If you own an online business, a blog, or any other type of website, you need to communicate with your visitors. Building an email list is one of the most cost-effective methods to achieve that, as the majority have an email address. You may be wondering what an email list is and how to build one. Let’s dive into each step to understand how to stay in touch with your visitors.
What is an Email List?
First of all, we should understand the concept of an email marketing list before creating or building it. As a beginner, go and check your inbox. Do you notice who sends you many emails? You may receive a lot of emails from various companies, right? These companies have your contact information on their email list because you may have purchased something online from them or you’ve downloaded an ebook from their website by giving your email address. Thus, an email list is a collection of email addresses from people who gave their email contact information and agreed to receive updates and promotional emails from a company.
Benefits of Building an Email List
Here are some basic reasons why you should build an email list:
- When you publish new content, whether it’s a blog post, an ebook, or a case study, you may inform people on your email list. Depending on the size of your email list, this can significantly boost traffic to your website.
- When you have a new product or service, you can reach your subscribers and promote them to try it out.
- When you organize an event, you can notify your subscribers about it through an email list.
- Emails are personal and through sending emails, your users can email you back with any questions or concerns. This is a good way to establish trust as you can address your clients by their names.
- You can send email promotions to your customers for them to take advantage of exclusive deals.
- It’s easier to send targeted emails with an email list. You can segment your list by considering your users’ interests. You can group them based on their activities and email responses, sending them targeted emails that best suit their interests. When you send them targeted emails and they get relevant offers, they are more likely to become your loyal customers.
It’s a lot easier to persuade someone to give you their email address than to buy your products or services. It costs people nothing to sign up to your email list, and they just need to fill out a form. When you have their emails, you can follow up, help, and turn them into customers. For getting more traffic to your website and building brand awareness, you can also opt for content creation services from freelancers or an agency to do the job.
Now you know that you will benefit from your email lists, as well as your customers.
Steps to Build an Email List
It’s time to dive into the best practices for creating an email marketing list:
Offer Something Enticing
The best way to encourage your leads to join your mailing list is by providing exclusive content that will be irresistible. The content can be an infographic, video, webinar, e-book, etc. When you have a landing page and create high-quality visual or written content assets, like webinars or an e-book, you can promote them on your blog or social media.
To encourage people to sign up for your email newsletter, you should offer something exclusive and make it clear what they will get if they sign up. Here are some basic tips for that:
- Always mention one major benefit that members will gain when joining your email newsletter. For example, they can have access to discounts, top-of-funnel content, free trials, etc. In that way, they can also save their time not to return to your website to see new products or new blogs.
- In each of your newsletters, include testimonials from newsletter subscribers to show the value you provide.
- Mention how frequently they will receive emails from you.
Be specific about what your subscribers will get when they sign up and ensure that people will think of it as something valuable. When they sign up, be sure to justify your leads’ expectations and keep your promises, otherwise, they will unsubscribe.
Have a Sign-up Form on Your Website
Ensure to get an email address from visitors to your website and it doesn’t matter if they buy a product. Your website is one of the best places to entice potential email subscribers. Use your email marketing software to create a sign-up form on your website with the sections of “name” and “email address” to fill out. For example, if your leads don’t buy anything but leave their email addresses, you can send them emails with a coupon to bring them back. Always keep in mind to make it easy for your leads to opt-in to your email list whenever they visit your website or make a purchase.
Include an email sign-up box on your website and blog so that people can subscribe to your mailing list. Here are some basic tips for you:
- Include bold sign-up forms in the right sidebar or footer.
- Put popups and popovers in the header, sidebar, or footer of your website.
- Include a call to action.
Make sure to put the sign-up form in high-converting places, such as at the top of your sidebar, in the footer, after each blog, in a popup box, etc.
Have an Opt-out Link
Your email campaign can be very appealing and well-targeted, however, still, some people would like to opt-out. Include a link at the bottom of your email for people to opt-out if they want.
Use Segmentation
Once you’ve built your email, use segmentation for sending targeted emails. With that in mind, consider their previous purchases, which emails they opened, and more. You can send relevant and targeted content by using tags in your email marketing program.
Use Your Social Media Platforms
Use your social media platforms to get subscribers; you can do it by sharing content that will boost their curiosity to sign up to your email list. Always communicate with your followers to respond to their concerns and questions and share with them your blog posts that include some helpful tips for them. Offer them to sign up to your email list to get more useful information. Organize contests where you can have their emails to give a prize to a random winner.
Create a Landing Page
If you want to mention a promotion or special offer within your email marketing campaign, make sure there is a page linked somewhere in the email to redirect your readers. If you don’t want to link to your website and instead to a more specific campaign to capture their full attention on that specific page, then you should create a landing page.
Use Email Marketing Carefully
Email marketing is a good way to stay in touch with your customers, however, it should be used with the utmost attention. Ensure your customers willingly opt in to your mailing list and always explain the type of messages they’ll get and the frequency they’ll receive emails. Keep in mind to have the contact information of your business and a link that will let people unsubscribe when needed.
These were the basic steps for you to consider whenever you think of creating and building an email list. Grow your business and engage more customers through successful email marketing strategies.