If you are still skeptical about building an email list then let me tell you that email lists are absolute gold for digital marketers and business owners. The secret behind every successful business is their well maintained and nurtured email lists. So if you haven’t already started out with building your email list, you should not waste any more time. In this guide, I will help you educate and learn how to grow your email list with modern tools and tactics. Here’s a quick overview of all the concepts of email list we will be covering in this article:
What is an email list?What is the importance of an email list?Tools required to build your email list.How to grow an email list fast?Best list building strategies.
I am quite sure that with the help of this guide, not only you’d be able to set up your email list, but also able to keep on growing it significantly.
What Is An Email List?
An email list is a collection of mainly email addresses and also names, locations, etc. These email addresses can be of your customers, subscribers or leads. Since you have their email addresses, this means that –
Your customers have allowed you to send them regular updates on new product arrivals or even purchase confirmations.Your subscribers are interested in your blogs, articles or guides and want to be notified through emails.Leads may be interested in what you may have to offer (products, services, discounts, etc.). So you should convert them into customers by sending them emails.
An email list can degrade (more on this later) by unsubscriptions or grow with different lead generation or promotional campaigns.
What Is The Importance Of An Email List?
In the quest of learning how to grow an email list, you should first know the importance of an email list. I have already emphasized the fact that email lists are considered as digital gold. And, in this section, you’d know why… If I tell you that email marketing has a bigger reach than social media platforms, would you believe it? Yes, that’s true. According to recent statistics, Facebook has over 1.35 billion users and Twitter has over 270 million users. But when it comes to emails, there are over 4 billion registered email addresses. Have you ever noticed, both of these platforms (and almost every other platform) ask you your email address while signing up? They too are building their own email lists for sending you email notifications and updates. So now, the question arises –
Social Media Marketing or Email Marketing?
With the recent decline of organic reach of Facebook posts, the only option left with social media marketing is to go through with paid advertisements. Even when you start an ad campaign for your products and services, there are many complexities and hurdles to overcome. Naturally, you may question if social media marketing is worth trying when email marketing is relatively offering greater ROI. I would say yes… Social media marketing, when used with the right lead generation strategy, is known to bring new leads, And, ultimately, replenishes your email lists. And, a huge number of leads from across the globe offers you the possibility of globalizing your business through promotional email campaigns. Now coming back to the topic, here are some more reasons why emails and lists are considered so important –
- Better ROI – Email marketing is known to offer better ROI than social media ad campaigns or any other type of marketing.
- Personalized Communication – Detailed email lists (with information like name, city, etc.) foster better-personalized communication. Many email marketing tools offer personalization tags to support this.
- Loyal Customer Base – With the help of email lists and segmentation tools, you can keep track of the actions of your leads. This way, you would know which part of your email lists requires more nurturing and which part is your loyal customers.
- Improves Brand Reputation – Email list is the best way to flaunt your customer base. You could feature “50,000 Customers Love Us” on your landing page and improve brand credibility and also reputation. Besides these reasons, there are many more ways in which email lists can yield maximum benefits for you. But now, let’s move on to the next segment of “how to grow your email subscriber list” guide. That is…
Tools Required To Build Your Email List
Now that you have known the importance of building and growing an email list, it’s time for you to take some action. Ideally, I would like to wave a magic wand and start growing my email list. But that’s too good to happen and works only in our dreamland. In reality, we require a few tools to build our email list.
1. Website
A website or simply a blog is one of the most essential things you need to grow an email list. If you don’t have a website yet, it’s very simple to start one. Just find a suitable domain, a cheap hosting service, and a suitable theme. We won’t be going deep about it in this blog but I assure you, it just requires a few clicks and a few minutes. All the businesses have a website that is used as the medium to collect leads, either through content marketing strategies or a landing page. But most importantly, the other two tools (mentioned-below) would work only if you have a fully functional website.
2. Subscription Or Opt-In Forms
Having just a website won’t help you start collecting leads. For that, you either need a landing page (with an opt-in form) or just an opt-in form at different places on your website. Not many bloggers and business owners know that strategically adding an opt-in form in their blog can result in a massive growth of their email list. And, if you do not want to compromise any chances of getting a lead, these opt-in forms can be embedded as a side widget, on the header, a floating widget or even as a pop-up. Now, if you are pro in coding or have a friend who is fluent in coding, it can be done very easily. But what if you are just starting out and have no coding experience? Then you’d need a platform, ideally an email marketing service (more on this below) that provides all sorts of opt-in forms. All the known email marketing services are known to provide advanced opt-in forms capabilities even if you have beginner level knowledge.
