“Subscribe to our blog” is the most common call to action (CTA) on WordPress websites, and one of the lowest-performing CTAs you can have on your site. You will, however, get blog subscribers, and, if you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably have a fair number of subscribers.

Who are they?

The majority of bloggers and WordPress website owners don’t even know.

Whaaaaat? You can see your house from space. How can you not know the identities of your blog subscribers?

We recently asked several hundred marketers from companies of all sizes this question:
Do you know your blog subscribers?  Here are the results:

Blog Subscriber Poll Response

Great news for the 34% who said they have the name and email of their blog subscribers.

Bad news for everyone else.

That’s right. Nearly 66% of poll respondents don’t have enough information about their blog subscribers to turn them into leads.

What? Turn them into leads?

That’s right. When someone raises their hand to subscribe to your blog, they are telling you that they are interested in what you and your organization have to say. They want to learn more from you; they’re asking for more. They are starting a conversation.

But you can’t participate in that conversation if you don’t know who they are.

How does that make you feel?

Does this help? It’s like sitting at a table in a restaurant, and the server hands you a note. You open it, and it says “I’ve been dreaming about you my whole life, and I can’t believe you’re here. I want to meet you, but I don’t know what to do except to write you this note.” The note is unsigned. You ask the server who sent it, and he shrugs. “I don’t remember.” You are left… wondering… how can you connect with this person?

Potential customers are leaving notes just like that for 66% of marketers, according to our results.

How sad.

This is one of the biggest issues with most WordPress sites. You do need a “Subscribe to Blog” button, so you add a widget that came with your theme (if one did), or you search through the 1,112 plugins that come up in a search for “subscribe” and pick one.

Neither one of those activities will get you the fully integrated and automated experience you, and your subscribers, deserve.

Here is what you deserve:

  1. To get the name and email address of each blog subscriber – at the very least
  2. To see which blog posts each individual subscriber viewed
  3. To be able to deliver additional content to each subscriber based on his or her individual interest
  4. Oh yes, to be able to ascertain interests from that subscriber’s behavior
  5. To see what other pages and content has been viewed by each individual
  6. To see all of that in a centralized lead database that allows you to take action
  7. To nurture your leads throughout their investigation and decision processes
  8. To be top-of-mind when they are ready to buy
  9. To do all this without having to figure out which combination of plugins to install to make it happen

Why would you settle for anything less?

In a day and age when you can see your house from space, knowing your blog subscribers and being able to effectively engage with them should be child’s play.

And trust me, it just never gets old.