How to Build an Email List

Did you know it costs 5 times more to find new customers than to keep and maintain current customers?

To help improve your business sales cycle, email marketing is a high-impact, low-cost way of delivering messages to your current and prospective customers𑁋if, you have a great email list.

Keep reading for incredibly effective strategies to build an email list and grow your business.

Build an Email List the Right Way

<span class="wpil_internal_link" style="font-weight: 400;”>Email marketing allows you to build relationships with your customers. You can use Facebook ads, website pop-ups, and other strategies to start growing your email list.

1. Ask Effectively

Building an email list starts with asking. The key to growing a good list is to develop a script, both online and in-person, that answers the following questions your potential subscribers will have:

• What’s in it for them? Explain the value of joining your email list. This may require exclusive promotions, discounts, invitations to events, or value-focused content.
  
• What objections do they have? Address any potential concerns they may have when they join your list. How often are you sending? Will it be easy to unsubscribe if it’s not for them?
  
• How can they sign up? Make the process of providing their email painless and foolproof. Are you using a pop-up lead capture or static signup forms embedded on your webpage?
  
• What happens next? Once they submit their email, what can the expect to happen and why kinds of emails will they receive. Do you have a welcome email to your list before sending them on a journey with your business?
  

This is an important starting point before implementing strategies to grow your email list.  

2. Personalized Call-to-Actions on Every Page

Imagine arriving to a blog about “content marketing” and a pop-up appears with an offer to download a complete guide to content marketing. According to Hubspot, these kinds of personalized call-to-actions have a 42% higher view-to-submission rate than using a call-to-action that is the same for all visitors.

When you can serve your visitors content that reflects their needs and interests, you’re going to achieve higher rates of subscribers. Instead of using a single lead magnet to build your email list, evaluate your current website and create ebooks and white papers that target your visitors’ unique needs.

3. Pop-ups & Lead Capture Forms

Modern websites are using pop-ups that are strategically timed to present an offer to their visitors. There are also location dependent pop-ups that reveal the offer after a visitors has scrolled down a certain length of a page. These pop-ups can be used to feature your personalized CTA.

When researching SEO on Backlinko.com, this is the pop-up they use to capture your email:

After clicking “GET THE FREE GUIDE NOW”, they ask for your email which redirects you to the guide after submission.  

If done right, your pop-ups and strategic email capture forms can give you a substantial boost in leads.

Here’s another example. Digitalmarketer.com used pop-ups only with returning visitors when they stayed for 15 seconds or more. Also, they were able to segment out those who were already subscribed to their newsletter.

This was the result of their campaign:

• Acquired 2,689 more leads in 2 weeks;
• <span class="wpil_internal_link" style="font-weight: 400;”>Increased sales by 30.22%;
• Decreased bounce rate by 8.52%;
• Increased time on site by 35%.

If you can deliver valuable content to your visitors in the right place and at the right time, you can see an increase in results for your efforts.

4. Paid Social Media Ads

If you have a valuable piece of content to offer your target audience, Facebook and Instagram ads can be used to build an email list. You may need a dedicated landing page to feature your opt-in form and deliver your content.

Remember, the purpose of a lead magnet (i.e. the content you are offering in exchange for an email) is to provide value to your target audience. Focus on highlighting their pain points and how your content can solve the problem. This also helps to establish your business as an authority and build credibility in your market.

Once you have decided the focus of your content, you can create an unbeatable ad campaign.

Since you want your target audience to take a particular action (opt-in to your lead magnet), choose the Conversions objective.

Then, you can choose a conversion event. Be sure you have properly installed Facebook’s pixel on your website (here’s our guide to installing the pixel on WordPress).

The last step in your ad campaign is to set up your targeting.

Since lead magnets are “top-of-funnel” content, you want to target cold audiences. These are audiences who have never engaged with your business and will be discovering you for the first time.

For ideas on designing and creating social media ads to build your email list, try these:

• Facebook Ad Templates
• Facebook Ad Design
• Instagram Ad Examples
• Instagram Ad Specs & Sizing

STRUGGLING TO SET UP YOUR OWN FACEBOOK ADS? Follow these easy steps to creating a proven Facebook ad campaign.

5. Use Email List Software

As you build your email list, you’ll want to use the right email marketing software. Here are a few of the top services available today:

• ActiveCampaign
• Constant Contact
• MailChimp
• Klaviyo

At VoyMedia, we recommend using Klaviyo. Here’s why:

If you want to create simple text-only emails or stunning image-heavy newsletters, Klaviyo has an easy-to-use, drag-n-drop builder. You can set up automated sequences and segment lists based on interests, behaviors, and other demographic features.

For ecommerce business owners, Klaviyo allows you to integrate your store (i.e. Shopify, WooCommerce, Magneto, etc.) and create detailed profiles for each of your customers. You can track the last interaction with your email campaigns and website. It analyses their spending habits by looking at the types of products they purchase and tailors actions to their needs.

Click here to read our Ecommerce Email Marketing Guide.