any relevant groups you’re part of, on your blog or podcast, and on social media.

The higher value the giveaway, the more entries you will receive, so your list will grow faster.

If you’re thinking of how you can afford to give the products in the giveaway for free, there are two ways to do this.

Firstly, you give away your own products. This allows you to promote your products at the same time. Make sure there’s actually a demand for this if you’re going down this route.

Secondly, have a partnership with another company to provide their products as gifts for your giveaway. Using your giveaway as a platform, this allows them to promote their products as well as making your giveaway even more enticing, especially if the gifts are in demand.

48. Build a tool

In a saturated world of content, it’s the useful stuff that stands out. So if you want to collect emails…

Build a useful tool.

That’s one way HubSpot has managed to get a bajillion (roughly) emails in the span of a few years. One of their most successful tools is the Website Grader:

The landing page is incredibly straightforward. It asks how strong your website is and prompts for a URL and email address. That’s it.

But it works like crazy.

The grader ranks your overall performance, mobile presence, SEO power, and site security. Those are big areas people obsess about, so a tool that analyzes all those things for the cost of an email address is a big thing.

Building a useful tool like this can rake in the email addresses. Find a need your audience has and address it with a tool.

49. Create an email course

Email courses can grow your list very quickly.

Check out this email course example by Brennan Dunn from Double Your Freelancing:^[*]

It also has a high perceived value (as courses in general do) so people are usually willing to part with their email addresses to join them.

Think of something that you’d like to teach your audience which would provide value to them. Chunk it out into an email course in your autoresponder series to be dripped out.

Then, post the first day or lesson as free, ungated content on your blog or podcast, and then have people sign up for the rest of the course if they want the material.

50. Create an email challenge

As far as opt-in offers go, email challenges can be some of the most powerful offers to grow your list like a weed.

Not only are they very engaging for your new subscribers, but through the challenge you’re helping them achieve a goal or a desired outcome, so you’re providing massive value to your audience. Check out how Jen and Jadah from Simple Green Smoothies do this with their 7-day green smoothie challenge:^[*]

The challenges grow your email list by being a rock-solid opt-in offer, but they are also usually something that people want to involve their friends in.

When you set up your challenge, ask your subscribers to invite a friend in your introductory email. Remind them that goals are almost always met more easily when you’re doing it with a friend.

51. Create a quiz

Quizzes provoke curiosity. It comes down to narrative psychology — the school of thought where we organize our life into stories that describe our personas.

It’s a strong phenomenon, and quizzes tap directly into that psychology.

That’s why you can use quizzes to capture emails.

The most popular option is a company called LeadQuizzes. With it, you can easily create a quiz that match your branding and embed it on your site.^[*]

Visitors have to enter their email address to see their results.

Granted, those are lofty goals for most of us. But the proof is there: quizzes will help you build your email list.

52. Create a resource library

If you already have a butt-ton of resources at your disposal, consider aggregating them all in one place — a Resource Library, if you will.

We (of course!) do this exact thing. We take all our best gated resources and put them in one place:

To access the Sumo Library, you need to register a Sumo account with us. By doing this, we’re able to add more subscribers to our email list as well. After doing so, head over to the library to have access to our content upgrades!

The idea of having a resource library is appealing because you don’t have to waste time searching for resources. Everything you need is in one spot.

So this page disguised as a one-stop-shop for every marketing resource is, in reality, a repository for every list-building opportunity they’ve got.

53. Repurpose content

People are making dresses out of recycled pop bottles. Can you believe that?

It’s a whole new world of reuse and repurpose, so why not jump on board with your content?

It’s easier than you think. Just take a page from Neil Patel’s playbook. He went through his site and turned 47 of his articles into infographics. The result?

“Within the two-year period, we’ve generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains, all from those 47 infographics.

If you decided that you want to buy 2,512,596 visitors, it would cost you $125,629.80 if you paid 5 cents a visitor. If you bought 41,142 links from a service like Sponsored Reviews at a rate of $20 a link, you would have spent $822,840.

And that wouldn’t even give you high-quality links. We naturally got our links from sites like Huffington Post and Forbes.”^[*]

It’s the same content you’ve already created, just in a different format.

