Email Marketing: How to Build a List of Subscribers
With all the new social media sites that are available to use to get your message out there. It is easy to forget about email, especially when you consider that there are 3.8 billion email accounts in the world today. The email open rate is nearly 50%, with even higher rates among millennials, so if you got a product that you think fits the younger generations then email may be your go to platform. We are going to look at how you can build a list effectively by effective list building.
What is List Building?
List building is the method of gathering a list of subscribers for an email list. They are the basis of email marketing, without it, you have no email marketing. Whilst social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have the potential for quick and free marketing, they do have a catch.
The catch is that all of these social media platforms require you to pay to reach your audience with paid marketing. This can be in the form of promoted posts, sponsored stories or other types of marketing. These methods do have the potential of reaching your audience. If you want to keep costs down then List Building is the way to go.
The great thing about building an email list is that it does take time but it is also free. Emails, when done right, can be a very effective form of marketing. Marketing that does not require a paid budget. The downside of email marketing is that there is a lot of competition. You are competing with both SPAM and other types of email marketing. It is therefore very important to build your list effectively.
How to build your list effectively
Here are some pointers for you to follow for building your list effectively.
Offer something valuable
When you offer something valuable in return for an email address you have a higher chance of people signing up. Make sure that it is something of value though, there is no point in people signing up just for the sake to getting a freebie. You want people to sign up because they want to get something valuable in return. This could be anything from a free ebook to a discount voucher for your store.
Make it easy to sign up
Make sure that you make the signup process as simple as possible. There is nothing more frustrating than getting to the end of the signup process then finding out that they forgot to give you their email address!
Place signup forms in the right places
Have a sign up box on each page of your website. A good way to do this is to have the sign up box appear on the right side of the screen while the user is looking at the content.
Keep signup forms simple
The signup form should not have too much content on it. The last thing that you want to do is for people to sign-up and then abandon the process because they were frustrated filling out the form.
Make a compelling offer
Once your visitor has made it to the end of the signup process you need to give them a compelling offer. Essentially why they should sign up. Just giving them something that they can get straight away, as mentioned above, is not the best idea.
Finally, give your subscribers options
This is very important. Give subscribers options as to how they receive emails. This is a way to keep them engaged. If you do not want them to get promotional emails, offer them that option. If they are getting a newsletter and find that interesting then they might like an opt in box where they can opt in to get more information about that particular topic.
Email marketing is a very effective form of marketing if used effectively. Do not be shy to give it a go!
