How to Grow Your Email List in Ten Simple Steps

60% of consumers say email marketing influences their purchasing decisions. Without a plan to grow your email list, however, you’re missing out on a chance to reach those customers. By creating a strong list of email subscribers, you can improve engagement and boost sales.

Ready to learn how to grow your email list? With these ten simple steps, you can gather more subscribers. Then, you can use your unique content to wow them into becoming paying customers.

With an email list marketing strategy, you can build a high-quality email list in no time. Let’s go over how to build email lists that will help boost your business.

1. Know Your Audience

The first step toward success with any marketing campaign is to know your audience. The better you know your customers, the more likely you can appeal to their interests. Once you have their attention, you can use the rest of these tips for how to grow your email list.

First, determine your ideal customers. These are the subscribers most likely to trust your brand and buy from your business. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when defining your ideal customer:

– What demographics do they fall under (age, gender, marital status, location)?

– Where do they spend time (online and in-person)?

– Where do they get information?

– What challenges and frustrations do they face every day?

– What are their immediate goals?

– Which brands do they already trust?

– How do they prefer to communicate (texting, social media, email, etc.)?

– What phrases and words do they use to communicate?

– What’s their budget?

– What does a day in their life look like?

– What makes your customers happy?

No two customers are exactly alike. If you have a larger target audience, you might want to consider breaking your audience into customer personas. 

Determine who would use or benefit from your product the most. Then, split those customers into different groups based on the information you gathered above. You can also partner with an experienced digital marketing company that can complete this audience research for you.

Gathering this information about your customers is an essential step when building email marketing lists. With this information, you can make compelling offers that will attract people to subscribe.

Without it, you’re creating generic messaging that won’t help you attract the people likely to trust your brand.

2. Improve Your Site

Before you can encourage people to sign up for your email marketing list, make sure they’re willing to use your website. A confusing, difficult-to-use site can scare off visitors. They might leave before you get the chance to turn those visitors into subscribers.

There are a few ways you can improve your website, however.

First, make sure your site loads quickly. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test your site speed. This tool will also provide you with a list of ways you can improve your speed.

For example, make sure your sites are compressed. You might also have a plugin on your site that’s lagging you down.

Next, make sure your site is easy to navigate.

Check your navigation bar. Are the pages labeled and organized in a way that’s easy to understand?

Where is your subscriber form located? Does it stand out on the page? If people can’t find your form, they won’t subscribe.

You can improve your website’s design by using minimalistic design trends. Minimalism removes distractions from the page that could keep visitors from subscribing. Removing these distractions can also speed up your site.

Minimalism integrates white space throughout your landing pages, too. Using white space, you can avoid confusing or overwhelming visitors. You can also use white space to lead visitors to your forms. 

By improving your website, you can discover how to build an emailing list without complicated marketing tactics. 

3. Create an Offer

Why should people subscribe to your email marketing content in the first place? 50% of consumers claim email is their preferred mode for receiving marketing materials. However, which marketing materials you promise to send could determine whether or not they subscribe.

First, consider what assets your target audience would like to receive. Which freebies you offer could help you attract more subscribers. Offering a free gift can also help you build trust with your target audience. 

Make sure the freebie you offer is helpful. By offering something your customers want or need, they’ll know to come back to you for more. For example, consider offering a:

– Workbook

– Checklist

– Cheat sheet

– Video tutorial

– Email course

– Discount code

– PDF guide

Make sure people know what they’re going to receive. Then, stick with that promise.

It’s also important to use a strong call-to-action (CTA) to compel people to get engaged. What verbs will spur your visitors to take action? 

You can also promote your website content by offering exclusives. Use the fear of missing out (FOMO) to encourage people to subscribe. 

Offer them something they can’t find anywhere else. For example, you can use social media to promote your email list marketing. Let people know you’re a go-to resource for upcoming news and announcements they’ll only receive by email. 

Remember, people are trusting you with their personal contact information. They need a reason to trust you. Offering a freebie customers actually want will compel them to offer their email address in exchange.

Consider adding social proof to your site, such as reviews from happy customers. Adding social proof can help you build brand trust, which can help you build your mail list.

4. Get Social

Chances are your customers are already scrolling through social media looking for brands and products. In order to drive traffic to your freebie and opt-in form, consider using social media. You can promote your freebie in:

– Social media posts

– Your social media bio

– A blog post

– The sidebar of your website

– A Facebook group

– Forums or other places online

– Gests posts on another brand’s website

– Your own email signatures

You spent time and energy creating your freebie. Make sure to promote it to discover how to grow your email list.