That new, repurposed content — be it a video, infographic, ebook, or anything else — can live on your site and generate sign-ups through increased site visits.

54. Find and promote your evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that will stay relevant and fresh for a long time.

It’s your best content. The stuff that everyone keeps coming back to time and time again. For us, it’s this guide.

This kind of content drives sign-ups in two ways. First, people find the content so valuable that they sign up for future articles. This is harder to rely on, but it happens nonetheless.

Second, marketers gate these pieces of content. Check out what Jeff Goins did:^[*]

This is quite the enticing offer. It’s an ebook on how to build a huge blog readership (and how to live off that). It’s a great piece of content — one that remains timeless a.k.a. Evergreen.

But you can’t access it without giving your email address. That’s the beauty of evergreen content. It’s so good that people don’t mind signing up to get it.

Find your content that’s consistently visited and promote the heck out of it. If you need ideas for promoting that content, check out these 134 ways to get more traffic.

55. Offer content only subscribers get

If you’ve got a strong readership, you can create a sign-up opportunity where you offer an exclusive piece of content once a week to those subscribers.

The content could be:

• A short video
• A podcast
• An article
• A tool
• An ebook

Basically, anything valuable that your readers would love. The exclusivity is key here. The more you make those subscribers feel like they’re getting something exclusive, the higher the subscription rate you’ll get.

Note: Remember to send the subscriber-only content to both your new AND current email list subscribers.

56. Subscriber-only deals newsletter

Exclusivity is a strong motivator. Especially when you couple that with awesome product discounts.

Frys.com has a newsletter specifically dedicated to offering product discounts. You’ll routinely see their crazy deals on places like Slickdeals only to find that you have to have the email code to claim the deal.^[*]

The only way you get that discount code is if you join their newsletter. Even if you can’t offer crazy deals like 50% off, you can still offer a 5-10% occasional deal to entice visitors to sign up.

57. Cross-promote on other email lists

Partner up with somebody who has a similar size list as you, and email each other’s lists a call to action to join for your opt-in offer.

Make sure you’re pairing with somebody either in a complementary niche or the same niche but who aren’t competitors. Drive each other’s email subscribers to a landing page with your opt-in offer.

58. Ask your existing subscribers for refferrals

Your existing subscribers can be a great driver of future subscribers. After all, they are your current fans. They (presumably) are subscribed to your email list for a reason.

As part of your autoresponder series, you can create an email that requests that your subscribers refer one or two friends who they think would benefit from the information you’re providing in your emails.

Use a subject line like “Quick Question” and then just ask!

For example, Wilson Hung would send an email with a content upgrade and ask his subscribers to forward the email to a friend. Here’s what the email would look like:

The only thing his subscribers had to do was click the hyperlink which opened a populated email they could send to a friend.

These subscribers who are willing to refer you business in return for a freebie are highly interested in what you have to offer. By doing this, you can automatically identify your most engaged subscribers so you can send targeted emails to convert them into paying customers.

Your subscribers want to help you, and they’re obviously benefitting from the information you’re providing. Chances are they’ll be happy to spread the word to a friend.

59. Sending an email outside of your email list

Why not look outside of your email list?

You can do this by private messaging your followers/contacts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and asking if they’d like to be on your email list.

In your pitch, frame it in such a way that they’ll be getting even more value from you if they subscribed to your email list.

You could add in some goodies (like a free ebook) for them too to sweeten the deal. That way, they’ll be more incentivized to join your email list.

60. Ask them personally

You can even ask them personally.

This method takes a lot longer than the above alternatives, but you’ll get a much higher response rate.

Organize individual meetups with some of your followers who are not on your email list yet. Even better, organize small-scale events where you can interact with your followers.

If you’re not much of an extrovert, you can do this virtually as well. Refer to step 58 above.

You could even cross-check your email list and check if those who have emailed you before are on your email list. If they’re not, email them and ask them to join!

Note: Not everybody will agree to it, but it’s worth giving it a shot.

Start growing your email list now

You can’t afford to ignore your email list.

And now, you have no excuses. We’ve given you every list building strategy under the sun. It’s up to you now to grow your email list!

Don’t forget to let us know in the comments section below of any strategies we missed!

