It’s no secret that Email is still one of the best marketing tools available to businesses today. It’s easy for customers to sign up, and you can reach them right on their device. But getting started with email marketing can seem intimidating. Where do you even start? Perhaps you’ve heard that people are abandoning email, making it a smaller part of the marketing mix. This is true to some extent, but there’s still a lot of value in email. Email rates for opening and engagement are still above social media and outpace other forms of advertising. In this article I’ll give you the 6 best tips for building your email list.
1. Find Out Who Your Target Market Is
The first step to gathering a quality list of subscribers is figuring out who your target market is. You need to make sure that when you are starting out that you aren’t targeting too broad of an audience, you want to maximize the value of each person on your list. One of the best ways to do that is to get very specific about what types of people you are looking for.
“Get brand specific, get demographic specific, and even get geographic specific if possible."
Once you have this information you can start working on the platform that you use to build your list.
2. Have Multiple Locations Where Consumers Can Sign Up For Your Emails
It’s important to have multiple locations where consumers can sign up for your emails. In addition to having a form on your homepage, be sure to include a newsletter sign up form in the footer of each product page or on your blog sidebar. Utilize your website, emails and social media pages to make sure that you have an easy-to-see, easy-to-find area of your website where people can sign up for your list. The easier it is for people to sign up, the more likely they will.
3. Offer An Incentive to Email Subscribers
A simple solution to increase opt-in rates is to offer an incentive to email subscribers. For example, after someone signs up for your email list, send them a coupon with an expiration date that encourages them to purchase. They will be more likely to open your emails if they have something to look forward to, and this could lead to more sales over time. It’s essentially a win-win situation. If the offer is compelling enough, some people might sign up just to get the coupon, then later purchase from your site because they have already established trust with you.
4. Use Landing Pages For Email Sign-Up
Landing pages are one of the most valuable tool in an online marketer’s toolkit and adding an email subscription form is the easiest way to dramatically boost your email list. Here are some of the biggest benefits of having a full-fledged, standalone landing page for your opt-in offer:
You’re not hiding your lead magnet. This is the number one mistake we see people make with their opt-in offer – they include it as an incentive at the end of a blog post, and then they bury the offer at the bottom of the page. This is a huge mistake, because it means that only people who have read all your content will eventually see it. By contrast, when you place your offer on its own dedicated landing page, you’re explicitly stating what you want: my email address in exchange for this free gift.
Only qualified leads can opt-in. This allows the emails you have within your list to be 'quality' which increases responsiveness, list health and ultimately revenue.
“Keeping in mind that 10% is a benchmark for a good conversion rate - the average landing page conversion rate across all industries is 9.7%."
5. Leverage Your Social Media Outlets
While building your email list is essential, it is sometimes a difficult task. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram will be your best friend while you’re building your email list. While this might sound odd at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Use posts on those platforms to include a call to action to join your email list as well as sharing a link to where they can do so. You should also always be sure to have an opt-in in any blog post or landing page on social media to increase your chances of capturing a new email address. It is a cost-effective way to build your email list and promote your business at the same time.
6. Limit Sign-Up Detail Requirements
With an eye on your potential customer’s inbox, make it easy for them to sign up for your email list. Make sure to include a clear call-to-action and keep it short. Don’t make people think, just get them to click. They will read your emails; they just don’t want a long form when they don’t have time. Which is why it is important to keep your subscription questions to a minimum.
“The more questions you ask, you run the higher risk of scaring away potential subscribers and leads."
Building your email list is one of the most important things you can do for your business as it gives your valuable insight into your customers and allows you to market directly to them instead of through a third party. It also gives your brand the opportunity to turn site visitors into long-term customers.
In Summary
Email marketing is a powerful and cost-effective way to stay in touch with your customer base. But how do you know if it’s worth the effort? You could focus on the number of emails sent, but that might not be an accurate representation of success when executed correctly. The metric that really matters has nothing to do with numbers at all – it’s about quality engagement rates. If you have a high percentage of engaged customers, they are more likely to buy from you or sign up for future offers which means email marketing can be very profitable.! Get in touch today for quotes on how we can help improve any aspect of your email marketing strategy so that people will actually read what you send them without feeling like spam.