Building Email Lists: Everything You Need to Know

Trends come and go, but Electronic mail has been around for over 50 years, and continues to be one of the most powerful marketing tools out there today.

Is Building an Email List Worthwhile?

While it might not be considered as new or sexy as things like push notifications, email is in almost every home. It continues to be incredibly effective at converting people to paying customers, and then maintaining that relationship long term. Simply put, if you have a business of any sort, you should be building your email list.

While barriers like spam filters and throw-away email accounts exist, in the end what that list represents is a group of people who have expressed interesting in your business, and that’s a powerful thing. If you can gain access to someone’s inbox, you have access to their attention, and there are few things more valuable than a person’s attention. Each address represents a potential customer and potential dollars in the bank.

Building a high-quality email list with a high engagement rating might not be an easy task, but it’s extremely worthwhile when you get it right.

Valuable Content

Good marketing comes down to a true exchange of value between a business and its customers. It’s tempting to jump right to tactics like popups when considering how to build your list as fast as possible, but it’s our opinion that this is losing sight of the big picture.

Rather than annoying people into signing up -increasing the chances of your content being incorrectly reported as spam down the road, by the way- instead, show them that the emails they receive will add value to their lives.

How do you show people that you’ll add value to their inbox? Provide it up front! Create compelling and valuable content on your website, and then promote that content via email. The content should solve their biggest pain points, dive deep into specific subjects, and answer their biggest questions.

There will definitely be a time and place to send out promotional emails pitching your products and services, but people will be much more likely to sign up (and stay engaged) if they know that the bulk of your communications can meaningfully improve some aspect of their life.

Questions to consider include: who is your audience? What are their pain points, and what sort of quick fixes and permanent solutions are they looking for? By figuring out how to serve them most effectively, you’ll create true and lasting relationships.

Landing Pages

A landing page isn’t a popup. They are entire pages, with their own dedicated urls, that exist solely to capture email addresses. In other words, they’re not a box that pops up when a person reads one of your blog posts or visits your home page, but a single page people can be sent to. Why are landing pages fantastic?

• Landing pages don’t feel as intrusive. Because they’re not potentially putting barriers between your customers and the content they came to see, there’s less chance that customers will dismiss it out of hand or even leave your page because they’re irritated.
• You can include more information on a landing page than you can in a popup. Because popups have to be short and concise in order to not overwhelm the page, they’re not where you put your pitch. A landing page is a space devoted to convincing a customer that they want to give your their contact information, and in the end that’s what we’re looking for.
• You can create multiple landing pages for different purposes. We won’t delve too deeply into this point here, as it’s properly an article of its own, but consider the power in being able to create a custom page for each customer profile and successfully direct them toward just the right marketing strategy.

There are plenty of ways to create landing pages, from using landing page software to build it for you to contacting your friendly local web developer to create something truly custom for you. Either way, if you can answer the question “what do they get out of it?”, you’ll be giving people a compelling reason to sign up.

Test Everything

When seeking to build your email list, A/B test everything. A/B testing is simply testing two things against each other to see which performs better. Once you’ve identified which one works better, you know where to focus your efforts going forward.

Lead Magnets

According to Investopedia, a lead magnet is “… a marketing term for a free item or service that is given away for the purpose of gathering contact details; for example, lead magnets can be trial subscriptions, samples, white papers, e-newsletters, and free consultations. Marketers use lead magnets to create sales leads. The marketers attempt to convert the leads into paying customers of a product or service, or they may market unrelated offerings to the sales leads.”

In essence, a lead magnet is a trade between you and a potential customer: their contact information in exchange for… something. The nature of that something is up to you, with the only requirement being that it has value to the customer, hence the idea of a “magnet” attracting leads.

Premium Downloads

Some common examples are downloads that unlock after filling out a contact us form, such as

○ Checklists

○ EBooks

○ Cheat sheets

○ Discount coupons

○ Templates

○ Case studies

○ Webinars

○ Podcasts

You are by no means limited to those examples. CodeDesign, for example, provides a free custom mockup of a website within 7 days of filling out our contact form.

Utilize Content Upgrades

Be it a downloadable transcription of a podcast episode they just listened to, a members-only section of your website, or a free trial of a paid service, the idea is to take the engagement the reader already has with that piece of content, and then make it better.

