Our Best Tips For Building Your Email List
First, the bad news. On average, your email marketing list degrades by about 20% every year. People change their addresses, they change their mind about wanting to hear from you, or they simply stop using the only address you have for them altogether.
But now, the good news. We can help you stop that decline and start getting that number going back up in the right direction. How? By following these top tips, we can help you gain – and keep – more customers. And the key is by getting their email address.
1. Make your website work harder
It’s your store. Make it work as hard as it can for you. Link offers that capture email signups throughout your site. Ensure they’re easy to see. Place CTA (call to action) buttons on and in as many places as possible on your site – don’t miss an opportunity to get someone’s address!
2. Create multiple email subscriptions
By creating multiple, targeted subscription types, you’ll increase the chance that visitors will subscribe to one of them. For example, a field in your website’s footer and a popup that appears on key pages.
3. Build a welcome program
Welcome emails typically achieve an open rate of more than 50% (source: Econsultancy). Not only is it polite to show your appreciation for signing up, a welcome series is also the perfect opportunity to showcase your brand. What’s more, this type of email provides you with a chance to enhance the data on your potential customer beyond the email address.
4. Create new resources to build lead generation
We know from experience that people love whitepapers, blogs, best practice guides or any free value-add downloadable content. And it’s a proven way of collecting new addresses.
5. In the email itself
Include share buttons, like ‘Email a friend.’ You’ll gain access to fresh networks who might want to sign up for your list. At the bottom, include a ‘Subscribe’ CTA as a simple text-based link, so if it’s forwarded, you can guarantee it can be read.
6. Social media
Use Twitter to promote an offer or a new resource. Anything, in fact, that might make more people sign up. Use your Facebook page with a sign-up form tab – which can be created in OM3 – to collect addresses from social fans. And don’t forget to add ‘Share’ buttons to your content and landing pages, too.
7. Video
Use the power of your company’s YouTube channel. Tell viewers about your newsletter, where they can sign up and give them a compelling reason to do so. You can include links to relevant landing pages in your videos’ text descriptions.
8. Surveys
Engage with your customers and they’ll engage with you. Surveys and forms are a great way to find out more about your customers and prompt them to tell you how you’re doing.
9. Popups
Popups are an unignorable way to ask your website visitors to join your list. And with the OM3 Surveys & Forms tool, you can easily create your own popup and choose which pages you want it to appear on.
10. Display advertising
Using ads, you can drive traffic to one of your dedicated landing pages. Remarketing ads are also powerful, as you can create targeted segments to advertise to. For instance, you could send blog readers that don’t subscribe to your blog updates to the subscription page.
11. Trade shows
Offline activities like trade shows present an excellent opportunity to harvest email addresses from potential customers who are likely to be interested in what you do.
12. Collect them at face-to- face meetings…
There’s no better way to ask someone for their email.
13. …Or from when you call people directly
You’re still speaking directly to another human being – just ask them for it!
14. In-store
Your bricks-and-mortar store is just as much a potential goldmine as your online store. Human interaction is another great way to harvest people’s email addresses – if you’ve built up a rapport, get in there.
15. In-store e-receipts
E-receipts give customers the option of receiving a receipt straight into their inbox. If you get their permission to join the newsletter at this point, it’s another opportunity to communicate with customers and to inform them of relevant offers.
16. Loyalty scheme
Offering customers, the chance to collect points is not only a great way to increase loyalty. It’s an opportunity to get them signed up in store and to collect their email address to receive points updates and other exclusive offers.
17. Paid media
Pass on your downloadable whitepapers, content or other resources to external publishers and ask them to promote it on your behalf.
18. Re-engage lapsed subscribers
Just look at it like you’re meeting up with old friends. Create an engaging re opt-in message that promises to deliver the content they want, when they want, if they let you know their preferences. Such Transparency often pays dividends in terms of trust and reputation
These are our top tips and tactics for gaining access to people’s email addresses. Each one of these tips can be a blog on to its own. It can get complicated. If you need any help navigating give us a holler.