Growing your email list for marketing

Electronic mail is the one of the most common means of communication today. Little wonder, marketing professionals are using the mass mailing strategy to communicate to their target audiences in order to gain new followers and customers. They know that emails are conversational. Although mass mailing comes with its challenges, it is an effective marketing tool. In fact, failure to exploit mass mailing as a marketing tool means that you are missing an opportunity to get your brand out there. An Electronic mailing list is a special way of using the email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. Basically, it is a list generated for all emails in your database that can be divided into groups. For example, you can have an email list tagged ‘Clients’ because all the emails on that list are clients. The point of creating or building email lists is to send the right message to the right people at the right time with the aim of enhancing your marketing effectiveness. However, growing an email list organically takes a lot of time, effort and patience to achieve. The organic way means growing a list through the traditional opt-in methods. But smart marketers have learnt to look beyond the traditional way of expanding marketing reach by adopting more creative ways of growing an email list. Hubspot.com has some interesting ideas on how to grow an email list:

Starting with your contacts

There is no better way to build your email list than to start with your contacts. You can easily import your contact list from any mailing engine, such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

It is also advisable to ask for permission from your contacts to mass mail which will show your brand as considerate and thoughtful. Nobody wants to receive mails that they do not need. So, it is usually better to indicate that they can unsubscribe at any time.

Encourage your current email subscribers to share and forward your emails by including social sharing buttons and an “Email to a Friend” button in your marketing emails.

This will open up more channels to new networks, friends and colleagues who may be interested in what you have to offer. Be sure to include a powerful and conspicuous call-to-action such as ‘subscribe’.

Create remarkable email content

This goes without saying that consistent, useful information or updates are sharable to others, thereby increasing your reach and helping you to grow your list.

Promote online contests

Promote an online contest, like a free giveaway, and have entrants sign up or submit using their email address. Also share the contest on social networks to increase your reach.

Create separate email lists

To send specific content to various segments, there is a need to create separate email lists. The type of message you will send to clients will generally not be the same as you would send to visitors who are yet to become clients. Creating separate lists also helps you to reduce the rate at which people subscribing from your email list.

Add a link to your employees’ signatures

Adding a link to your employees’ signatures will guide other people to a landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list.

My favourite method of growing email lists creatively is adding news items at the bottom of my email signature with a link to a subscription form. This catches my targets and arouses interest.

Add call-to-action buttons

Add a call-to-action your social media pages, such as Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+. Then link the CTA button to a landing page that requires an email address to access information.

Attract subscribers through gated offers

This requires a visitor to sign in or subscribe before they can access your offer, and it is a great way of building an email list. People are naturally curious and this has been used several times with successful results.

Link to offers that capture email signups throughout your website

Keep your offers up front and include calls-to-action in every page of your website. Key places to consider are your website homepage, the main page of your blog, your ‘about us’ page and your ‘contact us’ page.

People love promotions

Take advantage of this to run a partnership with a well-known website or email newsletter to help you collect email addresses from a fresh source.

(Source - Punch)