You sit down and are all ready to write but then 45 minutes have passed, you’re still staring at the blank new Google Doc you created. You’re stuck.

Having months’ worth of blog post ideas at your disposal is your wildest dream right now (instead of struggling with what to blog about six days before it needs to go live).

You’re in luck!

We sorted through thousands of Sumo customer’s most popular articles and found out content ideas (categorized into blog post types) that get noticed based on 175,000,000 visits.

Ready to see what we found?

60 blog post ideas to keep new content coming

Hate running out of ideas on what to blog about? Get the 60 Blog Post Ideas in a spreadsheet so you can refer to it anywhere anytime.

DOWNLOAD THE BLOG POST IDEAS CHEAT SHEET

Mixed media posts

1. Infographics. Make no mistake — Infographics are still a highly effective content type to garnish attention, links, and shares.
2. Comics. Explain something using comics to get your point across in a simpler way and entertain in the process.
3. Quiz. Buzzfeed proves it. Quizzing your audience is a viral blog post idea people can’t resist.

Roundup posts

4. Opinion Roundup. Ask influencers on their opinion or answers on one question. Round up their answers into an article. Then, ask them to share the article for more traffic. Roundup posts can lead to a shit ton of shares.
5. Influencer Roundup. Round up influencers in your niche who have achieved something cool and write a post about it.
6. Curated Roundup. A roundup of the top articles, podcasts or resources in your niche.

List posts

7. Basic List. One of the most popular types of content out there, a basic list is a quick read under 1200 words.
8. Expanded List. 1500+ word list posts that expand upon each of the points.
9. Methods List. List all the methods you can think of to get one result.
10. Tools List. List and rank the tools to get something done. Break out to best FREE tools and best PAID tools.
11. Checklist. Create a checklist and form it into a blog post.

Fear mongering posts

12. Warning Post. Warn your readers about something they weren’t aware of. Provide information on how the reader can deal with the warning.
13. Mistakes Post. Share the common mistakes that people are making on your topic.
14. “What You’re Doing Wrong” Post. Share one thing that most people are getting wrong about your topic, and show them what to do instead.
15. Myth Busting Post. Debunk a popular myth in your niche (and back up why it’s not true).
16. Glossary Post. Create a glossary for the beginners in your niche to learn all the terms.

How-to posts

17. Basic How-To Post. Show your readers how to do something in your niche (this includes recipes on food blogs).
18. Celebrity How-To Post. Share how a famous person does something in your niche (ie How to Swim like Michael Phelps).
19. How-To User Guide. Provide a guide on how to use a tool in your niche specific to a group of people (ie How to Use Excel for CEOs)
20. How-To Objection Post. A How To post that pre-empts a common objection (ie How to Start a Business Without Spending a Dime)
21. Timebound How-To. A time-bound How To post (ie How to Lose 10 lbs in 30 Days).

Emotional posts

22. Aspirational Post. Write about somebody who has done something awesome in your niche. (Ie How Sam Smith Cured His Diabetes with a Plant Based Diet).
23. Rally Cry. Get your readers riled up with a rally cry post calling your readers to arms (ie Let’s Stop Letting the Scale Control Us).
24. Inspirational Story. Inspire readers to take action with motivational stories (ie How I Quit My 6-Figure Corporate Job and Travel Full Time) ].
25. Manifesto. Build a community with a manifesto for your blog or readers (ie The Weight Lifter’s Manifesto).
26. Bonding Post. Bond with your readers by writing a personal but highly relatable bonding post with a moral (ie The Unspoken Truth They Never Tell You About Parenting).
27. Open Letter. Write an open letter to a person or group of people (ie An Open Letter to Donald Trump).
28. “Give Readers a Challenge” Post. Help them meet a goal you know they have (because you’re familiar with their psychographics) and show them how to do it (ie The 7-Day Productivity Challenge).
29. “Awe” Post. Leave your readers in awe with a viral video or unusual story (ie The Viral Proposal Every Woman Wants).
30. Lessons Learned Post. Share the lessons you learned doing something unusual or interesting (ie What I Learned From Traveling to Every Country in the World)

