10 easy ways to grow your email marketing list in no time

When it comes to marketing, we can safely say that delivering the right messages to the right audiences is the key to success. As you might know, there are dozens of online platforms and tools through which you can achieve that. One of the most influential content distribution channels, which encompasses a potential audience of more than 4 billion users, is email. The secret to a successful email marketing strategy, however, lies in your ability to target the people, who will be most interested in the products or services you offer and to persuade them to subscribe to your newsletter so you can continue to conduct business with them.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, email marketing is the most effective way of nurturing leads and 31% of businesses cite newsletters as their highest-performing tactic in this area. So if you want to achieve your business goals, we strongly advise you to include essential email marketing practices in your strategy. If you don’t know how you can achieve that, don’t worry, Interval as a digital marketing agency has your back. After we’ve introduced the basics of high-quality newsletters, now we’ll be focusing on the most effective practices through which you can grow your email list and easily attract the right audience in no time.

Why do you need to grow your email marketing list?

First of all, let us explain what an email marketing list is. This is simply a database or a collection of email addresses, which businesses acquire through lead-generation campaigns. The main goal of such campaigns is to engage with potential customers by introducing relevant content in exchange for their email addresses (or any other personal information about the particular user). Once the potential customer (or the lead) has given you their email address, you should ask for their consent to receive regular emails from you, or in other words to subscribe to your newsletter.

No matter if you’re just starting, or if you’ve been sending newsletters to your customers for years, one of the essential email marketing practices, which you should be implementing is to constantly acquire new subscribers. As HubSpot shares, your email marketing database is degrading by 22.5% each year. This is because subscribers change their jobs, thus also changing their email addresses. Additionally, there are always people who use the unsubscribe link in your emails and willingly cut off your communication with them. Either way, if you simply let those events unfold and do nothing about it, your email marketing efforts will be in vain. You might be creating amazing content, however, if you’re directing it towards an uninterested and tired audience, the results won’t be satisfying at the very least.

Therefore, the importance of fresh newsletter subscribers becomes apparent. You need to be working towards acquiring more contacts in your email marketing list constantly. Keep reading to find out how!

Growing Your Email Marketing List

There are many platforms and communication channels, which can help you grow your email marketing list. These include email, social media, your website, the websites or social accounts of your partners, and more. Additionally, you can also use traditional marketing and prompt the visitors of your physical shop to sign up for your newsletters. So let’s start exploring how you can utilize those and see the numbers grow.

1. Create a sign-up form on your company’s website

A great trick that can help grow your email marketing list is to enable users to register on your website. Include a registration form, which requires information such as email address, name, age, and other relevant data from which your business can benefit. Furthermore, you can create specific pages, which cannot be accessed by non-registered users, such as checkout pages, exclusive blog content, pages that provide tailored experiences to users, etc. That way, users who are truly interested in your products and services and who want to access all of the information on your website will willingly sign-up and subscribe to your newsletter. Therefore, you will be creating a list of people, who are very likely to purchase your products.

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2. Create popups on your website

Yes, we totally agree that by doing this you risk annoying users. All of us have been in a situation when we want to get something done or simply learn something new, but we’re constantly distracted by nerve-wracking pop-ups. However, we have to honestly admit that some of those bright-colored banners are actually relevant and sometimes useful. No wonder why marketers use pop-up banners constantly – it’s because this proven method works! We are not suggesting that you need to create 20 pop-ups and spam users with them constantly (you will only scare them away by doing this), but one well-designed, thought-out pop-up might do wonders. Don’t forget to think about the most appropriate moment to display the banner, for example, it could pop up only when the user has read (or scrolled through) at least 50% of your content on a given page.

3. Enable a commenting section on your blog

Another smart method through which you can grow your email marketing list is to enable a commenting or feedback section under each of your blog posts. Users like to give feedback and to be able to express their opinion, especially if they are interested in the topic of conversation. Therefore, by empowering them to do so, you will not only increase their satisfaction from engaging with your brand, but also gain valuable information about them (their email addresses).

4. Add subscription links to your employees’ email signatures

In that way, each email communication may result in a new subscriber to your newsletter. This method is especially useful for companies with a lot of employees. It is very simple as well. All you need to do is create a landing page, containing a subscription form, and include a CTA with a link to it in your staff’s email signatures. So if your team consists of 5 people, with each of them communicating (via email) with at least 5 other businesses or clients in a given working day, you have the chance of gaining 25 new subscribers per day. How amazing is that!

5. Add CTAs on your company’s social media pages

Social media is a great tool for driving traffic to your website, building awareness about your brand, and engaging with your audience. While there are some rules, which you need to follow and some mistakes, which you should try to avoid, for the most part, social platforms are not too hard to master. Therefore, one of the easiest ways, in which you could persuade users to subscribe to your newsletter, is to include CTAs on social media. Many of the popular platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, for example, allow you to have one main CTA button on your company’s page. It’s a good idea to create a landing page with your email subscription form and link it to the CTA button on your social media. Furthermore, you can plan a post or two about this landing page, when you are creating your social media posting schedule, and share the link to it in your newsfeed. Just keep in mind that you also want to provide relevant quality content to your followers and not just over-spam them with action requests (such as asking them to be included in your email marketing list).