A great strategy is to build content upgrades right into the design of your website. Unlike paywalls, you’re not creating frustration by interrupting the user experience. Instead, take a great piece of material or software and add a bonus feature in exchange for the user’s contact information. This supplements the user experience rather than taking away from it

Do a Giveaway

Because giveaways only have a set number of winners, you’ll be able to put more resources into a few high value prizes.

You can give away just about anything, from physical products to premium services, digital downloads and more. If you’re looking to supercharge your email list building, it’s a hard strategy to beat: In order to sign up for the giveaway, people must first give you their email address. There’s no deception here, because how else would they be contacted in the event that they won something? Simply include a small piece of text stating that by entering this drawing, the user consents to receiving newsletters and other marketing emails.

You can use a giveaway platform to make it easy for people to enter, or even do it completely analog with strips of paper tossed into a hat. Just make sure to be prompt and upfront about the details, and announce the contest winner as soon as possible on the end date.

Quiz or Survey Results

Another great type of lead magnet is a quiz or survey that provides the results via email. You may be familiar with “Which Harry Potter Character are You?” type quizzes, even if you haven’t taken a few yourself.

The thing to remember is that the quiz or survey should be related to your content in some way. If you’re a car dealership, for example, you might want to create something like “what is your dream car?” or even more tangibly, “Find out how much your car is worth”. This often also provides you with other pieces of information from your users, such as their name or initials, birth month, age and preferences. Use this power wisely, but be aware that it’s there.

In the end, great marketing comes down to a real exchange of value between you and your customers. Businesses can try and cheat that, but the best campaigns benefit everyone.

Grow your list with social sharing

It seems like everyone is on social media these days, but chances are good that unless you’re posting brand-relevant content on a schedule, and not just engaging with customers but finding content to engage with yourself, you may not have gotten the most out of it.

Social media is a great place to put your lead magnets by presenting potential customers with something fun, non-invasive, convenient and relevant to their lives. Whether you’re posting to your quizzes and bonus content elsewhere or offering social media exclusive benefits, you have a unique opportunity to talk to your customers one-on-one. Unlike situations such as help desks where you’re approached only after you have a problem, you also have the benefit of your customers being open and (hopefully) not frustrated or defensive. At the same time, if a customer does have a problem and tags your business in it, you have a chance to resolve it for them immediately, showing all of their connections and followers your excellent customer service chops.

Consider going live on Facebook, for instance, and pitching your email list there. Customers can be notified in advance of your posting schedule, and perhaps even have the opportunity to suggestion (not guarantee) future topics, as long as they’re signed up.

If someone is struggling with something you can help with, leaving a comment on their social media post is also a great way to pitch your newsletter or other email content organically. If you’re designing your content correctly and hitting your audience’s pain points, mention that you share tips and tricks which address this person’s particular problem and invite them to subscribe. One thing to make sure of, however, is that you’re tailoring your message as personally and relevantly as possible, so you don’t get hit by spam filters.

Finally, it’s incredibly easy to automate social media posts to sites like facebook, instagram, linkedin and even pinterest, allowing you to prep your content in bulk and post personal and relevant links to your signup form automatically on whatever timeline and schedule you set up.

Run Facebook Lead Ads

If you’re looking for highly targeted ads to specific demographics, Facebook should be your first stop. You’ll be given the opportunity to choose your marketing objectives, such as traffic, engagement or lead generation, filter your audience by nearly any metric you can think of, and even take advantage of the new Dynamic Creative feature, which allows Facebook to arrange your headlines, images, calls to action and more automatically, based on which subsection of your audience is engaging with it.

Equally helpful is the ability to set a budget and schedule. Enter the sum you have reserved for your marketing campaign, choose how long to run your ad and how often to post it per day. You’ll be guaranteed a certain number of clicks or impressions, and know you’re getting the value you agreed upon in exchange.

Add Social Sharing Buttons To Your Emails

As important as using social media to promote your email list, the inverse can be equally helpful. Try adding social sharing buttons to each of your emails, and allow customers to easily promote your content themselves. You’ll achieve a wider reach, and it’s well understood by now that people are much more likely to engage with something recommended from a friend or loved one than they are if they encountered it out in the wild.

What has your experience with email lists and social sharing been like? Did we miss anything? Share your thoughts in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to check out CodeDesign for all your web development, digital marketing and seo needs!