Cornerstone posts

31. Ultimate Guide. A comprehensive, detailed guide covering everything on a specific topic (ie The Ultimate Guide to Going Vegan).
32. FAQ Post. Answer a question that’s frequently asked in your niche (ie Is It Bad For You To Drink Coffee Every Day?).
33. Advanced Guide. An ultimate guide for advanced readers in your topic (ie The Advanced Guide to Google Analytics).
34. Beginner’s Guide. A beginner’s guide for readers in your topic (ie The Beginner’s Guide to Adobe Lightroom).
35. Tutorial. A tutorial of how to achieve something specific (ie A 10-Step Tutorial to Set Up Your Canon DSLR).
36. How Something Works Post. An article explaining how something works like the show How It’s Made (ie How 3D Printers Work).
37. Explanatory Post. Explain something widely misunderstood in a simple way (ie Why Calories in Vs Calories Out Won’t Help You Lose Weight).
38. History Post. Share the history of something in your niche (ie The History of the Cell Phone).

Data and science

39. Backed by Science Post. Make a claim and back it up by scientific research (ie Science Proves It’s Okay to Let Your Kids Cry).
40. Analysis Post. Analyze a company or process and report on it (ie How Shopify Increased Revenue 90% In 365 Days).
41. Data Post. Analyze data from your own company and report on it (ie We Analyzed 1,000,000 Website Visits and Here’s What We Found).
42. “Top Stats” Post. Round up the top stats in your industry to keep your readers informed (ie 14 Global Warming Statistics You Need to Know).

Challenge posts

43. Challenge Report. Share the results of a challenge you conducted related to your blog topic (ie 6 Day Social Detox Challenge).
44. “Here’s What Happened” Post. Do something interesting, and write an article about it (I Stopped Eating Dairy for 90 Days and Here’s What Happened).
45. Reasoning Post. Share why you do something controversial or did something unusual (ie Why I Walked Out on Tony Robbins).

Opinion posts

46. Controversial Post. Take a stand for or against something controversial (ie Here’s Why 9/11 Was an Inside Job).
47. Case Making Post. Convince your audience of something that matters, using data where you can (ie Why Your Website Needs an Email List).
48. Fortune Teller Post. Predict something in your niche that will happen in the future (ie You Won’t Be Able To Make Money Online In 2019).
49. Editorial Post. Write an article expressing a story or opinion (ie A Day with New York’s Elite).

Social proof posts

50. Basic Social Proof Post. Use social proof to tell a story (ie 500,000 Websites Are Succeeding With Sumo).
51. Testimonial Post. Use a testimonial to spin a full article off of it (ie How Tim Grew His Site 4x with Sumo).
52. Case Study. Create a case study off of somebody who had great results with something in your niche (ie [Case Study] Growing a Site from 0 to 10k Visitors in a Month).
53. Result in Timeframe Post. Demonstrate how you got a specific result in a short timeframe (ie How We Build a Product in Only 2 Weeks).

Influencer posts

54. Interview. Interview an influencer about something related to your niche (ie Tony Robbins on How He Grew His Traffic to 1 Million Visits/Month).
55. Success Post. Dissect the success of somebody famous and share what you find (ie How Jared Really Lost Weight Eating Subway).
56. Celebrity Revealed Post. Reveal something about somebody famous (ie How Jennifer Lawrence Styles Her Hair).
57. Objections Preemptive Post. Preempt a common objection in your niche (ie You Don’t Have to Give Up Chocolate to Lose Weight).
58. Preparatory Post. Prepare your audience with something they should know before reaching a goal (ie What You Should Know Before You Launch Your First Product).

Underground knowledge post

59. “Little Known” Post. Give your readers little known information (ie 13 Little Known Ways to Get Longer Eyelashes).
60. Breaking News Post. Cover some breaking news in your niche to ride the viral wave (ie Chris Pratt and Anna Faris Just Broke Up and the Internet is Crying).

DOWNLOAD THE BLOG POST IDEAS CHEAT SHEET

10 top trafficked blog ideas (after analyzing 175 million visits)

The top 200+ blog posts on Sumo’s content-creating customer’s sites revealed that these are the top 10 pieces of content you need to create.