6. Offer freebies

Probably one of the most common, yet effective ways, in which you can grow your marketing list is by offering free products (such as eBooks, whitepapers, guides, and more) to your audience. This approach is known as a “gated offer”. The name comes from the fact that users will have the opportunity to access those materials, but to do so, they will need to enter their email addresses first. You can create a landing page and upload the freebie there. Then share the link to it on your company’s social media accounts, run ads, or post a CTA leading to it on your website. Keep in mind that the free content you provide needs to be somewhat connected to your niche or the industry your business operates in. This is crucial because otherwise, you might attract subscribers, who are not interested in your products. If they are not interested in your products chances are they are not going to buy them. Your freebies could include survey data, industry reports, insights, which may be of interest to your target audience, infographics, and other valuable data.

7. Organize a giveaway

You probably know how the cliche goes: to receive, you must also give. This is very true when it comes to growing your email marketing list. If you want to see more people subscribing to your newsletter fast, you could organize a giveaway and request that participants provide you with their email addresses to enter the game. Again, it’s important to choose a prize, which is connected to your business or the goods and services you offer (it could even be one of your products or a voucher for a free service). For example, if your company sells toys, you may want to create a giveaway, in which the participants win a trip to Disneyland for the whole family. Don’t forget that your copy and visuals should correspond to your target audience’s interests. In the case of our example, you could include images of the most iconic Disney characters – Mickey Mouse, Donald the Duck, and others. It’s a good idea to build anticipation and excitement in your audience and to create a sense of urgency by including phrases like “enter today, the giveaway ends in 24 hours”. Keep in mind that this approach may not be appropriate for companies, which conduct business with other companies (or in other words for B2B marketing). However, if you sell products to consumers directly (B2C – business-to-consumer) a well-thought-out giveaway can do wonders and help you grow your email marketing list in no time.

8. Host an online webinar

You can build your email list by hosting an online webinar (or any other online event of your choice). Use your company’s social media channels, your website, and a dedicated landing page as means for popularising your event. Create ads, posts, as well as blog articles, which talk about your online event, build excitement in your target audience, and invite interested consumers to save the date. Don’t forget to request users’ email addresses, so that they can register for participation in the event and receive additional working sheets and documents connected to it. Once more, make sure that the topic of the webinar corresponds to your products or services. So if you are selling flower seeds, for example, create a webinar, which talks about gardening. This approach is amazing because it can do wonders both for B2B and B2C businesses.

9. Have amazing newsletters

Imagine this: While going through the boredom that is your inbox, you suddenly come across an email from the cleaning company, which takes care of the tidiness of your home. You are amazed by how nicely this email is done. It has creative visuals, funny copy, and (most importantly) relevant information on how you can easily clean your oven and get rid of grease stains on your carpet. You’ve liked this email so much and found it useful, that you decide to click the “share” button and send it to your friends and family. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, chances are it will. Well-done newsletters are a powerful tool for growing your email marketing list, especially if you include CTAs, which prompt your current subscribers to share it with others. Therefore, even if you are not putting any other efforts towards expanding your email list, your hard work may bring you more leads naturally. Spend some time thinking about your design and your copy. Make sure that they correspond to your target audience and that they offer useful information, which can contribute to solving your audience’s problems. The goal here is to pay attention to the details and create enticing newsletters so that your current subscribers would want to share them with other people. Keep in mind that this approach alone may not bring the desired results. That is why it’s best if you combine it with other methods.

10. Partner up with influencers

Influencer marketing is an incredibly powerful tool for achieving your marketing goals. The reason for that lies in the fact that mouth-to-mouth marketing (when someone you trust recommends something to you) always works and is considered the ultimate conversion tool. This approach works best for B2C businesses, which offer products directly to consumers, rather than for B2B (business-to-business model). Since influencers (especially micro-influencers) usually engage with their audiences and show authenticity, we could argue that their followers perceive them as friends and trust their judgment. Therefore, partnering up with an appropriate influencer and promoting your email newsletter both through your company’s and through the influencers’ communication channels could turn out to be very beneficial.

Need more email marketing tips?

As with any other marketing activity, it’s best if you have a comprehensive understanding of the features and peculiarities of this communication channel before you jump straight to creating your strategy. This is especially true for email marketing because you and your business can get into serious legal trouble if you accidentally (or not) violate GDPR. Our advice is to stay away from websites, promising you hundreds of new subscribers within minutes, because this often means “purchased subscriber lists”. Buying emails, rather than gaining them, can result in a damaged reputation, penalties, and audience, which has no idea who you are and what you are offering (therefore is not willing to spend money on a product offered by a completely unfamiliar brand).

That is why we believe it’s best if you outsource your marketing strategy to experienced professionals. Interval, as a digital marketing agency, is result-driven. This means that you will know exactly what you get out of your agreement with us. At the end of the day, we will analyze the performance of your campaigns. Then we will create a report and will often visualize the results, explaining to you what worked well and what not so much. Furthermore, we will calculate your ROI (return on investment) and give suggestions on what could be changed in order to obtain higher rates during the following campaigns. We are not simply marketing experts, we are your partners! Don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation.