We’ve come a long way in a few decades with the internet booming as everyday use. With so many businesses that have taken up an online presence, emailing is still an effective way to stay in touch with your customers. In fact, email marketing is one of the most successful marketing tactics today and it works for any and every phase of your business.

Building your email list, however, is where it gets tricky. With so many options and so many avenues of execution, it can be difficult to pinpoint what will be the most effective method of growing your email list. The best way is to use trial and error with what works best for your business, but below are five tips to help you get started.

Offer Incentives

A while back, staying connected by email was appealing enough; however, these days people are going to need a lot more convincing to have your business in their inbox. One of the best ways to persuade someone is through incentives such as discounts and sales. Different incentives work best for different companies, so you will have to experiment and see what type of incentive works for you and your products.

Incentives can also include giveaways. Rather than simply giving a discount, you can also make it more entertaining by making it a fun process. If you’re a fashion-based website, you can hold a contest to give away one of your products to someone who can design the best winter dress. Giveaways are a great way to gain email subscribers because you can clearly see who is interested in your product since they decided to participate.

People who are interested in your business are the people you want on your email list, as they are more likely to buy from you in the future. Therefore, you can offer another incentive to those who didn’t win the giveaways as a sort of consolation prize, such as a discount or a free sample.

Use Freebies

Freebies are a great way to grow your email list and to provide value to your audience. Valuable freebies include things like checklists, ebooks, templates, mini-courses, videos, and PDFs. Your freebies should give your audience information that is actionable and that can’t otherwise be found on your website. Freebies are not only a good way to collect email addresses from your audience but they can also act as a great entry-level product that can help push potential customers down the funnel.

Participate in Collaborations

Another way you can utilize technology to your advantage is by collaborating with other people like businesses or entertainers. There are all sorts of entertainment people seek out, such as social media, music, or tv shows. Seek out opportunities where you can do relevant collaborations and you and your collaboration can both gain new followers from each other.

One example is to become a podcast guest. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular in recent years and many people listen to a variety of them. Not only are you using a popular form of entertainment to your benefit, but you also take this opportunity to make your company seem more personable rather than just a company.

Podcasts are a great source of discussions and also interviews, so it’s a surefire way to pique people’s interest in signing up once they learn more about your business. Once you find a podcast whose audience is your target, you can show off your expertise to a whole new section of potential customers. And it’ll help because you’ll have the podcast host vouching for you and will often conclude the episode by asking their guests where the audience can find them online.

Make the Most Out of Social Media

It may be an obvious thought, but the power and influence of social media platforms are often overlooked. People are constantly on some form of social media platform, so this is a great way to gain email subscribers because you’ll be promoting to a highly active audience. Whether you decide to promote on Facebook, Instagram, or somewhere else, you’ll have larger access to an audience who is more likely to pay attention to what you do on a daily basis – if they follow you, they want to know what you have to say!

Some of the ways you can use your social media platforms to build your email list are to promote your incentives such as giveaways, discounts, or freebies that require an email signup. One thing to remember is that not everyone will see your post if you promote only once. Social media platforms often show different feeds for different people, so it’s best to repeatedly promote certain announcements for those who may not have seen it the first time around.

Pro tip: you don’t own your audience on social media, the social media company does, so ensure that you get lifetime value out of your followers by inviting them to your email list where you get to decide when and who is reached! (Hint: we share a tool that helps with this in the next section.)

Use Online Tools to Build Your Email List

There are a number of easy-to-use apps that can help build your email list so that you can focus on other important parts of your business. Setting up your website for email list conversions is extremely important and these tools can make that much easier.

MailMunch, for example, helps grow your list by converting website visitors into subscribers and customers. You can optimize these forms the way you want so that anyone who visits your website will receive a popup, scroll box, or a top bar to encourage them to sign up with their email. Anyone who signs up will automatically go directly into your email list. 

Another tool you can use is Join My Mailing List App, where it collects email addresses from your Facebook business page and they are then added to your Constant Contact account. This is a great tool because if Facebook shuts down one day, your business page will be gone. Instead, you can use this app to transfer your Facebook followers into the mailing list you actually own for safekeeping.

Also keep in mind that with technology booming in the last decade, everyone is using a smartphone on a daily basis. One of the biggest ways people are communicating today is through texting because it’s convenient and easy. Instead of asking people to write down their email addresses or fill out a form on your website, ask people to text their email to a certain number to join your email list.

There are many email service providers who offer the text-to-join functionality for free, such as Constant Contact and Bronto. Even if you don’t have those, however, there are stand-alone services that can make text-to-join work well such as JoinByText.com, CallLoop, and TXTImpact. With texting being one of the leading forms of communication around the world, it could benefit your business by joining.

Make it Actionable

Building an email list can be difficult because of the overwhelming amount of tactics available and the fact that your competition is also constantly asking for your audience’s emails. With this being said, do your research, be unique, and offer value, and find what works best for you and your business. Every business is different and every audience is different, but following these general tips as a guide can certainly help you in the right direction of growing your email list.

If you need help building your email list, the team at Vela Creative Co. would be happy to assist you. Contact us here.