If You’re Struggling to Build Your Email List Read This
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Email marketing is a crucial strategy that can be used to convert your website browsers into buyers. On average, businesses can earn $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing, and the average conversion rate is 6.05% versus 1.9% for social media.
Convincing someone to give you their email address during their first visit to your website is easier than convincing them to make a purchase — it doesn't cost them anything.
Once you collect someone's email, you can engage with them and slowly move them through your marketing funnel, and eventually convert them to customers.
Generally, the top of the funnel are leads that come to your website and don't stay very long. One level down are visitors who have gone a step further and have interacted with your brand by following you on social media, submitting their email address, or reading your blog. At the very end of the funnel, are people who are close to converting or your customers — people who have purchased your products or services.
Email can be used to directly sell to users by sending offers to customers or clients who abandon their cart, but it can also be used to engage with people, tell your brand story, provide helpful tips, announce a new product or service, and keep your business top of mind for your email list.
The best part is, email marketing is an inexpensive digital marketing channel, making it easier to get a positive return on your investment (ROI).
Why build your email list?
With email list building, you own the contact information that users submit when they subscribe to your email list.
It's not like other marketing channels — particularly social media — where you're at the whim of third-party algorithms or platforms that are subject to tumultuous changes.
Keeping up with social media algorithm updates is a full-time job. With email marketing you can segment your lists and send personalized campaigns to your subscribers. It's direct, ensuring every person on your list receives an email the same way they'd get a piece of mail.
Email is a necessity. Many people go a few days without checking social media, but you check your email on a daily basis — several times.
You can customize your email campaigns for your audience — your strategy might even be different for each list you have. You get to choose the subject, design, and content that you send to email subscribers.
A great email campaign starts with a great list
You can't expect to start an email list and randomly send campaigns with the hope of a high open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate.
Successful campaigns start with your email list. Building segmented and targeted email lists is the best way to get going. It's not worth spending your time to build beautiful email campaigns, with sophisticated design, engaging copy, and special offers if your email lists aren't properly organized.
Three priorities for building a valuable email list are:
Quality: Get real information from people, don't buy email lists.
Relevance: Target people who are genuinely interested in your products, services, or industry.
Quantity: Once you've checked off the first two priorities, you can start focusing on volume and growing your list.
5 ways to start building your email list
1. Add a popup offer to your homepage
Encourage your website visitors to subscribe to your mailing list by offering value. This could be an eBook or free download, a discount off your products or services, or another special offer in exchange for their email address. For example, you can say, "Enter your email for a free comprehensive guide to setting up your email marketing strategy.” You can also include a field for their first name on the pop-up, so you can personalize emails later.
2. Create an exit popup form
An exit popup form can be used to make one last attempt to convert visitors as they are about to leave your website. It detects when users are going to navigate away, and shows your visitors a final message. You could "save" 10%-15% of visitors with an exit popup by collecting their email addresses and then marketing to them later through email campaigns.
For example, your copy could say, "Before you go, enter your email for a chance to win a free marketing strategy session.”
3. Include an email signup form at the footer of your website
Old school and simple, including an email signup form at the footer of your website is a way for visitors to opt-in if they'd like to hear from you. This can be effective if you publish content regularly that your potential and existing customers want to get notified of.
4. Offer free online networking events or workshops
Free online networking events and workshops can be an effective way for you to build brand awareness, provide value, get feedback, and build your email list.
You can promote your event via social media, to your existing email list (ask people to forward it), and you can also partner with other entrepreneurs for the event to cross-pollinate your audiences.
It's a good idea to segment these lists by event so you can send personalized emails afterward.
5. Use the signup button on your social media channels
Include a "sign up for our mailing list" or "get the newsletter" button on your social media channels when possible. On Instagram, you can use Linktree or Later’s Linkin.bio feature to include multiple links in your bio — make one of them click through to a signup form for your email list. Or, when you’re planning your content schedule, you can include 1 - 3 posts per month that drive people to subscribe for your mailing list. You may want to consider making it a separate list, so you can measure how effective Instagram is to your email list growth.
You can also include a call-to-action (CTA) button on your businesses Facebook page to encourage your followers to sign up for your email list.
5 ways to accelerate your email list growth
Once you've started to build your email list, and have a better understanding of whom you want to target, you can try implementing more advanced email list building strategies and tools. You may even find a few out-of-the-box tactics that work for you.
1. Use a chatbot to engage with potential and existing customers
Online chatbots can save you time and effort by automating customer support. You can integrate it with your website, and by using artificial intelligence chatbots have conversations with customers (in audio or text).
Some chatbots, like MobileMonkey, allow you to create marketing campaigns within a chatbot.
This is an opportunity to share a special offer via your chatbot campaign, encouraging users to submit their email address in exchange for a special discount on your products or services.
You can also use marketing campaigns to get potential customers into a messenger loop and use an app like Zapier to get email addresses, Facebook profiles, and physical addresses.
While you can't add contact information to an email list without the users permission, having this information could help you retarget later with an ad that encourages potential customers who have engaged with your chatbot to sign up for your mailing list.
2. Run ads to drive traffic to a landing page
You can create targeted ads on Facebook to drive people who are likely to be interested in your products or services to a dedicated landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list. You can target ads based on location, age, gender, profession, interests, and more.
Sending users to a landing page versus your homepage is a way to clearly display your offer and email signup form. It's free from distraction and focuses on getting people to sign up for your newsletter.
3. Create a questionnaire to engage with your target audience and collect email addresses
You can create a survey using Google Forms or Typeform to engage with your target audience.
The questionnaire can be for market research or even crowdsourced blog content. You can include a field on the form to collect email addresses and either add a note that lets people know they will get added to your email list upon filling out the form or incorporate a question at the end asking if you can add them to your email list.
Send your form to friends, family, post it in Facebook groups, mention it on social media, and include a special offer for people who fill out the form. For example, you could say, "Upon filling out our short questionnaire, you'll get a special code for 10% off your first online purchase."
You might even consider sending out a questionnaire before you launch a new product or service. It's a great way to get your email list started and bring friends, family, and potential customers on your startup journey.
4. Offer something for free in exchange for email addresses
Create a free offer, how-to, or download to encourage users to sign up for your mailing list. For example, if you offer marketing services you could create a content calendar template that users receive via email after they subscribe.
You can display this free offer on your website as a popup form that appears seconds after visitors land on your site, or it can be targeted at users who visit a specific page on your website — the choice is yours, based on your offer.
5. Hold contests or giveaways on Instagram
You can accelerate your email list growth by holding a contest or giveaway on Instagram.
For example, you can make a post on your business’s Instagram page with a special offer telling users to follow you, like your photos, and click through the link in your bio to sign up for your mailing list to enter to win.
One way to multiply this strategy is by partnering with other businesses or brands that have a similar or complementary target market. Even if your ideal customer is slightly different, as long as there's some overlap it's worthwhile and you can work together to help each other grow your email lists.
If you collaborate on a giveaway with 3 - 5 businesses you can work collectively on a strategy or the giveaway campaign to ensure that you're posting on the same day and sharing the same instructions for your prospective followers to enter the contest.
You can go as far as creating a landing page for the giveaway contest using a solution like ShortStack or ConvertFlow.
Building an email list is not one size fits all
No two businesses are created equal, so it's important to test different list building and campaign strategies to find what works best for your company. We hope these tips helped spark creativity and will get you started on building a quality email list for your startup.
What list building tactics helped you build your email list? Let us know in the comments below.
