Sending marketing campaigns starts with building an email list. At first, you may find it challenging, but with the right strategy and approach, you can quickly get the desired results. This post will cover all you need to know about link building and strategies to build an email list efficiently.

What is List Building?

List building refers to the process of building your email list by finding and collecting email addresses of people interested in your business, blog, products, or services. You can collect email addresses from customers, prospects, website visitors, and social media followers.

Why is it Important to Build an Email List?

For email marketing, you need to have an email list. The more subscribers you have, the better the results of your email campaigns will be. In short, the success of your email marketing campaigns heavily depends on the quality and quantity of email subscribers. Therefore, growing an email list is critical to leverage email marketing for business growth.

The following are a few of the many other benefits of list building:

Affordable Marketing

Among the many benefits of building an email list is cost-effective marketing. Email marketing involves minimum costs with a high ROI. The major investment involved in email marketing is purchasing email marketing software.

Personalized Emails

You can send personalized marketing campaigns to your subscribers. Personalized emails have a high conversion rate and help build relationships with subscribers.

Targeted Messages

You can segment your subscribers into distinct groups based on their interests, demographics, or other criteria. Segmentation allows sending targeted messages, which is the key to increasing email open rates. It also ensures the subscribers remain engaged and do not unsubscribe because of the unwanted emails.

You Own Your List

Email list is your asset; no one can take it away. It belongs solely to you, and the ownership does not depend on other factors. On the contrary, you can lose your social media followers due to a change in the platform’s policy. Or you may lose all contacts if your social media account is hacked.

Qualities of a Good Email List

When building an email list, the quality of the list is more important than its size. Your marketing campaigns will succeed in achieving its objectives only if you are targeting the right audience. Therefore, it is vital to understand what makes a good email list before you devise a list building strategy. A high-quality email list has the following qualities:

Subscribers Are Added After Consent

A good email list comprises subscribers who have agreed to subscribe to your newsletter. Tricking visitors into providing their email addresses or buying an email list is unethical and detrimental to your marketing campaigns. Therefore, seek consent before adding subscribers to the list.

Contains High-Quality Leads

A high-quality email list includes subscribers interested in your business or offerings. Adding people who have no interest in your blog, products, or services is merely a collection of junk. Again, seek consent to ensure subscribers are interested in your business.

Easy to Segment

Another quality of a good email list is that it is easy to segment the subscribers. In other words, it has information like demographics or interests. Therefore, when building your email list, collect relevant information to help you segment.

Metrics that indicate the quality of email lists include open, conversion, and unsubscription rates. A good email list has high open and conversion rates and low unsubscription rates.

Email List Building Strategies

The following are the most effective list building tactics to build your email list from scratch quickly:

1. Choose Reliable Email Marketing Software

Choosing the suitable email marketing software is the first thing you should do to build and grow an email list. Email marketing software helps save time, energy, and resources, enabling you to utilize all efforts in building your email list.

As the list of subscribers grows, managing the subscribers and the email campaigns becomes challenging. Remember, it is hard to acquire a subscriber, but it is very easy to lose one. Therefore, I recommend using reliable email marketing software instead of a regular email provider like Yahoo and Google.

Email marketing software helps create and customize landing pages, segment subscribers based on behavior or interests, and automate email campaigns. A few popular email marketing software include Getresponse, AWeber, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), Constant Contact, and Pabbly.

2. Use Content Upgrade Lead Magnets

A content upgrade is a free resource or bonus you design for a specific web page. It is an upgrade of existing content. You offer the content upgrade in exchange for an email address. In other words, a content upgrade is a lead magnet built for a particular web page, offering a free upgrade of content related to the page’s content. 

For example, a content upgrade for a blog post, “How to make money with affiliate marketing” could be a list of essential tools every affiliate marketer needs. Or, if you have repurposed your blog post into a YouTube video, you can offer that to help build your email list.

Content upgrades outperform any other form of lead magnets. Since they are relevant to the blog post topic, they lead to better conversion rates.

3. Use Unusual Calls to Action on Buttons

We see CTAs everywhere, which is what makes it challenging to grab the attention of the users. However, you can significantly improve the conversion rate by using unusual calls to action on buttons. Unconventional calls-to-action perform better because of the following reasons:

• Distinctive calls to action stand out and immediately catch the attention of visitors.  
• Typical words like “register” or “join” may sound like a long-term commitment, scaring the visitors away.
• Interesting terms like “Lock in my free account” or “I’m in” entice emotions, tempting users to take action.

Therefore, be creative and think out of the box while crafting CTAs. Anything that stands out from the rest will perform way better than the usual for building an email list.

4. Use Scroll and Click Heatmaps

We all know that the placement of CTAs is critical for conversion rates. But how do we learn what is the best place for a call to action?

Using scroll and click heat maps!

Click maps help you identify where the visitors click and how they interact with the different elements of a web page, including CTAs. Scroll map, on the other hand, shows how far the visitors scroll and where they quit the page.

Both click and heat maps provide valuable information that you can use to decide the best location for CTAs. Ideally, you should place CTAs within the part of the page where most visitors reach and click or tap. The goal is to ensure the maximum number of visitors see the signup form, helping you quickly build your email list.

Smartlook and Hotjar are popular heatmap tools to determine users’ click and scroll behavior.

5. Offer Incentives and Discounts

Offering incentives and discounts is an efficient way of building an email list. For example, a popup can offer a discount on the first purchase while users browse the catalog. Or, you can offer free shipping. Either way, the visitor will be tempted enough to subscribe to the newsletter.

