Good marketers know that email marketing is a crucial way to reach their audience, and the more people on their email list, the better. What some marketers fail to realize is that the average email database degrades by about 25% every year, so building a list is a never-ending process. Here are five tips for easily and effectively growing your email list.
1. Don’t buy, BUILD!
Buying an email list may seem like a quick and easy way to grow your audience, but list buying is far from effective. In addition to potentially being flagged as spam, using a purchased list means you have no way of knowing if the people you are marketing to are interested in your products or services. Building your own list will ensure you’re reaching the audience that is most likely to engage with you.
2. Add an email sign-up form to your website.
Keep it simple. Collect only the most essential information (like name, company, and email address). You will have opportunities to gather more information down the road, but you don’t want to dissuade anyone from signing up because your form is too long.
3. Offer incentives for joining your list.
Incentives can be anything from offering a discount on products or services to providing them with exclusive, “insider” content that they will find valuable. You should also require an email address to download resources from your website, such as PDFs and ebooks.
4. Include an email field on all forms.
If you have an ecommerce site, collect email addresses when visitors make a purchase by including an email field on the payment form. The same goes for online event / webinar registration forms. Let people know they are opting-in to receive future emails.
5. Make it easy for people to share your emails.
If you are providing quality content to your email list, your contacts will want to share it. Adding a “forward to a friend” button to your email makes it easy to reach potential new subscribers. Include a link to your email sign-up, so they can receive the latest news from you directly.
Once you have implemented these practices and your list is growing, you might consider using an email platform that integrates with a CRM tool to market directly to more specific segments of your audience. We’ll be covering implementing CRM tools and automated marketing on our blog later this month. Stay tuned!
