5 Ways To Grow Your Email Marketing Lists
- Evi Dewhurst
- Mar 26, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 14, 2020
Email marketing went through its successful and not-so-successful phases over the years. The spewing spam trends of the past had the unfortunate effect of making audiences overly suspicious.
Suspicious of receiving endless junk email offering what they didn’t need, didn’t want to know about, or didn’t sign up for.
It was no surprise when there were more opt-outs than opt-ins.
Can we blame them for their resulting marketing email aversion?
Thankfully marketers bounced back from that tragic age. We’ve slowly paved the way for more honest conversations, helpful content, and straight up problem solving. Effective tools have allowed us to anticipate the conversion funnel and automate messages for the right time, and the right customer.
Email marketing: An effective conversion tool
If you have a content strategy, email communication should be on your radar as a distribution channel. It can increase traffic and visibility to your carefully crafted customer-centric information. And just like content creation, your efforts here should not slip. Keep that wheel turning to maximize benefits over time.
59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
Yet many marketers still doubt the power of email marketing despite its evolution to a (somewhat) more noble communication form. There seems to be a lingering distaste attached to those unfortunate spam email days.
Right behind that lives the disconnect between promoting sign ups to grow your contact lists. It’s time to remove the shackles of the past and stride confidently into your email marketing strategy, including growing your lists.
Email list perspective: Love the ones you’ve got
I’d like to point out an increasingly popular conversation topic around email marketing lists before I share the 5 tips.
You don’t need a gazillion sign-ups to be successful.
The push for vanity metrics in the last decade made us all believe we had to have MORE. More email contacts. More social followers. More traffic.
I could compare this to MORE potato chips. They sure look great. Taste great too. But MORE makes you feel bloated and saps your energy.
Your marketing metrics are the same. More might look great. But they are potentially bloat and not true measures of your effectiveness. Don’t get caught up in the number. Instead, focus on the priority of engaged audiences, no matter how many you have.
When building your email lists, do not be daunted by their small size (whether your perspective is hundreds, thousands, or millions). Instead, focus on this important fact: Those are the people who want to hear from you. They opted in. They said, “yes, please.” Don’t ignore them to chase imaginary unicorn numbers.
Appreciate and nurture the ones you’ve got already.
Growing your email lists in 5 simple ways
One last thought before I jump in. I would hope I don’t have to say this, but say it I will. Just once. And I won’t prattle on about it.
Don’t. Buy. Lists.
With that out of the way, here are 5 ways to grow your email lists and encourage organic sign ups from people who DO want to hear from you. You’ll need an existing landing page/form to direct them to, so make sure that’s alive and well (or multiple versions if you have a variety of personas) to accomplish the following:
1. Consistently encourage social media followers to sign up
A few examples:
- You’re allowed one CTA under the header image. Use the “Sign up” option and link it to your email sign up landing page with form
- Consistently share sign up opportunities in the newsfeed. Promote if you have budget
- Consistently share sign up opportunities in the newsfeed
2. Add a pop up to your website (perhaps the home page)
I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to disrupt your beautiful UX. But this pop up doesn’t have to be a huge eyesore.
- Keep it fairly small
- Set it to exit intent
- Write clear copy with a simple directive
- Link out to your landing page
3. Add a simple sign up form on your website pages
No landing page necessary here. Simply add a small form at the bottom of your pages with a clear call to action and two or three fields maximum.
4. Add sign up opportunities to posted blogs
Not all your blog readers are on your email list. But perhaps they would like to be. Encourage them to receive the latest industry and blog news straight to their in-box at the close of featured blog posts.
5. Encourage your field sales team to add the sign up to their email signature
Draft a line of copy with a link to the sign-up page, and distribute to the sales teams to add to their email signature. That puts it right in front of your key audience each time sales communicates by email.
Are these 5 ways going to drive massive sign ups? Likely not. But they will drive organic audience opt ins who are standing up to shake your hand. They welcome your conversation.
Nurture them with quality content. Avoid the spam-laden, shotgun marketing messaging of the past. Share blogs, education, best practices, helpful lists, information-packed infographics, and more to genuinely solve industry-specific problems for your audience. Make their lives easier by providing real value.
When they’re in need, they’ll remember you.
Those relationships are worth emailing for.
Looking for inbound marketing support and skill? Contact me today for a free 30-minute consultation.
References:
Caroline Forsey, “The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2020,” HubSpot, Last modified February 26, 2020, Accessed on March 25, 2020. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats
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