Build Your Email List With These 5 Tips

Although there are several online marketing strategies, you need to constantly build your email list, as email marketing continues to produce great results when done correctly. A solid email list gives your business access to your target market around the clock. It is a quick and affordable marketing channel to present your list with a special offer or breaking news.

You could have great sources of email marketing content and effective email subject lines, but if you are sending your emails to an outdated and inactive email list your efforts will not produce results. In order to keep your email list responsive you need to constantly add new subscribers. How do you do this? Read the five tips below — they can help you build your email list.

1. Make Your Opt-In Highly Visible

In order to collect the email address from your website visitor you need to present them with an offer. Entice them by offering something of value in exchange for their email address. You could have the best offer, but if your visitor isn’t going to see it then your conversion rate is going to be pitiful.

Now, not every visitor that lands on your website is going to scroll down to the bottom and look at every square inch of site content. You need to position your call-to-action on top, above the fold. Your visitor should be able to immediately see your CTA as soon as they land on your website. Make it highly visible and make sure that it draws some attention. Remember, your visitor isn’t going to land on your site and look for your CTA, so you need to make sure that they can’t miss it!

2. Promote Your Content & Expand Your Reach

If you are creating great content then you need to promote it across social media and industry blogs to expand your reach. If you are planning on using your content to convert readers into email list subscribers then you need to promote it as much as possible. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn are great platforms to share your content.

If your brand is constantly growing then your social media following will grow along with it. Instead of trying to convert your social media following directly into sales, use the opportunity to point them to great content. If they read something that they feel provides value they will be likely to opt-in to your email list. Never be scared to promote your content to your social audience. Don’t forget tip number one above: make sure your call-to-action is highly visible — not only for visitors to your homepage, but to each piece of content you publish as well.

3. Provide Value

The worst thing you can do is to throw together a low quality offer that provides zero value. If someone subscribes to your email list in order to get your offer and they discover that it is not something of value they are going to unsubscribe from your list and probably never interact with your brand again. Consumers are presented with offers every single day. Virtually every single website has a free guide or some “value” offer to encourage the visitor to submit his or her email address.

Put yourself in the shoes of your target market and think about what they would like. What would they consider to be something useful and valuable enough to give you’re their email address? The eBook we give out on our website is over 80 pages and provides real value. It isn’t an 8- page advertisement, and that is why our unsubscribe rate is almost zero! One of the biggest mistakes responsible for poor email marketing performance is a low quality offer.

4. Study Your Conversion Metrics

You need to constantly track and evaluate your conversion numbers. If your subscriber number slow down and die off then you need to make changes. Split testing your offer is one of the easiest ways to see what is going on with your numbers. If your visitors feel like the offer is not valuable then they will pass, so test multiple offers and see what one pulls in the most subscribers.

You can also test different form colors, button text and colors, and even the form fields that you require. One reason many businesses see a low conversion rate when it comes to their email list is because they are asking the visitor for too much information. Gather just enough information to make an initial contact with your subscriber.

5. Spell Out Your Offer

If your visitors are not subscribing to your list it might not be because of the actual offer, and instead the problem is how to offer is being presented. Take a look at some offers out there. Many just simply say “free download” or “free eBook” – a generic CTA like that will never produce great results. The visitor has no idea what the offer is, so they have very little interest. If anyone does submit after seeing a weak CTA will be a very low quality (and useless) lead.

If you are offering a free eBook then you need to make sure that someone can look at your CTA and immediately know what the eBook is about and what they will gain from reading it.

These tips will help you build your email list, but don’t forget that email marketing is just a small piece of a successful online marketing strategy. If you would like more free online marketing tips make sure to sign up for our free marketing newsletter and download a copy of our eBook titled, “The Complete A-Z Online Marketing Strategy Guide.”

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