Email list building is an inbound marketing necessary evil. Often, we focus so much on content creation that we overlook the critical importance of building lists to send our brilliant promotional emails out to.
The good news is there are many painless email list-building strategies to help grow your lists and increase your circulation. And, since statistics claim that your email database degrades 22.5 percent every year (HubSpot), you need to be sure that you are regularly adding fresh contacts to your lists. And, no, we are not going to tell you that buying a list is the best way to build your database.
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Pop Ups
Yes, those annoying pop-up ads from the early days of the Internet are still around. Fortunately, like much of the web, they have grown up and become more sophisticated. Now, they are “content-upgrade” pop-ups. And while some of you might still hate them, they do work. Digital marketing guru, Brian Dean of Backlinko, grew his numbers from 35 subscribers per day to 75 per day, resulting in more than 3,600 new contacts in just three months. The difference now is that pop-ups are being used similarly to CTAs—offering specific content or information in return for entering an email address.
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Sharing is Caring
One of the simplest ways to grow your list is by creating outstanding, shareable content! And by asking people to share. Your readers (those already on your list) are more likely to share your emails with friends, family, and colleagues if the content is well-written and relevant. Plus, encouraging them to share it—and making is easy to so—increases your chances of adding names to your email database. Always include social sharing and “share with a friend” buttons in your emails and add a subscribe CTA at the bottom as well.
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Get Social
Implementing a social media campaign is a great email list-building strategy for several reasons. You can reach a broad range of readers who are not currently on your list and entice them to subscribe via various offers, such as free content in the form of an ebook or whitepaper. And, like email CTAs, you can make content conditional. You can also combine approaches and create a list clean-up campaign that you promote on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram). In addition to sending a message to current subscribers asking them to resign up (confirm email), you can gain new subscribers and reinvigorate older ones whose radar you may have fallen off. The owners of those bad emails might see you on SM, remember how much they like you, and re-subscribe with a current email address.
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Strategic Partnership
Working with a strategic partner is a good way to access a fresh, relevant audience. Run a promotion with a complementary business and get access to a wide range of possible subscribers. If you co-host an event (virtual or in-person), swap leads with your partner post-even to help both of you. And, strategic email list-building strategies have the potential to lead to additional, mutually beneficial partnerships in your industry.
The best part about email list-building is that there are more than just these four strategies out there. There are myriad creative ways to grow your lists and increase your leads. Have a sure-fire trick you’ve used to cultivate you email list? Let us know about it on our Facebook page!
If you need more help building leads download this free guide now!