3. Email Marketing Service
Now that you have the means to collect leads, it all comes down to safely and securely storing them on a platform. And, that platform is none other than an email marketing service. As I said, all the top email marketing services provide email list growth modules such as opt-in forms, landing page builder, etc. But the thing you should also look for is the Contact/Subscriber Management module. As you receive new leads, these email marketing solutions have the potential to automatically add them to your desired email list. All it takes for you is to configure it once and it works automatically and forever (unless you change the settings). Apart from contact management, you should also seek an email list segmentation feature. The segmentation could be on multiple variables like recently opened, recently clicked, haven’t opened your emails in the last couple of months, etc. Trust me, the list management feature is the ultimate tool that will help you maintain an active email list. And, as always, the icing on the cake – a fluent, drag & drop email builder to create responsive email templates. These email templates will help you nurture your leads to convert them into customers. And, also to maintain regular communication at a personal level. Since all the modern email marketing solutions provide these features, it becomes dauntingly difficult to choose an ideal one that would cater to your needs. Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall in this limbo by recommending you Constant Contact. Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing services that are known for its email list growth-oriented features. To help you quickly get started, Constant Contact provides a 30 days trial period. Post that, you could subscribe to any of its premium but inexpensive plans, starting at $20/month.
How To Grow An Email List Fast?
Now that you have all the required tools at your disposal, it’s time to starting growing your email list. According to Constant Contact, the secret behind the growth of an email list depends on a valuable incentive, followed by a simple opt-in opportunity. Simply speaking, you should offer an incentive or benefits (like a discount, free trial, copy of files, etc.) in exchange for their sign-up. But mind you, this sign-up process must be extremely easy and must be completed in a few steps. Note – For optimal growth, the incentive must complement what your business has to offer. If you are planning on just sticking the sign-up form in the blog’s sidebar then it may not work as well. Try adding a freebie or some other kind of incentive. Having said that, there can’t be “enough” leads or customers in your email lists. The more, the merrier. But you should know that your email list degrades by approximately 25% every year. Speaking in numbers, if you have an email list of 10,000 contacts, by the end of this year, your 2,500 contacts would have either unsubscribed or simply expire. So it is wise and highly recommended that you keep on replenishing your email lists from time to time. Based on the above-mentioned growth secret, I have curated some top email list building strategies that you can easily employ.
Best List Building Strategies
Now, we are in the endgame..!! It comes down to choosing the desired list building strategies and using it with the provided tools. Here some proven list building strategies –
1. Offer eBooks Or Guides
Many bloggers or simple website owners use this list building strategy. In this tactic, you simply have to create an eBook or a PDF guide about your area of expertise. After this, you simply have to offer this to your readers in return for their sign-up.
2. Discounts Or Offers
If you are a service-oriented business then there’s no better way to grow your email list than offering your leads a generous discount or offers. A simple sign-up form, strategically placed at certain locations of your landing page can boost your email list growth.
3. Exclusive Feature Or Early Access
This list building strategy would work great for SaaS companies. If you fall in this category then you can offer exclusive features, free updates or even early access to your site visitors. I am quite sure that this could lure your visitors to opt-in as your leads.
4. Contests Or Free Giveaways
This is by far the best and most used list building strategy by diverse businesses. But if you have an online marketplace or even an eCommerce store, this strategy could result in a significant boost of your incoming leads.
5. Social Media Lead Generation
Having a social media presence adds significant weightage to your online presence. Also, by creating social media accounts, you are increasing the chances of global visitors to reach your website. Moreover, there are paid Ad campaigns on different social media channels that emphasize on lead generation. That’s it… I know there are several other blogs, offering up to 50 – 80 list building strategies. But all of those revolve around the above-mentioned core list building strategies.
What’s Next?
I genuinely hope that you have realized the importance and potential of having your own email lists. Moreover, you now know how to grow an email list from scratch and at a fast pace. So it’s time for you to start implementing these tactics now. I assure you, with the help of the mentioned guidelines, Constant Contact & its secret, you are bound to build your email list in no time. Once you have a decent number of leads, you should also focus on maintaining your email list. By this, I mean that you should –
Regularly segment your list based on your contact’s actions and preferences.Clean your email list to remove invalid or expired email addresses.Send targeted emails to the selected group of contacts (email segmentation) to maintain relevancy and regular communication.
As always, if you need my personal assistance with this or simply have any more queries, feel free to drop them in the comments section. You may also read:
Email Marketing Software for eCommerceConstant Contact ReviewBest Yoast SEO AlternativesBest Web Hosting Services for Small BusinessesSendinblue Plugin for Shopify
