How To Grow Your Email List
When you’re running an online business, one of the best assets you can work on building from the very beginning is your email list. Not only are people who subscribe to your email list more likely to remember who you are and keep coming back to your website, they’re more likely to buy your products and services.
In order to grow your email list, you need a variety of ways to get email addresses so that your business can be built and strengthened.
Using Free Content To Grow Your Email List
It’s important to remember that if you’re obtaining email addresses for marketing, you need permission from somebody to send them emails. Yes, you can go out and buy hundreds of email addresses.
But if you receive an unsolicited email from somebody you don’t know, do you click on it and do business with that person? Chances are you don’t. That’s because people don’t buy from people they don’t know. Never send an email to someone who didn’t request to get an email from you. Your prospect has to get to know, like and trust you first.
Effective email marketing is all about building a relationship with your subscriber. Here are 3 list building strategies that build relationships and are ethical, practical and effective.
1. Offer A Freebie
You can offer something free, such as an ebook, but tell your audience they need to give their email address in order to receive it. This means that they get the information that they want, and you get their email address to add to your list. If you’re selling any products on your website, offer to give them a small discount if they subscribe to your weekly or monthly newsletter or mailing list. Most people won’t think twice about giving their email address if it means they get to save some money in return.
You may be concerned that building a list of “freebie seekers” will lead to poor sales and profits. And that’s a valid concern. After all, if you spend a lot of time and effort creating an ebook full of amazing content, why should you give it away? Why not sell it? The answer lies in how the human brain works when you receive a gift. When you receive something of value, without having to pay for it, you automatically feel like you “owe” that person something. This is known as the Law of Reciprocity.
Make sure it solves a big problem in your prospect’s life. Your new email subscriber will feel a sense of gratitude and respect for you. They will be more likely to reciprocate with a purchase in the future if you’ve provided a problem-solving resource for free.
2. Create A List of Reasons To Subscribe
It’s great if you can communicate to your audience all the benefits of subscribing to your mailing list. Rather than trying to be subtle, it’s often better to be upfront about the fact that you’re going to add them to your emailing list. If people are genuinely interested in your business, products, services or blog, they’ll be happy to receive updates. The people who are genuinely interested are the most valuable ones to have as you grow your email list. They are the people who are more likely to click on the new posts and links which you send over to them.
Rather than trying to reach a wide audience, think about the ways you can reach a more targeted audience. This will ensure that the people you do reach are very interested in what you have to say and the topics that you’re covering. While you might think a business which is very niche will get less interest, it will get high quality interest from people who are serious about that particular topic.
3. Run Competitions and Challenges
With an online business, one of the best things that you can do is build a good sense of community and develop the relationship you have with your website visitors. If you give them something special and which is different from the regular ‘buy from me messages’ out there, they will keep returning and will remain interested.
A good way to get people interested in your business is by holding competitions. Your website visitors and readers submit their email address so that they can be contacted if they’re a winner. By running a competition, you have something where people have to give you their email address in order to proceed.
In order to maintain your reputation and credibility, you should ensure that you hold a genuine competition and announce a winner. Publicly announcing the winner on your website (with their permission of course) will also encourage other people to sign up and submit their email address.
Depending on the type of website you’re running, you can get people involved by holding competitions. While fewer people will enter a competition than they will post a comment or share a post, it’s still a great way to grow your email list and build solid relationships with the key members of your audience. You can ask them to enter a competition by doing something and submitting it to you, or simply have a monthly draw where they can enter their email address and be in with the chance of winning.
Free Checklist: Grow Your Email List By Running A Competition
Online competitions are a great for building email lists, learning more about your target audience and engaging with your. Plus people love competitions and challenges! To help you get a competition or challenge started, download my free checklist, Running A Challenge, and get more people interacting with your website to help grow your email list, drive sales and generate profits for your business.
