An email list means a list of emails of customers who want to stay updated on all sorts of information related to your business, whether it’s discounts, changes, upgrades, or other details. In the current age of the internet, email lists have become a massive factor in a business’s success.
In this article, we will explore six ways that you can implement today to grow an email list.
Why does a business need an email list?
The internet is an irreplaceable part of our lives. Hence why it can be utilised in many ways to grow your business; one such way is email marketing, for which you need an email list.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your customers. In fact, statistics say that there is a six times more chance of getting higher click rates because of it.
It might be hard to believe, but emails are 40 times more effective in getting more customers than Facebook or other popular social media networks.
An example is Unbounce, a company dedicated to building landing pages with the help of AI-powered tools. The founder Corey Dilley says that 80-90% of their landing page traffic upon launching a new campaign is generated from email.
This example indicates how businesses are using their email list to drive traffic to their sales pages.
There are many reasons why the conversion rate with emails is so high.
It is a consistent method of always getting people back on your site, consequently increasing the website traffic.
Emails can be a creative and customized way to let a prospect know what you have to offer and how it may benefit them.
Having your own business email and a group of prospects engaged with it is essentially building your audience in your own space without taking the help of other areas. This gives you a deeper personal connection with your customers while showing your business’ self-dependency.
Emails are the most effective way to reach your customer directly and straightforwardly without worrying whether Facebook or any other social media algorithm puts it on your customer’s timeline or not.
The lifespan and reach of a social media post are terribly low compared to emails. What you post on Facebook or Twitter might reach only 1 percent of your audience and will be lost in the pile of content within a few hours. But only 22% of what you send to your email list will go to spam/junk. The rest will sit until it’s read, which means you may get clicks even several days after the mail is sent.
How to grow an email list?
There are multiple methods and strategies that help you grow an email list. For all cases, you will likely need a website to direct the email traffic. Whether you have products to sell or just read a new awesome blog.
Secondly, you will need an email marketing tool that would help you manage the emails and send out marketing emails regularly or set up a drip campaign to nurture leads.
Simply growing your email list isn’t enough. The longer the list is, the more difficult it becomes to manage. Properly grouping the emails is crucial to figure out which messages should go to which people. So in order to manage your email list, you can take help from some tools.
In this article, we will look into two free tools that will help you collect email addresses and manage them.
Mailerlite
Mailerlite is all about creating something your audience will love. Their digital marketing tools will help you expand your audience faster and drive revenues. Email campaigns, automation, selling digital products, tracking results, website building, signup forms — Mailerlite offers you virtually everything you will need on your marketing journey.
Mailchimp
MailChimp is one of the best tools out there for managing your email. It provides email automation and predictive segmentation service, which can help you find your targeted customers, engage them more with stand-out emails, re-engage old customers, cross-sells your products, and more.
So let’s discuss the 6 ways to grow an email list.
Growing your email list is crucial for growing your business. It doesn’t have to be very complicated.
1. Offer an exclusive bonus content
Signing up for your email list might seem like an unnecessary extra step for most of your website visitors. But not if they can get instant gratification out of it.
In other words, content upgrades access to something exclusive that they can only gain by signing up for your newsletter.
However, what kind of content upgrades should you offer your potential customers?
It all depends on the type of content you put out because the upgrade must be relevant to it. Moreover, it must be something tempting, something good enough to prompt the visitor to take that extra step.
For example, if you run a blog post with informative pieces, you can offer your visitors a downloadable PDF file in exchange for signing up.
If you sell products, your content upgrade can be in the form of discount codes and vouchers that your potential customers can use for their benefit.
You should also ensure the content upgrade offer is placed somewhere convenient on the webpage, somewhere the user will notice. You can highlight it in some way.
If the user clicks on the upgrade, there is a high chance they will complete the task and subscribe to your list.
2. Giveaways and contests
Everyone loves some good ol’ giveaways. It is an easy, quick, and effective way to get a lot of new subscribers at a go.
All you need to do is tell your users to enter their email addresses to join the giveaway or contest, and they’d be more than willing to.
