It’s all good and well getting interest from a potential customer once, but if you want to build a long-term, successful venture, then it’ll be best if you’re getting people returning to your business again and again. While there are many ways to do this, one of the best ways is to develop an email marketing list. Every so often, you’ll blast out an email highlighting your services, promotions, things like that — and of course, the more people that receive those emails, the greater the likelihood of seeing an increase in sales.
In this blog, we’re going to run through some of the smartest ways to grow your email marketing list.
Free Content
One of the best ways to grab people’s email addresses is to give them something that they need. Instead of paying money for it up front, they’ll get it for free in exchange for their email address, which then goes onto your email marketing list. An example of this would be to write an ebook or white paper, and then make it available to people via your website. You should also have good content on your website, to draw people into your website, where they can also sign up.
Get the Tools
In this day and age, there are plenty of tools that you can use to grow and develop your marketing list. Two of the best are ClickFunnels and Leadpages; to figure out which one is right for your needs, take a read of this article. Both platforms have their advantages and disadvantages, but there’s no doubt that if you get the right one and use it correctly, then they can be very handy when it comes to growing your email list, as well as help with many other areas of your business too.
Push to Your Followers
Are your social media followers also on your email list? It’s good to have Facebook and Instagram fans, but better to have them receiving your emails! So look at periodically asking them to sign up to your email address if they haven’t already. They’re clearly already interested in what you’re doing as a company, so you know that they’ll be interested in receiving updates via email.
Make it Easy
If people want to sign up, then they should be able to do so — they should face an uphill battle just trying to find out how to do it. It’s a good idea to have an email subscriber email box just sitting on the right hand side of your website. This won’t be the driving force behind your growing numbers, but it will add a few people. It’s also worth monitoring how much people are interacting with the button — if it doesn’t seem to be getting much engagement, then look at changing where it is on your website.
Allow Your Content To Be Shared
If you have people who love what your company does, then let them spread the word! It’s really important to allow your visitors to share your content, via whatever medium they choose. Just like that, you might have someone else on your email marketing list, and you didn’t have to do anything at all. This applies to your website, but also your emails. Having a ‘share this email’ link included in there will make it easy for people to forward it to their family and friends.
Host a Customer Giveaway
If you’re looking to drive your email subscriber list forward, then one of the best ways of doing this is to hold a competition. This can actually be used to improve any kind of numbers, including social media followers. Basically, it works like this: you’ll host a competition where the reward is something related to your business, such as one of your products or access to your services. All the public has to do is sign up with their email address (though you can make the rules more advanced, such as signing up and sharing content or something). You’ll find that you can get many more subscribers this way, and it won’t have cost you all that much, or perhaps even anything.
Subtle Pop-Ups
If someone’s going to visit your website, then they’ll have some interest in what you have to offer — but the chances of them returning might be slim, not because they don’t like what you have to offer, but because there’s just so many websites out there! So it’s a good idea to try to get them on the hook while they’re on your site, rather than letting them get away. One useful way to do this is to include a pop-up that asks them for their email address. This can be effective, but only if you do it tactfully. The first rule is to avoid having too many pop-ups. If they’ve clicked away once, then they won’t want to have another pop-up within 30 seconds. It’s also a good idea not to push through an email sign-up page just as they land on your website. After all, they haven’t yet had a chance to see what you have to offer!
Make it Worth Their While
Finally, remember that just because you’ve got people on your email marketing list, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll stay there. You could have 10,000 subscribers, but if you were sending far too many emails or emails that they didn’t value, then you can’t be too surprised if they hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button. So before sending an email, think about whether it’s really valuable, or you just hope it is. A good point to consider is whether you’d like to receive that type of email from another company. If the answer is no, then rethink your approach.
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, there are plenty of ways to grow your email marketing list. Indeed, even if you currently have a small number of subscribers, the tactics that we’ve outlined above would help you to attain any more. Get started with all the ones that you can incorporate, and just see what happens.