Are you looking to generate sales, build brand awareness, create a community, or maintain a solid customer list? Building an email list is a great way to do that and more.
On the surface, an email list is just a list of contacts connected to your business and brand. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll discover that they are a great way to manage your contacts and effectively use email marketing to grow your business and brand.
Whether you are a blogger, social media influencer, retail business, or service-based business, creating and maintaining an email list is highly recommended.
In this guide, we’ll review the steps to building an email list:
Why are email lists important?
Email marketing is one of the most effective and affordable marketing techniques. Social media may be a great way to introduce people to your brand, but it doesn’t allow you to hold onto the connections you make. It’s vital for you to have control over your audience and message to market your business effectively. Email marketing provides that.
Building an email list of your target audience allows you to tailor your message and drive your business forward.
The benefits of building an email list:
- It allows you to collect all of your leads, customers, and contacts in one place and organize them.
- You can create targeted email campaigns that speak directly to your desired audience.
- It is easy to transport and share.
- It’s a quick and easy way to send out announcements or relay valuable information to the appropriate people.
- It allows you to organize all your contacts according to lead type and interests.
The Best Way to Grow Your Email List: Lead Magnets
When it comes to email lists, the quality of your leads is far more important than the quantity. You want people to sign up to join your email list voluntarily. The best way to do this is by offering them an incentive; giving them a reason to sign up. These are known as lead magnets because they draw contacts to your list organically.
The type of lead magnet will vary depending on your business and the contacts you are trying to attract. Whatever you choose, the most important thing is that it holds perceived value related to your service or product. Most lead magnets are a free digital assent that provides a taste of what you have to offer.
Lead magnets are handy when building a B2B email contact list. With B2B marketing, creating an exchange of value is critical. You need their emails and information about them to market to them properly and provide quality service. That’s the value they provide. Your lead magnet will provide a service in exchange. It should solve a problem, provide a quick win, offer high value, be easy to access, and demonstrate your worth and expertise.
A Quick Step-by-Step Guide to Building an Email List
Step 1 – Create a lead magnet
First, you need to create the incentive. This could be a digital download, webinar, newsletter, quiz, mini-course, or discount (to list a few options). It does not need to be complicated or elaborate. It must provide value, appear enticing, and relate to your offerings.
It’s important to note that this is one of the ways to attract new additions to your email list. Having multiple lead generators running at the same time is good practice. In addition to your lead magnet, you might also use SEO blogs, social media, or basic contact forms to add contacts to your email list. A list of our favorite methods is below.
Step 2 – Create a sign-up form
The whole point is to add their contact information to your contact list. Creating a quick form on your website or landing page is a quick and easy way. You only need their name and email. But if you can collect other relevant details in the process, that is a nice bonus.
Step 3 – Sync your lead magnet with your email marketing software
Once you have their submitted form, you must add that data to your email list and share it with your email marketing software. How you do this largely depends on what software you are using.
For example, if your website is built in WordPress with Elementor and you’re using ActiveCampaign as your email marketing tool, there are plugin integrations that allow you to sync submissions from a form created using Elementor to a specific contact list in your ActiveCampaign account.
Utilizing marketing automations like this is key to growing and scaling your business!
Step 4 – Organize your list
One of the perks of email marketing is being able to tailor your marketing to your customers. To do that, you need to organize your email list because odds are, the list will consist of a variety of leads. How you manage your list depends on your email marketing strategy.
Most businesses don’t consider this step until their email list has taken shape, but it is more difficult at that point. Creating an organizational system from the beginning will save you time, energy, and money later. Segmenting and using tags, you can separate your email list into smaller, more targeted lists.
Keep in mind that you can adjust your organization system over time.
The Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Email List
1 – Using Lead Magnets
As we’ve mentioned, lead magnets are one of the best ways to attract high-quality leads to add to your email list.
2 – From Scratch
Gather their contact information in person or at a brick-and-mortar location.
3 – For Free
Use strategically placed CTA’s on your website, promotions, social media, and more.
4 – Using SEO Blog
Search engine optimized blogs are a great way to generate organic web traffic to your site. If you strategically place CTA’s and opt-in boxes, that traffic can lead to email subscriptions, especially if you place a CTA in and at the end of your blog posts.
5 – Subscriber Form or Pop-up
Place subscription forms in the footer, contact page, or in a pop-up form.
6 – Contest
Contests are a form of lead magnets that utilize a sense of urgency and high perceived value to attract leads.
7 – Giveaway
Giveaways are incredibly effective lead magnets and great ways to build your email subscriber list. Who doesn’t love a free offer?
8 – Social Media and Social Media Ads
There are a few ways you can use social media. First, you can place a link to a subscription form in your bio using a Linktree landing page. Second, you can create CTA posts that drives people to your website, blog, or email subscription form.
Creating social media ads is also very effective, provided you do them well.
9 – Webinars
Offering a webinar is a great lead magnet, especially for B2B marketing. They provide incredible value and attract contacts. You can make it accessible or offer it for a significantly discounted price.
10 – Referral Program
Referral programs have been effective marketing tools for years, so it makes sense to use them when creating your email list.
Building an Email List – FAQs
How do I start building an email list?
Start with the customers and contacts you already have. After that, creating embedded sign-up forms or pop-ups on your website is a great place to start.
How long does it take to build an email list?
You can generate a basic email list in weeks with a successful lead magnet or opt-in campaign. However, building your email list is an ongoing process, so you can expect it to build over time.
How often should I email my list?
This is a difficult question to answer. Experts disagree, but our research tells us it depends entirely on your email marketing strategy and customer response. The goal is to maintain brand relevancy without becoming a nuisance.
Most experts agree that at least one email a week is necessary, and two to three is ideal. Just make sure you offer a variety of relevant and enticing content.
Where do I build my email list?
It depends on what website CMS, CRM, and email marketing software you plan to use. Most people choose to create their list using their website, then manage it using CRM software that is integrated with their website and other marketing tools.
What are the best email list-building tools?
You can use tools like OptinMonster, OptiMonk, and Wishpond for lead capturing. Website builders like WordPress & Elementor have great plugins to help you build your email list as well.
Programs like Outgrow, Canva, and Rafflecopter are great for creating high-quality lead magnets.
We recommend ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, or MailerLite to manage your email list and create campaigns.
How do I use social media to grow my email list?
To start with, we recommend creating an opt-in or subscription form and placing it in all your social media bios either directly or through a Linktree landing page. You should also create call-to-action posts periodically to drive traffic to your Linktree.
You can also promote lead magnet offers via social media moving them toward the coordinating opt-in form.
Social media ads on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, or YouTube are also great ways to promote your brand and lead magnets.
How do I grow my email list without social media?
It is much more challenging to grow your email list without social media but not impossible. We recommend using word-of-mouth, networking, referral programs, in-person campaigns, SEO blogging, and Google ads.
How do I grow my email list for free?
Most of the email list-building methods above can be done for free. Creating social media or Google ads are the only methods that require a fee.
In our opinion.
The email list building strategy you choose will depend on factors such as your target audience, budget, business model and industry. However, we find that across the board our top two ways to building an email list are lead magnets and giveaways.
Often, you’ll find that you already have assets on hand to create a valuable lead magnet for your prospects. Once you’ve created the lead magnet and set up your email automation and list building workflow, you can put most of the tasks on auto-pilot and watch your email lists grow.
We’d love to hear what your favorite email list building strategies are, so be sure to leave us a comment below!
