A significant cog in the marketing machine is building a mail list. When you build a brand from scratch, setting up an email list can seem a daunting task to undertake. However, there are a few things you can do to create an impressive email list.
What is an email list?
In a nutshell, an email list refers to a collection of emails you get from your website or blog. Organizations or individuals collect email addresses and send marketing information and material to these email addresses.
Why make an email list?
Before we get to building an email list, you may want to know why you should create an email list. Here are the primary reasons you should build an email list fast:
You get direct contact with prospective customers
Building an email list allows you to reach out to your followers and visitors at the click of a button. There is no limit on the volume of information you can send them. More importantly, email lists allow you to come up with content specific to each potential client to suit their needs, making email marketing much more personal than traditional advertisements.
Higher chances of retaining visitors
Most people who look up your website or channel are unlikely to return unless you implement a strategy to bring them back. Besides having a user-friendly website and valuable content, you should use email marketing to contact them and give them a reason to revisit your website and purchase a product or service.
Easy to optimize your marketing schedule
Planning and launching online marketing campaigns without vital information is a futile endeavor. You need to know the demographic you are targeting and other parameters like interest, location, etc. Creating an email list can help you do this. You will know who, when, and how to contact if you have an email list, thus saving you time in creating and launching effective marketing campaigns.
More leads, more revenue
This is the most crucial benefit of all because getting and converting leads is the end goal of a marketing campaign. Set up an email list subscription on your website, asking your visitors for their contact information to keep them updated on everything that happens with your company, and have them check out your products and buy the ones that they want.
How do you build an email list?
Now that you know that building an email list is an integral part of an excellent digital content marketing strategy, here’s how you can quickly create an email list out of thin air:
Figure out your audience
Before you begin, you need to know the type of people you plan to target with your brand. Draw up a marketing persona, i.e., your ideal customer. Make a list of the different parameters and characteristics that fit your ideal customer. Some of them are name, job title, gender, salary, age, background, your marketing message, goals, challenges, and so on.
Have a website up and running
Sounds obvious, but you need to have a website for your brand. While you do not need a full-fledged website and developers working for you just yet, get a landing page ready. A landing page website can display your email opt-in form. An opt-in form allows subscribers to enter their email address.
Get an email marketing service
As you may have gathered by now, you will need to get your hands on an email marketing service such as PeoplePC webmail. There are a bunch of inexpensive email marketing services on the web. Choose the one that works for you and set it up. This service primarily organizes your email list and sends emails. As you build your list, you may do a lot more than merely collecting email addresses, like drip campaigns and sequencing.
Give them a reason to share their email address
You need to offer or sell something and give people a reason to provide you with their email address. Otherwise, there is no reason for them to be subject to potential spam. Once you find your target audience, think of things you can offer them that they will find valuable. You could provide a never-seen-before video, an ebook, useful tips, and advice, or anything else that can help your visitors.
If you do not have content at the ready, you can tell people that you want their email addresses to collect information and suggestions to create and improve your content. Ultimately, your visitors need to benefit from this.
Use Content Marketing to rack up email addresses
Using digital content marketing to incentivize people to give you their email addresses for more information and updates is a powerful strategy. You can use this strategy to build your list irrespective of experience level in content marketing. You use content marketing to attract users to your content and invite them to subscribe if they like the content they see.
Use Targeted Ads
While it is great to build your email list organically, you may want to purchase ads to streamline and catalyze it. The most lucrative forms of paid traffic include Facebook ads, LinkedIn sponsored updates and Twitter ads.
- You can use Facebook ads to narrow down and target your demographic. While you do have to shell out a couple of bucks for every email address that comes your way, you will get your money’s worth out of this.
- LinkedIn ads function similar to Facebook ads. However, your audience is very likely different from your Facebook audience, so you will have to target your audience accordingly.
- You can use Twitter ads to promote your tweets, amass more followers, and bring them to your landing page.
You have no choice but to spend money on ads to boost the process of email building unless you want to do it organically.
Conclusion
There you have it – this is how you build an email list from scratch. These are merely a few of many email list building tips you can find, so be sure to look up as many as possible.