They were responsible for 147,000,000 hits (83% of the top 175 Million hits were on these 10 types of content).

I’ve even included quick-start guide on how to generate foolproof blog post ideas based on each category.

Ready?

How to come up with things to blog about—and build your content calendar

1. How-to post

The “How To” post outperformed all other article types by a longshot, responsible for nearly 23% of the traffic to the most popular articles.

This is the cornerstone, evergreen content that teaches readers how to do something specific related to your niche. These articles can overlap with the Ultimate Guide (the #10 most popular type of content).

Check out how Herb.co uses how-to guides to teach a specific process:

And how Bulletproof uses them for content marketing on their blog, too:

It’s not surprising that “How To” content garnishes so much attention. Who hasn’t Googled how to do something recently?

This is good news for search engine traffic to your “How To” content, but since you’re educating your readers, it’s also extremely shareable.

Not sure what to teach your customers how to do?

Find some inspiration with Quora. Type your topic or keywords into the Quora search bar (let’s say your niche is homeschooling):

Check out the recently asked questions. In this case, you could write a blog post on:

• How to Socialize Your Homeschooled Child
• How to Homeschool Your Kids
• How to Know If Homeschooling Your Kids Is Right For You

You could also perform a Quora search to find more blog post ideas related to your topic.

2. List post

Not only are list posts in the top two for traffic, they’re also #2 on the top most shared article types.

Whether this will work for you depends on your niche and the size of your site. Sumo wouldn’t do very well with simple list posts, but Success.com does:

59% of people will share an article without even reading it, and since list posts are easy to scan and instantly gratifying (even when you just see the headline!) these bad boys are shared constantly, contributing to the traffic.

Not sure what type of list post to create?

Find a content analysis tool like BuzzSumo (nope, we’re not brothers) and type in a popular blog in your niche’s URL. Let’s say you were in the travel niche:

You can then filter the results by published year and sort by total shares. (You need a paid plan to do this.)

These are proven topics in your niche for garnishing attention, shares, and likely traffic.

Don’t copy them, but use them as inspiration for your list post. Here are some prompts:

1. How (ie X Ways to Prepare For Your Solo Trip)
2. Who (ie X Best Travel Credit Card Bonuses in 2017)
3. When (ie X Months for the Best Travel Deals)
4. Where (ie X Little-Known Travel Deal Websites That’ll Save You A Ton of Money)
5. Why (ie  X Reasons To Start Travel Hacking in 2017)

Apply those prompts to each topic (in this case, solo travel, travel credit cards, travel deals, travel hacking) for dozens of list post ideas.

3. Explanatory post

The explanatory post is #3 on the top 10 types of blog posts to create, driving over 20,000,000 hits over the 27 top sites we analyzed.

In this blog post idea, break something complex down and explain it so your readers can understand.

For example, this article on Big Think uses the explanatory post to go into the science of a surprisingly common question:

Another great example is an explanatory article on Dean’s blog:^[*]

In these blog posts, you’re educating your audience and setting yourself apart as an authority in your niche.

These explanatory posts are linkable assets (meaning other bloggers and resources in your niche are likely to link to you as value-adds for their readers) which also happen to be evergreen, cornerstone content.

Trying to figure out what to explain but coming up short? I’ve got you.

Pull up a subreddit in your niche. Let’s say you’re in the weight loss niche. I’ll use /r/loseit as an example.

The Quick Way: Type “why does” and “how do” in the search bar (keep the quotes so it filters just for those exact match terms).

Start scrolling through the results to find the top questions people have in the niche:

In this case, you might create an explanatory post answering the following questions:

• Why you should never starve yourself
• How fasting works in weight loss
• Being fat doesn’t make you a bad but…

The Better Way: Scroll through the subreddit and open the threads. Read through the questions and struggles the redditors are experiencing.

Each of those questions is like a golden, viral nugget for your blog handed to you on a silver platter, giving you a chance to educate about your topic. Write about them.

4. Warning post

In the fourth spot, the “Warning Post” drove 17 million hits to our sample sites, and this one makes sense:

Warnings are difficult to ignore.

