For online businesses, email list-building is one of the must-do things to increase conversions and business growth. Growing your email list will help you have a successful business.
Why is that?
Nowadays, email is used everywhere and for almost anything. Regarding communication, email is more popular, and it has more conversions than other platforms. If you want a direct line from your business to your audience, this is what you should be focusing on.
When it comes to CTR, Facebook ads only has around 0.07% while Twitter has just about the same. If you’re thinking of getting more followers, Twitter CTR decreases with the more followers you get according to AdWeek. Let’s take a look at Mashable who has millions of followers. They only get around 0.11% CTR on tweets.
If you want something with a higher click-through rate, then you’re looking at email marketing. When it comes to conversions, ROI and social reach, email is your ace in the deck.
What is an Email List?
An email list is a business’ collection of email addresses that are created through lead-generating campaigns. When members opt out or unsubscribe, the email list decreases. On the other hand, when businesses solicit contact information, this will grow.
If you don’t do something, your email list will be reduced to zero. The email marketing database degrades by about 22.5% every year according to Hubspot. This means you should create a strategy to help make up for all of your lost contacts.
But how do you lose such a significant number of contacts?
Whenever email addresses move from one company to another, they change. Some abandon the old AOL address.
As such, you should continuously add fresh contacts to your list and level up your email marketing campaigns so your numbers will keep increasing. If you are tempted to buy an email list, we’re here to say that you should never do it. It’s called the kiss of death for some reason.
Why You Should not Buy Email Lists:
Good email address lists are never on sale
There is always a high chance that you will never find a high-quality email list that you can purchase. If it is for sale, it means that the email addresses there are mostly unqualified for marketing outreaches or just plain unresponsive.
The people on a rented or purchased list don’t know you or your brand
You’re risking more unsubscriptions this way. Purchased or rented lists are mostly scraped from other websites which is a dirty trick in getting contacts.
However, if you did purchase email addresses that were legitimately earned, these might merely have opted to receive emails from the company who sold you the list. If the recipient doesn’t recall opting in to receive information from your company, he or she will most likely mark you as “spam.”
You are harming your IP reputation and email deliverability
If your emails are identified as spam, you risk your company and IP address’ reputation. Your Sender Score will suffer, and you will have a hard time rebuilding your IP’s reputation.
People will think that you are annoying
Don’t you find emails from companies you never heard of a bit annoying? I bet you wouldn’t even want to buy from them. If you force your content on someone’s email, you lose their trust.
You are violating the GDPR rules of consent
Most, if not all, of email marketers around the world, are required to let their recipients opt out of email lists. Since May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) took effect. Because of this, having purchased email lists is not being compliant to this. You will even risk your email account. Email service providers might close your account if it suspects that your email keeps sending unwanted content.
Tips To Growing Your Email List:
With all that said, it is still better to build and grow your very own email list. Use your content marketing to reel them in and to build trust between you, just like how you want to have a strong relationship with a blogger outreach quality process.
So let’s dive in.
Draw in subscribers with lead magnets
What’s a lead magnet? This is an irresistible bribe that you can show your audience in exchange for their contact information. You see this almost everywhere. Travel blogs will ask for your email address, so you can have a copy of their ebook “How To Travel The World And Make Money,” or something like that.
You can offer anything for free, and they have to provide you with their email address to download it or access it. This free piece can be an email course, a guide, an eBook or a white paper. Whichever it may be, the main point is that you are offering value in exchange for something as valuable.
Here are some tips in making good lead magnets.
You have to be specific. Your lead magnet should address a particular problem that your audience has.
Provide a solution to the problem.
You don’t need a lengthy lead magnet. According to Digital Marketer, the longer your content, the less likely it will convert. Take an ebook; for example, it can be less than 20 pages! There’s no need for it to be that long. Try to keep it short and straightforward.
In just a few minutes of reading or opening your lead magnet content, the prospect should be able to see the benefit including increased insights, knowledge or something else.
Have evergreen lead magnet content
Create a content that will stay up to date and fresh no matter how long it will be. This will help you increase your email list. Make sure your content would be useful in a few weeks, months or years time.
Use CTAs
What’s a CTA? A CTA or call-to-action is something that will urge your readers to do whatever it is you want them to do. A CTA is what you will need to push your reader to give you their email address. Keep these short and simple. Also, always include these in relevant blog posts. Never create a blog post that doesn’t have a matching call-to-action. This is how you add ROI for every content you publish.
Connect both CTAs and lead magnets to an opt-in landing page
So you now have an evergreen lead magnet content and have a call-to-action. Now you have to connect all of these. Every successful lead magnet and CTA need a corresponding landing page. Point your CTA to a form to a place where they can’t help resist but give you their email addresses in exchange for content.
You can also try gated contents
Aside from freebies, you can also gate some of your content to get some email subscriptions. One example is having half of the blog post available to read. To be able to read further, they have to enter their email address to unlock the rest of the post.
This is easy too since you are merely using a content that is already in your website. However, to be successful, make sure that your gated content offers high value, is well-written and very much informative so that the reader won’t have any choice but to provide his or her email address.
In simpler terms, if you have crappy content, your readers will feel cheated. Remember always to provide value. Gate your best contents so your readers won’t feel bad after hitting that submit button.
Create a “Hub Pages” account
One other thing that you can do to turn your blog posts into lead magnets is by gathering them together and creating “hub pages.”
A hub page is a”hub” for your blog’s best posts under one topic. Once you’ve created a hub page, you can turn them into lead magnets by adding a CTA. Make it big and hard to miss. Ensure that your CTA appeals to the ones who are browsing for some knowledge on a specific topic. For your hub page, you can add an opt-in form and use a CTA to push visitors to enter their email to receive updates for every newly published content.
Use CTAs for Guest Posts
If you frequently do guest posts, you can add a CTA to your post. By post, we don’t mean the actual content, but the author bio is an excellent spot for a CTA. You can link back to your main site or a landing page created only for that guest post.
Draw people into your website and intrigue the readers to make them want to subscribe to you. Aside from this, you can also link to a few key places that feature your brand.
Conclusion: Once you have started building that email list, you will see the benefits soon enough. However, that’s not the end of it. You have to work so you can keep your subscribers around. You wouldn’t want them hitting unsubscribe, right? And that’s about it for our tips in creating an email list.
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