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5 Effective Ways to Build Your Email Marketing List From Scratch

Recently updated on January 19th, 2018 at 11:59 pm

Email marketing is almost ubiquitous now when it comes to advertising campaigns. Especially if you are an e-commerce business, having a dedicated email marketing team is an absolute necessity.

The development of even smarter smartphones has opened new opportunities for email marketers. In fact, these tablets, phones, and other gadgets have a higher email usage compared to their desktop counterparts. Email is always read first on mobile before anything else at an average of 25.6%. 55% of all the emails read everyday are opened on a mobile device.

So you want to tap into email marketing but you don’t have the mailing list to do so? I have you covered. Here are some tips on how to build your email marketing list from scratch.

1. Use your transactional emails to your advantage.

When a user signs up or buys any item from your website, subscribes to your blog content, inquires about your business, or downloads a freebie, you usually send an email for confirmation or response. These are transactional emails, so called because they are one-time messages sent for every transaction. They are usually automated and not necessarily promotional. They are just there to acknowledge that a transaction was made between you and the customer.

However, you can leverage these emails to invite recipients to join your marketing list.

Person receiving a newsletter email with subscription invitation

Transactional emails are one of those messages that the recipient always opens simply because they are relevant to them. They started a transaction with your business so they want feedback from you. That’s why the importance of these emails for your email marketing list cannot be understated.

2. Integrate your email marketing with social media.

I’m pretty sure you already know where I’m coming from here. Almost everyone has a social media account, so it goes without saying that you should already have social media marketing campaigns to promote your business. What I would talk about however is the importance of integrating social media marketing with your other marketing efforts, such as email.

MORE: 7 Core Tips to Make Your Email Marketing Engaging

Email marketing is one of the best ways to convert leads into buyers. Social media is one of the best ways to gather leads. You see where I’m going here. The size of potential reach you can get from social media alone is staggering. Let that marketing investment in social media payoff by using it to build your email database.

For example, you should make your subscription address visible on your social media pages. You can use Facebook’s call-to-action button to lead your Facebook audience to a special landing page where they can sign up. You can also promote your mailing list by giving incentives to your audience for subscribing. Promotions such as discounts or freebies effectively entice interested individuals to sign up for your email list.

3. Include an email marketing list subscription on your blog.

As with social media, integrating your blog with your site is a great way to get opt-ins for your email list. This success depends, of course, on if you have an extensive amount of good content on your blog. The idea is that people who search for topics that you write about find you through search engines. If your content is good enough, they will be interested in more.

MORE: Email Marketing 101: How to Craft the Perfect Subject Line

There are plenty of ways to achieve this. A simple way is to link your mailing list address to related blog posts. However, you can also achieve the same through blog plug-ins. Popular blogging platforms like Blogger or WordPress have several plug-ins for capturing email leads. There are also sign-up form plugins which get specific data from visitors. Just require a name and an email address to make it quick and easy.

4. Invite people to sign up for your list during events.

Trade shows are one of the events where you are sure that people who attend are interested in the industry.  Hence, they are also the best places to get email sign-ups for your email marketing list. Just a piece of paper or a computer spreadsheet and you’re good to go. Do try to get appropriate designs to maintain brand consistency though.

People signing up for an email list during a trade show

It’s fine to get mailing list subscriptions this way. However, you should still give booth visitors the freedom to choose. Put a checkbox on each to ask if they want to subscribe to your mailing list. That way, only those that are genuinely interested, and thus have a higher chance of conversion, will sign up.

5. Put your mailing list address on your business card.

Finally, a unique way of getting mailing list subscriptions is through your very own business card. I know it’s as simple as putting the email address of your subscription list at the back of your card but hear me out. It’s actually a good way for your business card recipients to know you better.

Part of the due diligence of networking is researching a potential partner’s business. Including a subscription list lets your recipient know how you communicate with your audience by subscribing to your mailing list. It is an easy to show them how your business works because they’ll have first-hand experience with your business offerings.

Do you have more tips on building your email marketing list? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

 

 

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