In this post, you’ll “warn” readers of something that they probably didn’t know about. For example, David Wolfe warns readers that Google is recording them:

And Mind Body Green warns readers about a side effect of tattoos:

As an expert on your topic, it can be tough to think of what your readers might not know about, so to think of blog post ideas under this article type, use Google Scholar.

Type in “recent studies on [topic]” (for example, nutrition):

And filter for a recent date (Since 2015, 2018, or 2019).

Most people don’t know about the recent science in your field (probably not even you!) so this is an opportunity.

In this example, you might read some of the papers and write:

• Warning! What Diet Has to Do with Colon Cancer
• Everything You Need to Know About Personalized Nutrition
• Gui Microbiota Plays a Critical Role (More Than You Think) in Your Health

Another way to come up with Warning article topics is to think of a common misconception in your field, and warn people about the truth.

5. Celebrity revealed post

The Celebrity Revealed Post is an article that “reveals” something about somebody famous in your niche.^[*]

This post type attracts readers who want to know some secret information on the celebrity.

To create this type of content, you don’t have to know the celebrity personally or even have insider information. But you should choose a celebrity who is popular in your niche right now.

Chris used this blog post type in his Tony Robbins article, the most shared article in 2017 on Sumo’s blog:

To create Celebrity Revealed posts, think of a top influencer in your niche.

If you’re out of the loop, bring up a top magazine-style publication in your niche (example: Entrepreneur.com for business) and visit their homepage. Let’s say you were in the beauty niche:

I didn’t have to go far to find Jennifer Lawrence (Vogue wouldn’t have put her as the main feature if she wasn’t big right now).

Then, type in “how does [celebrity name]” into Google for autocomplete:

You could write a Celebrity Revealed post about how Jennifer Lawrence styles her hair.

To write the article properly, you could quote some interviews she’s done with others, find hairstyles she’s worn in images, and link to tutorials (or create your own) on how to copy the hairstyle.

6. Breaking news post

This article type won’t be part of your regular rotation unless you’re a news or politics site, but the Breaking News post brought in over 12 million visits for our sample sites, and allow you to ride trending topics on social media, increasing your visibility.

One example is The Drive’s usage of the Breaking News post to share something relevant in their industry:

You don’t need exclusive information to report on breaking news, but you do have to be on top of your niche.

To set up a system so you don’t always have to be checking Google News for new info, set up a Google alert with some keywords in your industry:

You’ll get an email when those terms are mentioned.

To get the most benefit from a breaking news article, you should write about the news within 24 hours of it emerging.

Check on Twitter and Facebook’s Trend’s sections before you publish and make sure you’re using appropriate terms to take advantage of the trending topic.

7. Expanded list post

Alright, so let’s say your niche doesn’t do well with the listicle. Because, you know, you’re not Buzzfeed.

But list posts are #2 on the list of the most popular types of content for traffic, and you don’t want to miss out on the magical unicorn effect they have.

Enter the Expanded List Post: list posts that actually add value beyond mild entertainment to people’s lives!

In 20 Call-To-Action Examples, we not only list out the examples but provide actionable information on why they work:

These take the typical list post style article and expand on each of the points, providing more information and methods to take action on the points.

For the Expanded List Post, use the same method of finding topics for your basic list post, but expand on each of the points with more information.

Recall my example topics in the travel niche based on the list post research:

• How (ie X Ways to Prepare For Your Solo Trip)
• Who (ie X Best Travel Credit Card Bonuses in 2017)
• When (ie X Months for the Best Travel Deals)
• Where (ie X Little-Known Travel Deal Websites That’ll Save You A Ton of Money)
• Why (ie  X Reasons To Start Travel Hacking in 2017)

For the “When”, you might list out 5 of the cheapest months to travel, and under each point, include:

• An example of one of the best travel deals in that month.
• Some of the best locations to visit during those months.
• Data and stats on travel volume during that month.
• Where to go to find the best deals for that month. 

Expanded list posts tend to work in niches where traditional list posts don’t.

8. Controversial post

Controversy sells.

There’s no surprise there. So it’s also not surprising that this one made it into the top 10 traffic-driving blog post ideas.

But how do you come up with an idea of something controversial to write?

We’ll take it to Reddit again for this one.

