Email Marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your audience.
Owning a quality email list is like owning the most important digital asset.
Once your list reaches a certain size and assuming you’ve maintained a reasonable open rate, you’ll find that email becomes an effective channel for distributing Content or promoting your products.
In this post, I’ll show you how to build an email list from scratch using 9 easy (yet effective) tactics.
1. Place email signup forms in appropriate locations
The easiest way to get your email signup form in front of your audience is to place it in common places.
Some of the positions I use include:
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Blog post sidebar
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Footer section
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About page
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Blog page
Although these are all obvious locations, they are also easily overlooked by users.
So in your form content, you should write messages that are relevant to your audience’s desires along with elements that are likely to stimulate behavior such as social proof or testimonials.
2. Call to action to receive content updates
People always don’t want to miss anything, they want to receive updates on content they find useful.
This is a tactic I learned from CXL.
To test this, create a button Get updates right below the blog post title, it looks like this:
When the user clicks the button, it brings up a popup containing a form for them to fill in their email:
In fact, this is one of the top tactics that helps me get more email list signups.
3. Add pop-up
Pop-ups may have a bad reputation for being annoying and disruptive, but if they are carefully designed and have a clear purpose, they can be a huge help in building your list.
In fact, Sumo users have 23,645,948 email addresses collected by pop-up in less than two years.
Here is a list of dos and don’ts when trying this method:
- Make it contextual: Make sure your pop-ups are relevant and timely.
- Don’t show pop-ups when visitors first visit: Instead, check the average amount of time people spend on a page to determine the right duration for your pop-up.
- Take advantage of exit-intent popups: Form builders often recommend that you choose triggers based on exit intent.
4. Create interactive content
According to Content Marketing Institute, 81% of survey respondents agree that interactive content attracts attention more effectively than static content.
The interactive content we create on MarkKnow like skill assessments and calculators are also great opportunities to collect emails.
After readers complete the quiz questions, we ask them to enter their email addresses so they can receive their quiz results (it’s a simple, easy-to-take, and often hard-to-refuse offer).
5. Use lead magnet
Most visitors don’t want to give out personal information like email unless they get something in return.
Therefore, you will need to use lead magnets such as templates, e-books, checklists, etc. to increase the ability to “persuade” users to leave information.
At MarkKnow, we create free marketing templates and require visitors to provide their email before gaining access to this resource.
6. Create a newsletter signup page
Sometimes people want to go to a place on your website to sign up for your newsletter. That’s a legitimate need, and you can create a landing page to help them do that.
This landing page can also be where you direct traffic from off-site sources. Compared to other pages, it focuses on converting people and capturing their email addresses.
To capture your users’ attention and lead them to the desired action, you must create a seamless experience for them.
On the landing page of Demand CurveI really enjoy what they do. It’s a compelling and valuable newsletter signup page.
7. Use Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool that can help boost your email list building.
First, you add action button to facebook page your.
Next, you place your newsletter signup page link in the about section of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media channels you have accounts on.
Additionally, in your social media shares, you can include a link to your newsletter signup page (if appropriate) and a call to action.
Use UTM parameters to see which social media channels are performing best.
Basically, UTM can tell us two things:
- Which location or content is converting best?
- Which sources are contributing the most to your subscriber list?
Adjust and optimize for each social media channel based on what the data tells you.
8. Advertise to scale
Paid Advertising is the fastest way to drive email signups.
Targeting and scaling capabilities help you reach potential audiences instantly.
Jon Loomer used Facebook Ads to do this.
9. Create a referral program
Your current subscribers are the best opportunity you have to grow your list.
If you have an email list with a reasonable open rate, encourage subscribers to share your newsletter with people in their networks.
But this cannot be done manually, you need to build a mechanism using a referral email tool like SparkLoop.
Demand Curve ran a referral program in email:
They provide the referrer with a newsletter signup page link that has additional tracking parameters inserted:
https://www.demandcurve.com/newsletter?_cio_id=b4e70502c459a5ae04They also have a page for people to track their referrals:
When effective, a referral program helps create a growth loop and your email list subscribers will grow virally.
Conclusion
Building an email list from scratch is not easy but the tactics I mentioned above will help you make the process simple.
Not all tactics are created equal, some will work better than others. The important thing is to prioritize which ones you test.
For me, so far the tactics add popups, using the lead magnets and call to action to get content updates is the most effective of the freeways.
Are you building your email list? What methods are you using?
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