Winning Strategies for Email List Building for Successful Marketing Campaigns

Author: Team WH

Published On: 28-07-23

Last Updated on: 29-07-23

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

All your efforts to design an email campaign are futile without a concrete email list building strategy.

But what is email list building? This question is imperative when you are starting a business. Email list building is a process of collecting the email addresses of your potential customers to promote your services and products to them and encourage them to make a purchase. Hence, it is an essential aspect of your email campaigns.

However, convincing your target audience to provide their email addresses and opt-in for your marketing campaigns can be a monumental task. Fret not! In this blog, we will take you through the most effective strategies to grow your email list and explain why building an email list is important. Let’s dive in!

How Can a Vast Email List Help Your Email Campaigns?

Emails are essentially one of the most convenient ways to reach your customers. Here are some benefits of email list building for your email campaigns.

• Sending regular emails with quality content is much more affordable and effective.
• You connect with the people who opt-in for your emails. Hence the chances of conversions are high.
• With emails, targeting is easy, and you can personalise your email content according to customer behaviour. 
• You own your email list, which gives you control of your campaigns. You can decide when and whom to target and the kind of content that will attract your customers.

Top Email List Building Strategies You Should Try

Well-Timed Pop-Up and Slide-In Email Sign-up Forms 

Pop-up and slide-in forms are one of the most effective ways of email list building. They are dynamic, and you can set the pop-up timing, for example, when visitors reach a particular page, spend a certain amount of time on the website, or are about to leave (exit intent). 

You can also use them to offer exclusive content with a solid CTA and incentives like discounts and free trials to encourage sign-ups from your customers. 

Use Catchy Newsletter Subscription CTAs Across Your Social Handles

Make the most of your social media presence. Using strong CTAs on your business’s social media profile, leading to your dedicated sign-up page, is one of the most impactful email list building strategies.

Almost every social platform offers exclusive sign-up features that let the customers sign-up directly when they visit your profiles without leaving the platforms. For example, Facebook offers an ‘Add a Button’ option, which you can use as a sign-up link, while Twitter and YouTube provide sign-up cards to make the process easier. 

Display Sign-up Links in Email Signatures

Most businesses send dozens of emails daily, which essentially have email signatures at the bottom. While most email signatures display your company website link or other resources, you can use a catchy CTA that leads to your email list opt-in page. 

Just a bit of information about your company and email content alongside the sign-up CTA, and you are good to go.

Conduct Webinars to Educate and Motivate Your Audience 

Recently webinars have emerged as a powerful email list building tactic, as virtual events became popular during the pandemic. Conducting webinars and virtual workshops that provide valuable content to your audience can prompt them to provide their email addresses and contact information.

Moreover, it is an excellent way to engage directly with your potential customers to build trust and inform them about your upcoming offers. 

Attend Conferences and Business Events to Collect Sign-Ups

Presenting your business at a conference or trade show gives you an opportunity to collect email information. Take advantage of the events your target audiences are most likely to attend. Promote your business and special offers to the attendees and capture their attention. A positive experience at the event increases their chances of signing up for your emails later.

Organise a Giveaway to Grow Email List

With social media booming, online contests have become a thing. And let’s be honest, people love to win contests that offer free vouchers or goodies. Organising an attractive giveaway can enhance your brand presence among the target audience and persuade them to sign up.

You can make signing up mandatory to enter the giveaway contest along with follows on social media, comments, likes, etc, to build your email list and boost engagement. But make sure the giveaway is tempting enough so people can’t resist signing up!

Convey Social Proofs

Sometimes sending quality email content is not enough to attract your customers whose inboxes are flooded with marketing emails. Here using social proofs can be an effective strategy.

People tend to follow when they see other people’s actions. So, when you show them how many users have registered for your emails, it will naturally push your target audience to do the same. You can also display online reviews and testimonials to showcase your credibility and quality. 

Use Gated Content

If your website has valuable blog posts that are getting substantial traffic, you can make them exclusive by turning them into gated content. Gated content on a website requires the visitors to enter their email addresses to access the full content.

Use plugins to showcase a small part of your blogs or e-books and blur the remaining content to persuade interested readers to sign-up for more. Moreover, it does not affect your SEO rankings and thus, can be used as an effective way to grow email list.

Promote Referral Programs and Offer Discounts and Freebies

People love it when you offer great discounts or free goodies. Use this technique and provide exciting offers when your customers sign up for your emails. Promote discounts on your products or services, send goodies or free e-books, free shipping, etc, it can be anything that interests your customers. 

You can also use this tactic to set up a referral program to reward your existing customers for their loyalty and encourage them to refer their friends and family.

Moreover, these offers gain popularity rapidly and can help you grow your email list organically.

Don’t Forget Audience Segmentation

Email segmentation can help you separate your potential customers into groups based on their behaviour, website activity, content interests, and more. It can help you create email content that is relevant to these different as two groups may not have the same interest. Hence, sending emails that appeal to their interests can increase the chance of conversions, enhancing the success of your campaigns.

Wrapping Up

By implementing the email list building strategies discussed above, you can build an extensive email database that can be a powerful weapon in your email marketing campaigns. Analyse all the channels where you interact with your potential customers and see how they connect with your business before deciding what strategy works best for you. For instance, monitor customer engagement on all your social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, if you wish to leverage these channels to grow email list.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is an email list?

An email list is a catalogue of email addresses collected from people who have opted-in to receive your business emails. They usually subscribe to your marketing emails through a sign-up form on your website.

2. What is the ideal size of an email list?

No matter the size of your business, your email list building strategy should get you at least 1000 emails for running a successful email campaign and better conversion rates.

3. How many emails should you send in your email campaigns?

Initially sending emails twice a month is ideal, and you can gradually increase to one weekly email. If you have exciting offers to promote, you can even send two to three emails weekly.