Visit a subreddit related to your niche. (Example: Parenting). Many subreddits have a default “Controversial” tab, which displays the threads that are both upvoted and downvoted a lot. Filter for that tab:

Not every thread will truly be controversial without reading them, but many of the title’s of the threads give themselves away.

In the Parenting topic, some topics include:

• Daycare is too expensive!
• Having kids are overwhelming
• “Spoiling” your baby with holding them too much (believe it or not, this is a controversial topic).

Write a controversial piece arguing for the side you know your target audience stands by (which you’ll know from their psychographics).

Nervous to post something controversial? Don’t be. You’ll repel the people who were never going to follow you anyway, and become magnetic for your target audience.

9. FAQ post

The most shared content is long-form (3000 words and up).

But shares does not always equal traffic, and this short-form post idea proves that.

Coming in at #9 of the best types of content is the FAQ post. This is when you answer a question that’s frequently asked by your target audience.

These articles are not usually long or revolutionary, but they’re useful. They’re easily referenced in other content (for example, ultimate guides).

A huge benefit to the FAQ post is that the terms can drive tons of search engine traffic, as they have very high search volumes but very low competition.

To draw on another example from Herb.co, they used the FAQ post to get tons of search engine traffic:

Ranking #1 for a very high volume search term:

The SEO potential (medium keyword difficulty and relatively high search volume) for these FAQ posts undoubtedly contributes to how much traffic they drive.

Not sure where to start?

You can find plenty of topic ideas by using Answer the Public. Type in your keyword or topic in the search bar. For example, if you had a blog about budgeting:

And the tool drums up autocomplete data based on that keyword:

Displaying dozens of blog post ideas for FAQ posts.

In this case, you could write about:

• Why you should create a budget
• How to create a budget when you’re self employed or have income fluctuations
• How to create a budget when you’re paid weekly.

That’s enough blog post ideas to last you for years if you publish weekly.

10. Ultimate guide

The ultimate guide is the ultimate article idea.

It’s a cornerstone, evergreen type of content that covers everything you need to know about a specific topic.

Our guide guide on Instagram marketing is one of the most highly trafficked articles of 2016, but also drove almost 10,000 email signups and was #2 on the top sales-driving pieces of content published last year.

This is where you go in depth into a topic, covering pretty much everything the reader needs to know.

Ultimate guides can be step-by-step processes or comprehensive, informational guides. Because they go deep on one thing, choose a broader topic for your ultimate guide.

Done right, they are linkable assets and attract a lot of attention. So if you truly create the ultimate guide on your topic you can expect to rank decently for the term.

Start by using your favorite keyword research tool (we use Ahrefs) to plug in a search term related to your topic. Let’s say you’re in the baby sleep niche:

If your keyword difficulty is still in the green (ie it’s “easy”), write an ultimate guide on that search term — ie “The Ultimate Guide to Baby Sleep Training”.

But if it’s more competitive, check under the “Keyword ideas by search volume” section:

These are ripe opportunities for ultimate guides. In our example, you could write:

• The Ultimate Guide to Sleep Training Methods
• When to Start Sleep Training: The Ultimate Guide
• The Ultimate Guide to Sleep Training a 3 Month Old Baby

You can also try a different headline formula (you can choose from these 51) because “ultimate guide” is overused.

To create your guide, though, it’s not as simple as just writing a 1500 word blog post on the topic.

No, you have to create the ultimate guide on the topic.

So open the top search results:

Read through them, and create something better than all of them.

In addition to all of the details covered in the top existing guides, you would make sure you include frequently asked questions by doing some research on Reddit, Quora, and Answer The Public.

Writing an ultimate guide won’t be easy, if you want a more detailed guide on how to do that, check out this ultimate guide on writing an ultimate guide.

Never run out of blog post ideas again

We just covered a lot of ground.

I gave you 60 blog post ideas that actually work, revealed the top 10 ideas that drove the most hits on popular websites, and showed you exactly how to generate hundreds of article ideas step-by-step using a simple, proven framework.

Now you never have to read another article on getting blog post ideas or stare at a blank screen ever again.

DOWNLOAD THE BLOG POST IDEAS CHEAT SHEET

One day in, no reply. Three days in, still waiting for a response. One week in, you hear crickets…

If no one ever told you this before, here you go: It’s NORMAL.

