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How To Build An Email List From Scratch

In this digital era, no matter what type of business you operate, an email list is the key to digital marketing. Even there is a saying that building an email list is the first thing you should do as an online business owner. But convincing someone to give you their email address during their first visit to your eCommerce site is not easier. Even if you convince them, it’s difficult to build a good email list that will help your business grow.

Now, you might be wondering how to build an email list from scratch? Don’t worry!

In this guide, we’ll help you to learn the basics of building your email list from scratch. But not just any list. We’ll discuss how you can attract new subscribers who’ll engage with your email marketing campaigns and help your business grow.

How to Build an Email List?

Every successful email marketing campaign begins with an engaging email list. Though there are thousands of email list-building strategies, very few of them are proven to work in all types of industries. In this section, we will introduce those proven email list-building strategies that will help you to build your email list.

1. Choose an Email Service Provider:

Before taking any other effort, you need to ensure all your efforts are going to be fruitful. For this, you need to choose a good email service provider in the very first place. An email service provider not only communicates with your new email list but also organizes your email list.

If you’re planning to grow your list from scratch, look for affordability, ease of use, scalability, segmentation, and personalization features. Choose the email marketing platform that includes features like a landing page builder, marketing automation, and finally, A/B testing capabilities.

Though there are many options to choose from. We’d recommend our own service, OptinMagic to build your email list from scratch. Even though OptinMagic is a very new email service provider, it comes with a total package of features that meet every business’s needs.

2. Create a Sign-up Form:

After choosing an email service provider, you should build your signup form and embed it on all relevant pages of your site. If your goal is to reach a broader audience, don’t be pushy and spammy with email sign-up forms. Remember, the shorter your form will be, the more subscriptions you will get. The main field for your signup form should be an email address. Additionally, you can ask for basic information like name. While designing your signup form, make sure you’re adding a strong CTA about the value of signing up, whether it’s a coupon, exclusive content, or regular news and updates. Also, the headline of your signup form should tell the visitors exactly why they should subscribe to your newsletter.

Now, where should you embed your signup form? As long as you aren’t interrupting your user’s experience, you can add wherever you want to the sign-up form on your site.  You can embed the form in your blog homepage, exit pop-ups, sidebar, headers, and footers. You can even share your signup form in your transactional emails, in social media posts, and even promote it with Facebook ads.  But the best option is adding it to high-traffic pages of your website.

3. Build A Landing Page:

The purpose of a landing page is to accomplish one action, that action can be a purchase, a share, or, a sign-up. It gives the opportunity to get users signed up so that they can receive the piece of content you have for them. So, instead of sending users to the homepage and risking them getting lost, it’s far better for them to a landing offer a unique resource.

As the goal of the landing page is to make users input their email addresses, keep your landing page very simple. Don’t include too much information. Just keep a strong headline, beautiful relevant imagery, a field for the user’s email address and a single call to action. Also, create A/B variants of your landing page, and run tests to see what works best for your audience.

4. Use Pop-ups:

Pop-ups are a great way to remind your potential mail list contacts to join if they want. Though they have a mixed reputation, pop-ups are effective for building lists and increasing conversion rates. Your headline needs to be catchy and give them a reason to fill out the form so that people stop and read the pop-up. If you are able to make your pop-ups appealing through high-quality content and irresistible incentives, they could increase conversions by as much as 60%.

However, if pop-ups aren’t used at the right times, they can interrupt the user experience. And that is the worst thing you can do if you are trying to attract new subscribers. You need to balance a great user experience while still using pop-ups to acquire email addresses. Make sure the pop-ups aren’t negatively affecting your time on site, page views, or bounce rates. To keep your popups engaging, always let the user intake some part of your content. For example, if you are adding pop-ups on your blog post, give the visitor a chance to read some of the content before flashing the popup. You can even automate a popup to appear when the user is about to leave. The pop-up will retrieve the situation and collect an email address.

5. Get More Subscribers By Using Social Media:

If you have social media accounts, it’s a good idea to try and convert your follower into email subscribers as well. Post regularly on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram to drive followers to sign up for your email list with a compelling call to action. As long as you have an appropriate offer, it will help you to explode your email list with dozens or hundreds of email addresses.

There are a number of different methods for allowing people to subscribe to your email list from your social channel. You can run contests, giveaways, offer free downloads or exclusive products to attract attention and encourage your social media followers to join your newsletter. You can also link back all your social media channels and outbound marketing initiatives to a custom landing page. Moreover, you can join relevant social media groups where your target audience is active and post links to your own product or services.

6. Offer Incentives:

People won’t give you their email addresses unless they get something. So you need to give them something in return for agreeing to share a valid email address. This something could be coupons, discounts, free items, and enrollment in a loyalty program. When you sell something online and offer discounts for first-order discounts to potential customers, it creates a great incentive for people to join your email list. This strategy is called the lead magnet. It is basically a freebie you offer your website visitors in exchange for their email addresses. It will not only help you to build your email list but also increase your sales.

7. Host a Contest or Giveaway:

Another great email list-building tactic that you can consider is to utilize the powerful giveaway. The news of the giveaway spread fast and quickly builds hype around your brand and grows your email list at the same time. Just make sure the prize that you’ll be giving away is directly aimed at your target audience. You don’t want to end up gifting unengaged people who aren’t interested in your topic so don’t give a product that everybody wants. When you choose a highly relevant product to give away, it grows your email list and also allows you to promote your products at the same time. To pick a winner, you can run a raffle-style contest or you can randomly pick someone from your current email subscribers.

8. Use your Email Signature:

When your users receive emails they may want the option to click a link and explore your company in more depth. An email signature is typically a block of text at the bottom of emails that includes a link to go directly to your email newsletter, or it could be a link to a blog post or landing page with email subscription CTA’s. It’s a visual reminder of you and your brand which can stay in the reader’s head long after they’ve closed their inbox. Replacing your email signature with a call to action helps recipients connect with you and your brand in more meaningful ways. Most of the popular email service providers offer email signature customization with an in-built signature editor. Alternatively, you can design one in a graphic editor to embed it manually.

Nothing can be more impactful than having your own customers refer you and your brand. A direct recommendation from a known one is a sure way to convince people to join your list, let alone trust your brand and purchase from you. That’s how an email referral program can be the key to taking your list growth to the next level.

9. Using a referral program:

With referral programs, encourage your subscribers to share your offers with their friends, family, and colleagues to grow your email list. You can either just ask them if they know people who would enjoy your offer as much as they do. Or you can try to give away something valuable in exchange for a referral. The more people they will refer, the better reward they will receive. Those rewards can be free shipping, a $50 coupon or discount, a 25% discount, or even a free gift.

Build Your Email List Today!

Hopefully, you’ve got everything you need to build your email list from scratch. Just follow the strategies in this article, start sending emails to your list on a regular basis and generate whole lotta leads.

What list-building tactics helped you build your email list? Let us know in the comments below.

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