How to Grow Your Email List
One of the most difficult issues for any business is building their customer base. In email marketing, building your email list can also be a struggle. You may be frustrated because you have many customers but not many signups for your email list. There are a number of reasons why this might happen, some indicate a problem and others don't. We'll try to help you diagnose and solve whatever issues you do have.
The most important thing when trying to increase email sign ups is to make the value of your content extremely apparent. If your newsletters or email campaigns appear to be nothing more than advertisements or self aggrandizing public relations material, then there is no incentive to sign up for your email list.
If you're already producing great content and sending out worthwhile offers, then your next effort must be making that known. You need to demonstrate to your target base exactly what value you will be offering them. If you can show that you are providing true value with your email marketing, you should have no issue increasing your number of signups.
Another way to build your list is to collect customer data through a checkout or site signup process. If you have a shopping cart process on your site or if you require a user login, you can give your users the option to sign up for your newsletter through these processes. Almost all major companies have something like this in place. The most important thing about setting this up on your own site is being honest with your customers. Make it obvious that they are signing up for a newsletter or for future advertisements and let them know how much mail they can expect to receive. Do not force them to sign up, it simply won't be good for your list or for deliverability.
A growing trend is merging social media with email campaigns, typically people use their email list to grow their social network, but this can also work in reverse. Facebook competitions are a clever way to collect email addresses for your mailing list. Remember, always be clear about how you are going to use data. It will save you a lot of grief and it's the right thing to do.
There are many ways to grow your list and you can use your own ingenuity to come up with many more. The one way that we don't suggest, is purchasing a list. The risks are too high and the likelihood that you'll actually get usable, good data is slim. If you have questions about building your list or want to discuss a list building strategy, please do call us. We're always here to help you!