How To Build An Email Marketing List

Successful email marketing depends on a high-quality email marketing list. Follow the guide below for 12 key insights into how to develop an effective email marketing list for your business.

The Brand Setter Agency's 12 Tips On Building A Profitable Email Marketing List

1. Take advantage of every opportunity to ask a customer if you can email them. Think of every single time you have contact with a customer as a chance to ask for email permission – and think of every time you haven’t incorporated a request for email permission as a lost opportunity.

2. Explain why subscribing can benefit your customers. You need to convince them why it is worthwhile to subscribe to your emails rather than all the other email lists they could sign up for. It’s useful to be clear about how you will use their email address and how often (daily, weekly, or monthly) they should expect emails from you.

3. Define criteria and goals for building an email marketing list. Think about how many people you want to email, what types of people you want to target, and if you have any time and budget constraints.  Bear in mind that it is more useful to have a short list of people who are very interested in your emails than it is to have a long list of the wrong people.

4. Figure out how much each additional email address is worth to your business. If you know their value, then you know how much time and money is worthwhile to invest in building your email marketing list.

5. Be up-front with your subscribers and other site visitors. Explain your privacy policy clearly and make it easy for people to find and read.  On the same note, never trick people into giving you permission to email them(for example, by setting up a system where they share their email address with you without realizing what they are consenting to). Even if it’s legal, it’s a breach of trust and this will not help you to develop an effective and high-quality email marketing list.

6. Consider including a fun and quick activity like a game in your email campaign. This tactic, called a viral campaign, can help draw subscribers in, increase engagement, and promote your company to new people.  When you use a viral campaign, make sure it features a quick and easy way for people to forward their score or invite other friends to play.

7. Make sure all your employees that interact with clients understand why building the email marketing list is important for your company. This is particularly important for the staff that enter email addresses into the system, because it is critical that they understand the value of accurately inputting email addresses.

8. Make the 'Subscribe' form easy to find. Put a subscription form on the top of your home page or even on every page of your website – you want to ensure that everyone who visits your website will see it. At the same time, avoid being too aggressive when you ask for email permission. An automatic pop-up window on your home page, for example, is more likely to drive people away than convince them to subscribe. Usually, people won’t even consider sharing their email address before they have at least read something about you.

9. Offer incentives to encourage people to subscribe. Give them a special offer – a discount, a free gift, or a chance to win a prize – if they subscribe or help spread the word about your product or company. This is most effective if the incentive has a connection with your product or service, because then your new subscribers will be more likely to be part of your target audience.

10. Add an option to refer a friend to subscribe to your email marketing list, and make sure to include an incentive for both the person recommending and their friend in order to encourage people to use this option.

11. Try to avoid collecting overly sensitive information. If you need to collect salary information, for example, people tend to be more comfortable sharing their salary range instead of their actual salary.  It also helps to make people feel more comfortable if you explain why you need and how you will use the information you’re collecting from them.

12. Only ask for minimal information during sign-up, and ask for more data as your relationship progresses. For example, in the initial subscription form, you could ask for just the email address, and then you can collect more details and data at later stages after you’ve built some trust with the subscriber.

There you have it folks!

Are you struggling to attract the right audience? Struggling with social media or developing income producing products for your audience? Then you need to go brand yourself!

Book in your free 1-2-1 consultation with one of our senior branding and product development advisers to see how you can elevate you, or your business, today.

Email Emily at [email protected]