Based on research by WoodPecker, simply adding one follow-up email brings your reply rate from 9% to 13%, and the first follow-up email is usually the most effective — with the highest reply rate (about 40% higher than the initial email).

That’s why in today’s article, I’m going to reveal the follow-up email samples our Growth Team at Sumo uses to get responses from prospects — and why they work. The first step of course is to quickly find prospects’ email addresses and send the initial email. Then, the follow-up email is where the money is at.

Ready to rack up your response rate? Let’s dive in!

Follow-up email sample #1: Quick nudge

Why It Works: Your prospects might miss your initial email for whatever reason. This template works well as a quick reminder without being pushy. Also, the “Sent from iPhone” line below the name makes the email seem more personal.

When It Works Best: One to three days after your initial outreach email.

Example Of It Working:

Follow-up email sample #2: Sweet and simple check-in

Why It Works: With this email, you assume your prospect has read your email but haven’t gotten back to you yet. In case they haven’t read the initial email, they are more likely to check it out again, especially when you’re focusing on “helping” them instead of getting something out of them.

When It Works Best: Four to seven days after your initial outreach email. You can replace “weekend” with any other day depending on when you’re sending the email.

Example Of It Working:

Follow-up email sample #3: Ask for the right contact

Why It Works: Your prospect might change position, or you got a wrong contact. Instead of reaching out to the wrong person, use this template to navigate quickly to the right person by simply asking.

When It Works Best: It works best when you still don’t get a response after one or two follow-up emails. You can also use this as your first outreach email when you’re not sure if you have the right contact (sometimes Sumo’s Growth Team use this template even when they’re sure they’re reaching out to the right person as a conversation opener).

Example Of It Working:

Follow-up email sample #4: Give options (and inject some humor)

Why It Works: There is a slight possibility that your prospect gets annoyed after receiving a few follow-up emails from you. This template uses humor to ease the tension and show that you’re a human. Also with option #1 (i.e., your product not being a priority), you’re making it comfortable for them to reject you — so you can move on to the next prospect.

When It Works Best: As the fourth or fifth follow-up email in your outreach sequence.

Example Of It Working:

Follow-up email sample #5: Tiny sales page

Why It Works: This email has:

• A strong hook: “I really don’t want you to miss out on meeting our [Your Topic] expert.”
• Benefits: “…share their screen and show you exactly how to [Your Topic / Service / Benefits].”
• Social proof: “Our expert has worked with some of our top sites like [Your Past Customers].”
• Objection handling: “This is not a webinar. And yes, it’s free.”
• A strong call-to-action with scarcity: “We only have a few spots left. Find a time [here] (Link to your calendar).”

It works because it’s literally a mini sales page.

When It Works Best: You can use this email anytime after your first follow-up email. It gives your prospect slightly more information about your offering and a reason to take action immediately.

Example Of It Working:

Follow-up email sample #6: The last straw

Why It Works: First, you’re giving the prospect a reason why you’re being slightly pushy (i.e., so you save each other’s inboxes). Instead of waiting for a response forever, this email dives straight to the objective. If your prospects are interested, they can book a time directly; if not, you both save time and inboxes.

When It Works Best: Use this template as the last follow-up email after sending five to six follow-ups. You probably won’t get a response here, but it’s worth giving it one last shot before you marked your lead “dead.”

Example Of It Working:

With this email, converting prospects are booking a time slot on the link (instead of responding to the email).

Copy and paste these follow-up email samples into your email outreach campaign now

That’s the six follow-up emails the Sumo Growth team use to get more replies from our prospects. Now, here are three quick tips you want to remember when sending an outreach email:

1. Always test your email subject lines to optimize open rates. You can check out our giant list of 87 best email subject lines for a/b test inspiration.
2. Keep an eye on your sending frequency and the time you send the follow-up emails. In some cases, they matter more than the email body. What’s the point if your prospects get annoyed by too many emails from you? Or worse, missed the email?
3. Be human. No one wants to talk to a robot. Show the prospects that you genuinely care about them.
4. Do not forget that your email signature is a great non-passive way to encourage the prospect you are emailing to navigate to your website.