Whether you’re running a small business, joining the creator economy, or starting a side hustle, a growing email list is an invaluable tool. But while having a direct line to your customers is sure to make your life much easier, getting them to sign up to receive your emails can be tricky.
People today are more protective of their email addresses than ever before, primarily due to the fear of receiving spam, scams, and endless marketing junk mail. As a result, no one will give you their address just because you say please.
Instead, you need to implement a strategy that will ensure signing up is a worthwhile endeavor for your customers. And here, we’ll go over how to do just that in three simple steps.
Reasons to Start Building Your Email List
Between uploading to their social media accounts, posting to their blog, and updating their website, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting the building of their email list on the back-burner. But building your email list shouldn’t be something left on your to-do list. It should be a priority. Here are some reasons why that is:
1. You Own Your List
Growing your email list might seem unnecessary and tedious if you’ve got a large online following through social platforms. After all, what do you need 1,000 email subscribers for if you’ve got 10,000 followers on Twitter or YouTube?
The reality, however, is that those social media followers aren’t truly yours in the way an email list is yours. Instead, they belong to the platform. So if those followers stop using the site, or the platform changes how it works or goes down, your followers are liable to disappear.
With an email list, these problems cease to exist. Whether you keep your in a CRM or an excel document, it is categorically yours. So, you’re only liable to lose your subscribers if they choose to unsubscribe.
2. Email Bypasses Algorithms
In most online places, your ability to get in front of your audience depends on how well you can work with the rules set by algorithms.
For example, you need to understand and apply current SEO practices to get your blog posts featured on Google. Meanwhile, to get a photo seen on Instagram, you have to deal with the fact that its feeds are designed to show preference to any user’s friends and family over the brands they follow.
With email marketing, none of that stuff matters. Once you’ve got someone’s email address, contacting them is as simple as clicking send.
3. Email Is More Personal
Email marketing is unique in that the medium it utilizes is designed with one-on-one communication in mind. And unlike blogs and social media posts, email is a direct form of communication. After all, people have to search to find your blog posts online, but your email is sent directly to them.
Of course, you’ll likely send duplicate emails to hundreds, if not thousands of people. But email nonetheless provides a more personalized experience for customers. And in today’s market, where customers are looking for deeper connections from the brands, companies, and sellers they do business with, this is invaluable.
4. Stats Show That Email Marketing Is Incredibly Effective
Still not convinced that building an email list is a worthwhile endeavor?
First, there’s the fact that studies show more consumers use email than any social media platform, and around 61 percent of consumers say they enjoy receiving weekly promotional emails. As such, your potential audience is not only seemingly limitless but eager to engage as well.
Perhaps the most compelling statistic relates to the ROI rates email marketing can provide. That’s because studies show that email marketing typically returns $36 for every $1 spent. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways for a business to invest time and money.
How To Build Your Email List In 3 Steps
Step 1: Define How You Are Going to Use Your Email List
Before you build your email list, you need two things in place: a place on the internet where people can find and fill in your email sign-up forms and a clear idea of what exactly you will use the email list to do. The former can be easily solved by having a website and blog in place. And as we’ll see, this will become invaluable when promoting your sign-up forms later.
How exactly you plan to use your email list will depend on the type of business you are running and your end goals. You may, for example, wish to use your email list to publish a monthly or weekly newsletter or to promote new products and services,
In any case, you’ll want to ensure that the content you publish provides value for your customers first and foremost. That means doing market research to uncover your customer’s gain and pain points (i.e., what problems they have that you can help with and what things they desire).
If you’ve already got a content marketing strategy in place, you may already have a decent idea about the kind of content your audience is looking for online. But some additional research to see what can make your emails enticing won’t go amiss. So, utilize social media, conduct surveys, and, where possible, meet your customers in person to find out what kind of extra content your audience would like to see from your emails.
Step 2: Create a Desirable Opt-in Gift
Ensuring your emails will be worth your customers’ time is an excellent first step, but your potential readers won’t know this is the case until they sign up. And you can’t just expect them to take your word that it will be. So, you need to have an incentive to make the signing-up to your email too good an opportunity to miss. And that’s where your opt-in gift comes into play.
An opt-in gift, also known as a lead magnet, is a free product you exchange for someone’s details. In this case, a person’s email address and name. And when utilized correctly, it is your most valuable tool for building an email list.
So how do you go about creating an effective lead magnet?
Well, you first need to identify one common pain point many of your customers have. Then create a downloadable product that fixes or aids with this pain point.
Some examples of the kind of things you could create include worksheets, planners, templates, eBooks, or complete guides. But whatever you make, ensure that it’s something that won’t become outdated anytime soon. That way, you’ll only need to make the product once, and it will continue to serve you for a long time. For more info, read our article on how to use discounts in email Marketing.
Step 3: Promote Your Opt-in Gift
Once you’ve created your opt-in gift, the next stage is to promote it wherever possible. And one of the most popular and effective ways to do this is through strategic placement in the CTA (call to action) of your blog posts.
You can make these CTAs extra effective by creating blog posts that center around topics related to your CTA. For example, if your opt-in gift is a planner designed to help others with their scheduling, you could write a blog post about why keeping a schedule is essential. Then, in your CTA, you can include a link to sign up for a free planner.
As well as promoting your opt-in through your blog posts, you’ll also want to promote it through social media whenever possible by sharing and resharing links across your chosen platforms. You may also consider creating a separate page on your website dedicated to your opt-in gift.
Summary
There’s no denying that building an email list involves some hard work. But, the process doesn’t need to be overly complicated. Instead, it’s simply a matter of understanding your audience, creating an opt-in product that fulfills a need or solves a problem for that audience, and then promoting it across your platforms.
Once you do these things, you can build a loyal following from an audience that doesn’t have to look online for your content, services, or products but receives word of them directly into their email inbox.
Read also: 13 Effective Ways To Improve Your Email Click Through Rate