First, you must ensure the news of the giveaway or contest reaches a wide audience. You can send it directly to the ones already on your email list.
For a wider reach, you can promote it on social media accounts. You can also put up a banner advertising it on a corner of your landing page.
You also have to make sure that the prize is tempting enough. It doesn’t have to be huge, expensive, or useful. The prize is what will give the prospects the push to enter.
Try your best not to make the process too complicated, as it may demotivate some people.
3. Make use of short videos
Videos are a great way to get your content across in an appealing way. Many people prefer it over reading through walls of text.
More than 80% of businesses use videos in their email campaigns and gain a lot of new subscribers through it.
This works wonders because when users like a video or find it helpful, they’re likely to share it. As a result, your content reaches a larger audience.
You should make the videos short but engaging to make the most of them. There should not be any unnecessary tangents, and the content should be specific and informative.
Videos also give you the chance to present your content in a creative way. At the end of the video, you can add a reminder to the viewer to subscribe to the email list.
This strategy can work even better if the videos are incorporated into your website alongside the written content, and the signup button is close by.
A pro tip: Make sure your videos have subtitles. This added effort can go a long way. Not only can it help people who have a hearing disability, but it also caters to those who are too lazy to grab their earphones at the moment.
4. Conduct referral programs
Your email list might be short right now, but make the best use of what you’ve got. Engage your current subscribers in a referral program by giving them some kind of reward in exchange.
Referrals are extremely crucial for a business. According to the statistics, about 75% of people are more likely to purchase a new product or service because they heard good things about it from family or friends.
Most of them completely trust the referral of people they know and are guaranteed to at least check out your website.
This is why referral marketing is one of the most trusted methods of spreading the name of your business.
You can carry out a referral campaign every few months. Try to only engage your newest subscribers to the program instead of the older ones who have already participated.
5. Make the most out of the social media features
The more social media accounts you have, the wider audience you can reach. And if you know how to use all the features of these platforms, you can benefit your business in many ways.
Many social media platforms are being redesigned in ways that can profit businesses. For example, Facebook has introduced CTA (Call to Action) buttons for business pages. These buttons are displayed on the top of your page in an attention-grabbing way.
The same goes for Twitter, which can help you boost your lead generation. Twitter Ads lets you run lead generation directly from the app, so your prospects don’t have to leave Twitter to sign up for your email list.
If you’re using YouTube as well for your marketing, you can use their action cards feature to your benefit. You can add CTA or links that direct viewers to your website.
6. Use website popups
Even though popups are considered one of the most annoying features on a website they are still very effective. In a recent project by WPStudio, we saw a massive 28% increase in sign-ups by adding a popup.
The popups become annoying when there are too many of them or are they are irrelevant to the users’ interest. This can be an effective way to increase email if used sparingly and at the right the time.
There are multiple ways to use popups here we two very effective methods to collect emails.
Exit-intent popup
An exit-intent popup tracks your visitor’s mouse movement and shows them a targeted email signup option when they hover their mice to exit the website.
This is like a last-minute reminder to your visitor, and a beneficial one at that. An average conversion rate of 3.09% can be generated only by using exit-intent technology.
To make this system work the best, you can use cookies to track which users are revisiting your website and have already signed up. That way, they won’t get the signup message again and feel annoyed.
You do not need to be a web developer to create exit-intent popups as there are tons of tools, both free and paid, that do everything for you.
An exit-intent pop-up works even better with the combination of some other methods, for example, a sidebar email signup form.
Add a slide-in scroll box form.
You might have two or three signup forms spread all over the page, but most of the visitors’ eyes will skim over them. That’s why you need to make sure to grab their attention. A slide-in scroll box is perfect for that.
This box will scroll up from below or side the screen as the visitor starts to scroll down your webpage. Visitors have the option to minimize the window. But if it catches their eye, it will stay in their minds for a while, and they might consider it if they need to.
Marketing is difficult, but if you utilise all the available resources from the beginning, your chances of succeeding will be high. A properly accomplished email marketing can take your business to new heights.