5. Improve Your Form

In order to learn how to grow your email list, it’s important to make sure your opt-in form is easy-to-use. Otherwise, people will struggle to subscribe to receive your emails. Where you place the form, as well as how it’s designed, can change your signup rates. 

Make sure your form asks for basic details, including:

– Name

– Phone number

– Email

You don’t need to create a complicated, multi-page form for email subscriptions. Too many requests and fields can overwhelm people and lower signup rates. 

Consider testing out the form yourself. How long did it take you? Were there too many fields?

Once you improve your form, determine where you want to place it. Consider strategic locations on your site, such as:

– The site’s footer or a sidebar

– On your “About” and “Contact page”

– Within the body or a page or post

– As a pop-up or banner

– With a video embedded in the form

Consider using a heat map to determine where people spend the most time on a given page. Then, position the form in this space to attract their eye.

Improving your form will strengthen your email list marketing strategy.

6. Make it Personal

72% of buyers expect companies to personalize marketing communications to suit their needs. One way to attract more people to your email list is to personalize your other marketing strategies. 

This is where your audience research comes in. Remember, the better you know your target audience, the more likely you can appeal to their interests.

Use your audience research to create killer content your customers care about. 

What are you posting on your blog right now? Is it interesting enough to attract more site traffic? Does it appeal to your buyer personas?

Make a list of the keywords your customers are searching for online. You can use Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, or SEMRush to get started. Try to research competitor keywords, too.

Then, start creating content on your site that uses these keywords.

Make sure your site uses current search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. SEO is essential if you want to attract more people to your site. SEO uses keywords to display your website content on search engines like Google.

When you optimize your content for the right keywords, you can rank higher on Google than your competitors. That way, customers see your content before they see someone else’s.

Personalizing your content will help you with your customers. However, they won’t sign up to see more of your content if your inbound materials don’t reflect their interests. 

What unique value can you offer customers that your competitors can’t? Add that to your strategy. Try telling stories or providing a unique insight into the industry. Make sure you stay true to your brand.

Providing value to your customers will help you build brand authority. Then, visitors will return to your website for more. They’ll also subscribe to your email list to receive your content automatically.

Improving your content marketing strategy to appeal to your audience will keep your email marketing list growing.

7. Ask at Events

You can also find opportunities for building your email list offline. For example, you can collect email addresses at a trade show.

First, demo your product or discuss your service. Then, offer people the chance to learn more if they subscribe to your email list. Once you return to the office, you can add these new emails to your database.

You can also host your own events, such as:

– Meetups

– Hackathons

– Educational panels

– Conferences

– Seminars

These events will put you in the spotlight and give you the chance to network. People who attend are more likely to contact you because they attended your event. In other words, they already have some interest in your brand.

During these events, consider adding a QR code to your print marketing materials. A QR code can make it easy for people to access your website and exclusive content. You can find a free QR Code Generator online pretty easily. Then, prompt them to fill in their email address to access that content. 

If you don’t have it in the budget to host a big event, try an online webinar. Webinars provide you with an opportunity to talk about your industry.

Use these opportunities to build your email marketing list. Then, make sure to send these contacts a welcome email that confirms they opted-in.

Check out these eight easy ways to get the most out of your email marketing.

8. Make Sure You’re Mobile

As you use these tips on how to grow your email list, it’s important to make sure your website is mobile-optimized.

A mobile-optimized website is easy to use and navigate regardless of the device. Without mobile-optimization, however, your visitors will have to pinch and zoom to see your landing page. The frustration could cause people to leave before they fill out your form.

If they do find your form, they might have a difficult time filling in the fields on a smaller screen.

Google also uses mobile-first indexing to determine where you rank on their search engine. If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, you’ll rank beneath your competitors. Customers will have a difficult time finding your site if you’re on page 20 of a search.

Optimizing your site for mobile users will ensure you don’t miss out on a potential subscriber.

9. Encourage Sharing

Encourage people to share your content. Instead of reaching one subscriber, you could reach dozens simply by connecting with one person. Encouraging subscribers to share your content will help you build your mail list.

Make sure to keep up with these marketing strategies for 2020.

10. Test it Out

Once you start using these tips to build email lists, make sure to test your tactics. Every dollar spent on email marketing leads to a $38 return. Testing your tactics to determine what’s working (and what isn’t) will help you maximize your return. 

Take a look at the data. Which landing pages and freebies are gaining more subscribers. Which CTAs are working the best?

Reviewing your data will help you find opportunities to make improvements. 

How to Grow Your Email List: Ten Easy Steps to Success

Now that you know how to grow your email list, put these tips to use. By following these ten easy steps, you can gather more subscribers and start growing your business. Then, you can keep your subscribers up-to-date with the latest news and offerings.

Ready to start growing? Contact us today for a free digital marketing review.