Email list forms the biggest asset for any organization. It is simply a list of emails that firms have gathered from customers or website visitors who would like to receive updates, discounts, information, and other details about the product or business. Through this list, you can generate constant traffic to the website and also engage the audience in a more personalized way than your landing page, blog posts or tweets. For instance, one of the popular e-commerce sites like Amazon uses email data of customers to send offers regularly and get them to buy more products.
In case, you aren’t selling any products, but your business can still amass emails so you can get people back to your site or a new blog continually. It increases the repeat traffic and thereby your brand’s worth. Nothing gets engagement like email because if someone has given you their email address, then they are ready to engage with your content or products. Also, when you build an email list, it’s solely “yours.” You don’t have to worry about a vendor, third party or others changing the rules on you.
Therefore, building an email database must be a top priority for an organization. But how to do so? Convincing someone to share their email address isn’t a simpler task as no one wants to fill their spam folder. To help you build your Small Business Email List, we have listed ten easy ways here.
1. Know Your Audience
Before creating an email list, you should know your target market. So, we recommend you to create a market persona that represents your ideal audience. A primary persona should include:
- Name
- Company Name
- Job Title
- Education
- Industry Type
- Salary
- Revenue
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- His/her Goal
- Company Objectives
These details help you to understand the prospects better.
2. Create a Website
Once you know your audience, you can start with the creation of the website. It gives space for the members in the email list to gather and learn more about your brand. Most of the business owners fear as it is quite expensive to build one. So, we advise you to create a simple page website consisting of email opt-in form. There are various tools online that lets you create a single landing page quickly. This page can include some of the critical features of your product or services, images, and one or two informative videos if there is any.
Make sure you have at least one opt-in form in your website (if it has multiple pages). An opt-in form is where interested users enter their email address. But always ensure that you comply with data protection policies such as GDPR, Anti-Spam, and Can-Spam. Otherwise, you may end up paying huge penalties!
3. Make Some Offer
A website with just an opt-in form doesn’t help you to build a long email list. So, start giving some offers to the users as they always expect some reasons to join your list. Unless you give something in exchange for sharing the email address, users will not sign up for your newsletter subscription. As you already know more about your target audience, it’s easy to analyze what offer might interest them. You can give them a free tool, report, eBook, or free access to your software for a limited time. That’s it. You are all set to gather the email address.
4. Write Blogs
As you already have a website now, why not create some compelling contents in the form of blogs? It helps you to establish a strong brand reputation in the market and also gain customer trust. Write about your niche market and stand out as a leader. If you lack good writers in your team, you can always outsource the content or share the relevant materials from other websites. It helps you to keep the users engaged with your brand.
Besides, you can also ask them to share their email address if they wish to receive more such content directly to their inbox. Simply posting some of the targeted materials with a call-to-action button and strong SEO is adequate to grow the traffic as well as subscribers.
5. Use Social Media
Social media is one of the most reliable places where you can find almost all your prospects. It will give your brand a required exposure far beyond the circle of friends and family. So, post a link to your landing page on platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and everywhere else you think your audience is present. Use the right hashtag to draw the attention of interested users. It will likely pull in many email addresses then you expect. Do not forget to provide them with an incentive after they share the emails.
However, certain groups in social media channels let you share your link or description about your product on the page. Pick the ones where your prospects are most active and start sharing the link. But remember – “Too much of anything is too bad.” So, restrict yourself on the number of links you share in such pages. As long as you have an appropriate plan, and offers in hand, your list grows continuously to hundreds of thousands of email addresses.
Also Read: 7 Ways to Successfully Utilize the Power of B2B Marketing Database
6. Design a Business Card
Business cards are a small and inexpensive printed piece which any business owner can afford. You can include a statement such as “subscribe to our newsletter” or similar texts in these cards. So, whenever you meet people face to face for any reason, you can share your business card with them and also ask for their card. Firms can follow the same pattern in the reception desk of their office.
You can set a small box on the counter or the reception desk, and request visitors to drop their cards in it. If possible, you can offer some incentives such as a gift card, free product or service to those people. Besides, companies can add an offer on the back of their card that encourages the visitors to sign up to receive the emails.
7. Purchase Ads
Growing your list organically (steps mentioned above) may take a long time although it is the best method to do. But if you wish to gain massive traffic to your website and gain a large number of email address in a short span, paid plans are the only way out. Social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the best sources for the firms of any size. With the powerful segmentation feature, you can quickly target the ad to the requisite demographic.
You may have to invest some dollars for these ads, but it will bring more traffic to your landing page, grows the audience list, and also helps to gain more followers in the platform. You can also choose the Google AdWords option that gives substantial targeted traffic to your website and grows your list still longer.
It’s time to welcome the Subscribers
Email is the most ascendable way to make sales with new clients and also build a more profound relationship with the old ones. It is something that every business owners agree upon. But most of them fail to build the list at the earlier stage and regret later for not doing it a little sooner. Don’t be one among them and miss out an opportunity to engage the audience or drive new business. Always remember that the more people you have on your list, the chances of seeing your Email Marketing messages increases, and directly it spikes the sales rate. So, use these email building tactics now and grow your customer base.