One of the most valuable assets in marketing for small businesses is email marketing. Why? Because it creates a direct communication channel between the company and its current and potential customers. Unlike social media efforts where business owners can’t be certain whether their messages and content are reaching the target audience, owning an email list ensures that all emails sent to subscribers are landing in their email inboxes.
Now the question is, how to build an email list from scratch? In this article, we will discuss effective strategies to build and grow your email list for marketing success.
Why is an Email List Essential for Small Businesses
Here are 4 major reasons why small businesses can greatly benefit from an email list:
- High ROI: Email marketing offers a high return on low investment.
- Direct Communication: Email marketing offers an opportunity to connect directly to consumers without any mediators.
- Customization: Shape your emails to specific subscriber likings.
- Affordable: Inexpensive in comparison to conventional advertising.
10 Steps to Building An Email List
Step 1: Determine Your Target Audience
It is essential to understand who you are targeting before you jump onto creating an email list for your business. This will help you narrow down to the right audience and eventually lead to better conversion rate. Below are the characteristics that you can determine your target audience based on:
- Demographics: Age, locale, sex, and level of income.
- Interests: Determine the challenges, questions, and interests of users that your product or services may cater to.
- User Behavior: Spending habits, web interactions, or interests on social media platforms.
Step 2: Create Email List With Attractive Lead Magnets
If you are unaware of what a lead magnet is, it is value offered in some form in exchange for an email address. Lead magnets allure customers to subscribe to your email list. The most effective lead magnets in today’s email marketing space include:
- Discounts and Coupons: Offer coupon codes or percentage discount off their first order, or free shipping.
- Exclusive Content: Provide exclusive access to comprehensive guides, videos, eBooks, or other valuable content.
- Free Trials or Samples: Offer free trial services before the customers commit to your service plan. Product-based businesses can offer free small samples of products for customers to try.
- Lists or Templates: Provide tools or templates that can simplify certain tasks for your audience.
Building email lists with lead magnets is gaining huge popularity as the world is moving towards marketing automation. Check out this video to learn more about the effective use of lead magnets and how to set them up.
Step 3: Strategize on How to Build and Place Your Sign-up Forms
Although it may be tempting to gather a lot of information from your sign-up forms, keep in mind that customers may often pass up on seeing lengthy or tiresome sign-up forms. To make these successful, they should be as short and simple as possible. Here are key areas to place your sign-up forms for easy access:
- Website Pages: Place sign-up forms on your homepage, blog posts, and landing pages.
- Pop-Ups: Use time-based or exit-intent pop-ups to acquire user attention.
- Social Media: You can also share links to your sign-up form in your social posts or profile bio.
- Checkout Pages: Ask customers to sign up or subscribe during the checkout process.
Step 4: Take Advantage of Your Social Following
If your social accounts already have a following base, you can encourage your customers to join your email list.
- Social Media Campaigns: Design engaging posts and quality content which lures your followers into joining your email list.
- In-Store Promotions: Use signs or QR codes to gain sign-ups if you are a product or service-based business with physical stores.
- Loyalty Programs: Rewarding customers for loyalty in terms of discounts, coupons and credits for having friends and family sign-ups.
Step 5: Collaborate with Complementary Businesses
Why do something alone when you can get a hand? Find businesses that complement your products or services, collaborate with them, and have them recommend you to their customers while you can recommend their products to your subscribers. It’s a win-win at both ends.
- Cross-Promotions: Feature your complementary business partner’s email lists or lead magnets.
- Co-Host Events: Co-host events that require email sign-ups. The benefit can go both ways.
- Guest Content: Create powerful guest posts on their website with a strong call-to-action (like offering hard-to-ignore giveaways) to join your email list.
Step 6: Host Engaging Events
Hosting live webinars or Q&As, whether remotely or in-person, is a great way to foster your email list.
- Webinars: Offer registration with email sign-up to participate in webinars that provide valuable insights on skill development linked with your product or service.
- Workshops: Offer free or discounted in-person classes. Note that the success of these workshops will greatly depend on the knowledge and skill-building benefit received by the audience.
- Contests: Let your customers spin a wheel or pick a card and have them sign up to claim their reward.
Step 7: Make Use Of Paid Advertising
Many small businesses have shown immense success with paid advertising, which promotes your business over others at the cost of a premium.
- Social Media Ads: You can promote your lead magnet with Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platform ads.
- Google Ads: Direct traffic to a dedicated landing page with a strong call-to-action.
- Retargeting Campaigns: This aims to show ads to website visitors who haven’t signed up for your email list.
Step 8: Optimize Email List Sign-up for Mobile Users
Today, most people consume social content through their smartphones, so make sure you’re your email sign-up is set up for easy mobile sign-up.
- Responsive Forms: Make sure that forms load flawlessly on all devices and browsers.
- Short and Sweet Forms: As discussed above, the shorter and easier your sign-up forms are, the less resistant users will be to opt into your email list.
- User Experience Testing: It is a good practice to test the functionality of your sign-up forms on various devices and browsers.
Step 9: Showcase Social Proof of Your Business Credibility
Businesses often tend to develop customer trust by sharing acclamations of their credibility. Here are a few ways to do that:
- Highlight Benefits: Share stories on how your products or services have benefited your customers.
- Use Popularity Numbers: Show your potential customers how your company is growing, how many subscribers you have gained, and how that number is increasing.
- Showcase Endorsements: Feature reviews, testimonials, and quotes from satisfied and happy customers.
Step 10: Stay Compliant with Email Marketing Regulations
Ensure your email list-building practices comply with regulations.
- Opt-In Consent: Get explicit authorization before adding someone to your list to ensure they consent to receiving your emails as part of the sign-up terms and conditions.
- Easy Unsubscribe: Include a noticeable “unsubscribe” link in every email so users can unsubscribe easily.
- Choose Experts to Ensure Compliance: Use tools like MailerLite or GetResponse to ensure automatic compliance.
Conclusion
For small businesses, building a relevant email list may seem daunting at first. However, if you use the right tools and strategies, you can build this valuable resource and potential customer pool in no time. The right combination of quality content, smart thinking, organic discoverability, and paid push to catch the attention of potential consumers are your tools for building and growing your email list effectively.
Looking for more unique marketing tips? Check out this interesting read on Building Backlinks – Explore the Road Less Taken