You can offer free resources. Creating a lead magnet is a proven way of encouraging people to subscribe. The following are a few resources you can offer in exchange for an email address:

• A cheat sheet
• A template
• An online course
• An eBook or a Guide

Similarly, you can also offer a free trial. Offering a free trial helps build your email list and bring in more paid customers.

6. Create Referral Programs

Next on the list of list building strategies is the referral program. You encourage your existing subscribers to promote your business or blog in referral programs. Although word of mouth is one of the fastest ways of building an email list, people may only recommend your business if you offer them an incentive.

You can offer your existing subscribers a gift, incentive, or discount for referring a certain number of new subscribers. Alternatively, you can offer varying prizes or discounts for achieving different milestones.

However, keeping track of the referrals by each subscriber and rewarding them can be tricky. Therefore, I recommend using tools like Invitereferrals and ReferralCandy.

7. Host a Giveaway

Hosting a giveaway contest is another proven list building strategy. Giveaways help not only grow an email list but also spread brand awareness. They go viral quickly and give the desired results in less time.

Host a giveaway on social media for maximum reach. However, the prize or giveaway must be relevant to your niche to ensure you build your email list with qualified subscribers. Relevant giveaways ensure those who subscribe will remain beneficial to the business.

For example, you can give away air tickets if you are a travel blogger. Similarly, if you are a beauty blogger, you can offer a beauty product as a prize.

Several tools like Woorise and SweepWidget are available, allowing users to create powerful giveaways efficiently. 

 8. Use a Variety of Social Proof  

The ideal social proof for email list building is the number of subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more tempting it is for others to subscribe to your email list. However, getting a decent number of subscribers may take a long time. Then, what else can you use to tempt people?

Testimonials, reviews, and endorsements!

A single good review or testimonial can bring a lot of subscribers. Similarly, getting an industry expert or influencer to endorse your services or expertise can be significantly beneficial for building an email list.

Similarly, you can display a count of social media shares on every blog post. The more your content is shared, the more credible it is in visitors’ eyes.

Last but not least, if you offer a free resource in exchange for email addresses, the number of downloads is an ideal social proof. A higher number of downloads makes the visitors feel they will miss out on something precious if they do not download the resource.

9. Mention Blog Visitors as Social Proof

Like testimonials, reviews, and endorsements, you can use visitors’ activity on your blog to build your email list. The number of monthly visitors or readers is an excellent statistic to mention when you pitch your newsletter.

A higher number of monthly readers indicates the value of your content. It tempts people to subscribe to your newsletter so they do not miss future content. However, be cautious when using visitors’ statistics. Remember, a small number can be counterproductive. Therefore, I recommend mentioning the number of monthly readers only if they are above 5000.  

10. Ask Customers to Opt-In at Checkout

This list building strategy is very common and works almost every time. People who buy your services or products already trust your brand. Additionally, they will likely be interested in getting news regarding updates, discounts, promotions, or special events.

Therefore, asking your customers to opt in for the emails at the checkout can help you build an email list quickly. Include a check box next to the ‘Place Order’ or “Submit” button at checkout, asking customers if they would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Remember, do not add customers to the subscribers’ list if they do not consent. Using customers’ contact information, like names and email addresses, without their consent would not help you.

11. Pitch Your Newsletter in Social Media Posts

Everyone is present on social media, whether a blogger, business owner, or influencer. But did you know you can use your social media posts to pitch your newsletter and build an email list?

Social media can significantly help you in list building. Let me explain why:

First, many of your followers may not be your subscribers. They may not even be aware of your newsletter. Second, your posts reach audiences that are different from your followers. For example, the posts may appear when people search for information. Or, if you are a part of a group or opt for a paid advertisement, your content will reach a vast audience base.

Therefore, whenever you post a valuable piece of content online, make sure you pitch your newsletter in the description box. Ideally, create a landing page and provide its link.

12. Use Exit Intent Popups

Exit intent popups appear on users’ screens when they intend to quit the page. These popups enable you to offer visitors an exciting offer, encouraging them to join the newsletter before leaving. As a result, you get additional subscribers you would have missed otherwise.

Exit intent popups are significantly helpful for list building due to the following reasons:

• Many users may not scroll far enough and miss the CTA on the web page.
• A user who is gone may never come back to your site.
• You get to make one last attempt to encourage visitors to become subscribers.

However, your call-to-action in the exit intent popup must be more convincing than a regular CTA. You can offer a discount, a coupon code, or a free resource. Remember, you are displaying the popup to someone about to leave the page, and your call to action must be strong enough to make them subscribe.  

13. Use Comment Section to Increase Email Subscribers

Last on the list of email list building strategies is using a comment section to increase subscribers. Only some people spare the time to leave a comment. Those who comment on your blog posts are people who enjoy your content. They are the ones who read your entire content and scroll down till the end.

In short, commenters are likely interested in more content from you. Therefore, it is wise to ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. Include a check box next to the submit button, asking the commenter if they wish to sign up for the newsletter.

14. Offer Exclusive Notifications to Subscribers

Fear of loss is among the emotions that persuade users to take immediate action, like signing up. Let’s say you offer exclusive notifications to your subscribers; others would feel they are missing out on something important. Let me elaborate on this.

Everyone wants to get early notifications, be it a sale, the launch of a collection, or a teaser. However, when we miss something, we ensure it does not happen in the future. Therefore, if users learn that you are giving exclusive notifications to your subscribers, they will rush to join the email list. In short, they ensure they get all the significant notifications in the future.

Conclusion

List building is critical to kick-start your email marketing journey. At first, it may seem challenging and overwhelming, but you can quickly build your email list with the right strategies. Remember, growing an email list is equally important. Therefore, regularly remove inactive or poor subscribers to maintain a good email list.