Email marketing is a very effective strategy for reaching your target audience. With an effective email marketing campaign, you can target content exactly what your customers are looking for, which allows you to give them more in-depth information about your products, the knowledge they need to solve their pain points, and an overall sense of deeper connection and appreciation for your brand.
The benefits of email marketing are well known. There’s just one problem: Before you can start your email marketing campaign, you need to have a mailing list. For some small business owners, building an email list is an ongoing challenge.
Here are some helpful email list building tactics to complete a successful digital marketing campaign.
6 Effective Strategies for Creating Email Lists
Allow customers to easily subscribe to your email list.
If you want prospects and interested customers to sign up for your mailing list, make it easy! The more steps there are in the process, the more likely potential customers are to stray from the list altogether. There are several things to keep in mind when offering email list subscription options.
- Enter a registration in the sidebar of your website. You may find that customers are more likely to sign up when they can easily see the option from anywhere on the page.
- Simplify registration as part of the buying process. Provide customers with a box to click if they want to join your email list when they make a purchase from you.
- Try placing a bar at the top of the website which makes it easy for customers to click and register.
- Include the email list information in your signature so that people who have your email forwarded to, or who have connected to the customer service team to ask questions, can register more easily.
- Offer subscription information via email on your social media pages.
Customers won’t always sign up the first time they see the invitation. However, by making it easy to see where they can sign up, it makes it easy for interested leads to come back to your site and sign up quickly when needed.
Keep the process simple.
If you want customers to subscribe to your emails, don’t put any barriers that could make it more difficult to complete the process. Many small business owners have relatively few opportunities to gather information about their customers and their needs. They might try to use their email signups as an opportunity to connect more deeply with those customers, by asking more questions about customers’ needs, plans, or locations.
However, your mailing list may not be the best place to look for such information. If you have a complicated registration process with multiple questions, interested customers are more likely to simply close the window and move on. Instead, try asking just a couple of questions or even just securing the customer’s email.
Offer incentives that make joining your list worthwhile.
You know why you want customers to subscribe to your mailing list – so you can sell them more easily. Your customers, on the other hand, need a reason to join your list. Some will do this because they like your brand and want to know more. Others, however, especially those vital leads who may not have made a purchase from your brand yet, may need more incentives to take these steps.
Offer something that encourages people to sign up. This can mean providing:
- Access to exclusive content that adds real value to your subscribers.
- Coupons or discount codes.
- Freebies.
- Quizzes or other fun things that subscribers to your mailing list can try.
- Marketing investigations.
Consider what your customers need or want most and what will make them more likely to subscribe to your email list. Consider it an exchange – you want them to give you their email address, so you have to provide them with something in return.
Create a specific landing page for email signups only.
When you run a campaign geared towards increasing email subscriptions, where does that campaign take visitors? If it’s taking them directly to your website, they might get distracted quickly. There are product pages to look at and a company to get to know. By offering a specific landing page, on the other hand, you can guide customers directly to the next step you want them to take: joining your mailing list.
Integrate email signups as part of your ongoing marketing efforts.
You’re probably already busy creating content.
Are you creating content that will encourage subscribers to trust what you have to offer and to subscribe to your email list?
What about your social media posts – are they encouraging interested customers to connect with your brand and determine what else you could offer in longer posts or through your email content?
If your goal is to increase email subscriptions, be sure to offer content geared towards that goal.
If you only offer the same information, including discount codes, promotions, and content, that you offer on your social media platforms or website, consumers are less likely to sign up for your email lists.
On the other hand, if you offer valuable content in all of these locations, by providing additional incentives or information in your emails, consumers will be more eager to share their contact information with you.
Make sure your emails add value.
You don’t just want to increase your email subscribers with new subscriptions. You also want to keep existing contacts in your list.
Make sure every email you send delivers real value – valuable information, insights into new products, or discount information. When you deliver quality content, subscribers will have one more reason to stick around.
In short
Often, people avoid subscribing to email lists because they feel they have no reason to. With these strategies, however, you can give customers the incentive they need to share contact information while providing them with real value throughout their connection with your brand.
Would you like to know more? Contact us today to find out how we can help you with your listing efforts.
