“Your email marketing database degrades by about 22.5% every year.” – Hubspot
Not having much success with your emails? It might have something to do with your email lists.
Don’t give up. Email marketing works. It’s an easy way to provide personalized, targeted content to your audience, nurture leads, and better understand and assist your customers.
An essential component of a successful email marketing strategy is continually growing your email lists. It allows you to extend your content reach, build your audience and generate more leads. However, it’s often overlooked.
If you’ve ignored your email lists or are looking for new ways to gather contacts, here are some tips to help you out.
10 Ways to Build Your Email List
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Free eBooks
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Create eBooks based on the needs of your customers and give them away.
Yes, for free.
However, be sure to create a landing page that requires them to sign-up, email required, to download their “free” copy. From here you can nurture them through their buyer’s journey and convert.
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Offers
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Similar to creating an eBook, create a free offer to help solve your audience’s problem. Whether it’s a coupon, a free trial, or a free quote, provide a free solution and create a landing page that requires a sign-up.
From here, gather their information, including their email address.
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Blog
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Everyone’s blogging. (If you’re not, we really need to talk.) So take advantage of your platform by providing an option to sign-up for a blog email/newsletter.
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Social Media
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Benefit from all social media has to offer. Add CTA’s to your social pages, create ads, and promote eBooks and offers. Each should have a coinciding landing page to gather email addresses at the time of sign-up.
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Forward Great Content
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Encourage your email recipients to forward and share your remarkable email content. Provide easy email sharing and opt-in for your readers.
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CTA’s
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Direct your audience to the free content on your website. Entice your audience to sign-up with engaging Call-to-Actions (CTA’s) – emails required of course.
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Paid Search
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If you’re investing in all Paid Search has to offer, be sure to provide a link to a landing page related directly to your offer. Have your audience sign-up for the offer using their contact information and email.
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Online Webinars
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Live Webinars are becoming increasingly popular and allow you to connect and engage with your audience. Make sure your webinar is free and solves the problem facing your audience. Make sure it’s email-gated.
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Email Signatures
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Let your email signature guide your contacts to sign-up for your blog email/newsletter. Provide a direct link to your sign-up landing page and make the email address a required field.
You can implement this company-wide by having it added to each employee’s signature.
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Business Cards
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Get your team involved. As you collect business cards, collect email addresses. One of the oldest – and easiest – methods for collecting business cards is providing a glass bowl and providing an incentive.
Make sure it’s clear they’ll be receiving free email content. Otherwise, be aware that your emails will get flagged as Spam.
More Email Marketing Tips
There are many ways to build your email lists, and we always recommend continually doing your research to find what best works for you. Just remember, whatever method you use, always ask permission before adding anyone to an email list.
Even in “email”, there’s etiquette. Readers don’t want unsolicited messages and will be quick to hit Spam if they see something they don’t want. Do yourself – and your email list – a favor and play nice. You’ll be rewarded in the end.
We also recommend properly segmenting your email lists. Doing so will help create better-targeted content specific to the needs of your audience and improve your lead nurturing strategy.
Additionally, make sure you use an email marketing service that allows for segmentation, provides easy-to-read analytics, and offers marketing automation. Not having these tools could prove detrimental to your email marketing strategy.
