Email list building is the foundation of effective email marketing. This continuous process of reaching out to your target audience and sparking their interest in your product or service feeds your revenue stream.
The goal of this article is to show you specific steps to take in order to build a strong email list and maximize your email marketing in 2021.
1. Make your newsletter a valuable product
If you want people to sign up for your newsletter, you must make it worthwhile for them to put in the effort and time. That is why I would advise you to treat your newsletter as if it were a product. I’d say develop a great product and communicate the benefits of using it.
When it comes to newsletter design, there are a few rules to follow, but in my opinion, they can be boiled down to the 3 followings:
1. Focus on your target audience
Focus on the people who are likely to become your customers. Constantly learn about their information needs and develop the right content that corresponds to their daily challenges.
2. Make it useful
Help solve real-life problems with your content. Put your resources into content that is valuable for your target audience.
3. Engage with your contacts and ask for feedback
Use your newsletter as a two-way communication channel to improve your email marketing, for example, by sending emails that people can respond to, asking questions, running surveys, organizing webinars, and so on. Remember that the closer you are to your customers and potential customers the more you know about their information needs.
A fragment of email form REUZEL presenting selected customer reviews
Did you know? elfoMAP email list management tools, which include signup forms, landing pages, webinars, funnels, live chats, and many other useful features, make it easier to grow and manage your email list.
2. Promote your newsletter like a product
Once your newsletter is ready, you can advertise it and run promotional campaigns through the various channels available (just like you would do with a product).
- Social media pages: Include a link to your newsletter signup form or a banner promoting your lead magnet in your email signature and on all of your important social media profiles. Most platforms allow you to personalize the description of your business page or the bio in your personal profile.
Here’s how Foundr Magazine promote their articles on Twitter.
- Blog: it’s very likely that people who land on your blog organically represent your target audience. Invite them to join your email list if they like the content on your blog.
A signup form at the right side of elfo blog landing page
- Podcast: if you run a podcast, tell people about your newsletter and provide a subscription link. You can even create a separate email list for your podcast listeners and provide them a VIP experience.
- Partnerships: finding the partner is not easy but crucial for our well-being. Think of the people to run cross-registration campaigns and write guest articles with. Create a list of potential partners and put outreach on your weekly agenda.
An example of a co-organized webinar from webex
- Ecommerce customer profile: Make it easy for people to sign up for your newsletter when they sign up for your ecommerce platform.
A checkbox allowing visitors to add their email address to an email list at registration from American Giant
- PPC campaigns: Paid advertising requires a budget but also provides a lot of targeting options, allowing you to reach your target audience with unparalleled precision. Investigate opportunities such as Facebook Lead Ads and retargeting campaigns to increase the size of your contact list.
- Tools and software: Creating an online tool or software that your target audience will want to use is a great way to grow your email list. Rather than requiring users to pay up front, offer them limited access in exchange for their email address.
3. Create lead magnets
A lead magnet is something valuable for your target audience that you offer in exchange for contact information. The lead magnet’s purpose is to incentivize subscription and increase the number of targeted leads captured via a web form.
Lead magnet examples:
- E-book
- Guide
- Report
- Checklist
- Resource kit
- Framework
- Educational materials
Example of a free ebook created from Printful.
There are of course other types of “freebies” or “opt-in bribes” you can offer.
The key point here is that if you want to grow your email list, you must create content that your target audience will be willing to exchange their email addresses for.
4. Present the benefits or joining your email list
Why should anyone sign up for your contact list? I’m sure you can quickly answer this question at this point, but do you communicate clearly to people who haven’t heard of your brand yet?
Go beyond the “sign up to our newsletter” by simply providing a few reasons to do so.
A pop-up inviting website visitors to enter a contest from magic spoon
Come up with different incentives, like a loyalty program, discount, exclusive merch, or contest and test which one proves to be most effective.
5. Create a landing page for your newsletter
A landing page, also known as a “lead capture page” or a “squeeze page,” is a single web page designed to build contact list. Create a landing page for your newsletter.
Example of a short squeeze page containing only two fields – name and email address – and offering a free ebook from Masala Body
There are many ways you can build landing pages but the most convenient one is to use a landing page creator.
Landing page creator available in elfoMAP comes with mobile-optimized free landing page templates, intuitive drag and drop editor, and multiple other features.
Conversion tips: keep your landing page simple by providing a single call to action. Create A/B variants of your landing page. Run tests and see how content type, copy, or design changes influence performance.
6. Add subscription forms to your website and blog
A web form, also known as a signup form, is an HTML form that is placed on a website to allow visitors to sign up. There are various forms to choose from, such as a subscription form, download box, scroll form, fixed bar, lightbox, or an exit pop-up.
Add a fixed bar or a pop-up form to the pages with the highest conversion rates, such as the product page and the about us page. People who are interested in your offer will be able to sign up and receive more relevant information. You can create a web form from scratch or use an email list builder, like the one built into elfoMAP.
There, you’ll find various templates to choose from as well as an easy-to-use editor that will allow you to customize your web form to match the style of your website.
Consider the quality-to-quantity ratio when designing your web form. If you want to reach a specific target audience (for example, to generate B2B leads), you may need to create a longer web form that requests more information: company name, company size, position, etc.
Example of a long webform designed to collect email subscribers from Insight
If your goal is to reach a larger audience (for example, potential ecommerce customers), you may ask only for basic information such as name and email address.
The general rule is that the longer the form, the fewer people subscribe. The shorter the web form, the more subscriptions you get, but you have no idea how many people meet your criteria. The trick is to know what you want and to ask only for information that will help you achieve it. This will help you balance the quality/quantity ratio.
7. Create a survey for website and blog visitors
Visitors to your website and blog have already expressed an interest in your products or content. Use surveys to get people to subscribe to your content if they like it.
8. Run a webinar for your target audience
A webinar, also known as an “online seminar,” “web conference,” or “online meeting,” can be an excellent way to build an email list of high-quality contacts. The concept is simple: you provide valuable information to anyone who signs up for your contact list.
Carefully planned webinar content will certainly attract your target audience. To maximize reach, promote your webinar through other online marketing channels.
Pro tip: Partner up with people in your industry with same target audience.
9. Create a list building funnel
Looking for a more efficient way to generate leads? There are 2 kinds of a list building funnels:
1. Lead magnet funnel
Lead magnet funnels allow you to host your lead magnets, create landing pages, autoresponders, and promote them with Facebook Ads all in a matter of minutes.
Pro Tip: To begin collecting email subscribers with lead magnet funnels, you do not need a lead magnet. They include a collection of pre-made templates and content upgrades that you can use in your own campaigns.
2. Standard opt-in funnel
Even if you don’t have a downloadable opt-in incentive, these list building funnels can help you set up a full lead generation campaign. They can be used to promote your newsletter, an email course, a monetary incentive, or a resource vault.
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