How To Build An Email List From The Ground Up In 2021

Email is one of the most important marketing channels for businesses nowadays. Not only is it an effective communication tool that helps you get your message across to your customers but it’s also an excellent driver for sales.

So it’s no longer a question of whether or not you should build an email list but rather how can you build one as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Building a strong mailing list may seem like a massive task at first but with the right strategies, you can assemble a loyal subscriber base that can not only drive traffic to your site but also improve your conversion rates.

If you’re starting from square one and you don’t have the slightest of ideas on how to build an email list then this blog is for you. Today, we’ll be talking about how you can build an email list from the ground up in 2021. Let’s get started!

What Is An Email List?

Simply put, an email list is a collection of email addresses you’ve captured through your landing pages, lead capture forms, and other calls-to-action spread across your digital media properties. It is a database of people who opt-in to subscribe to your newsletter, blog, website, or emails.

The main purpose of building an email list is to increase the number of your hot leads that you nurture and convert into loyal customers. So you need a healthy and engaged email list to improve the earning potential of your email marketing campaigns.

The Benefits Of An Email List

Building an email list is crucial for any business because it’s one of the best ways to build a strong and lasting relationship with potential customers. By sending your marketing messages directly to their inbox, you can build stronger brand awareness while helping people move further down the sales funnel. Here are the benefits of building an email for your business:

It Helps Build Personal Relationships with Your Customers

Email is a great way to have personal online conversations with your subscribers. It gives your brand a human touch that no other digital marketing channel can. Your messages land directly in your lead’s inbox. You don’t have to worry about ever-changing algorithms or keywords just to get your message across.

You can also address each person in your email list with their names and you can even customize your messages depending on the segment they belong in.

Furthermore, email is the best way for users to talk with you in person and to ask questions of ever they run into a problem. It’s a great platform for solving your target audience’s problems through your expertise.

Email is Strongly Associated with Business

Despite the emergence of several online digital channels, email remains one of the most valuable for businesses. While social media is great for improving brand recognition and customer engagement, email still remains the most reliable way to do more business with your target market.

Email is a great way to sell your products, promote your discounts and offers, to announce new additions to your product or service lineup, and let people know about changes in your brand. It combines the allure of personalized messaging with professionalism associated with well-established brands.

Email is Targeted

One of the best parts about email marketing is you can send targeted emails to targeted groups. You can segment your email list based on different criteria including their demographics, how they respond to your emails, what activities they do on your website, where they are in the sales funnel, and more.

By grouping the people in your mailing list accordingly, you can customize the messages that will most likely appeal to them and give them the kind of offer they simply cannot refuse. This helps improve key performance indicators including open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Email is Not Influenced by 3rd-Party Providers

Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram are notorious for constantly releasing algorithm updates that can affect your digital marketing strategies. Your efforts can easily go to waste with just one policy change.

Email, on the other hand, is not influenced the decisions of other businesses. Once you have a strong and healthy email list, you’re pretty much set. You don’t need to worry so much about whether or not your marketing messages reach the right people. As long as your emails don’t bounce and you have engaging content, you have guaranteed access to the inbox of thousands of email users.

Email is Here to Stay

Email has been around for more than 50 years and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. If anything, it’s getting stronger as the years go by. Sure, new digital platforms and digital advertising techniques have surfaced in the last couple of decades but email has managed to stay relevant even now in 2021.

Email is so deeply engraved into people’s digital lives that you need it for setting up anything online including social media accounts. According to Radicati, there are over 3.8 billion email users worldwide. No matter what niche your business is in, there are thousands of people in that pool whom you can convert into paying customers.

How To Build An Email List

Now that you know what an email list is and how important it is for your business, it’s time to start building it. Here are the most crucial strategies you need for building a strong, loyal, and profitable email list:

Do Your Homework

If you’re starting your email list from scratch, there are a few things you need to set up. You need four preliminary resources before you can build an awesome email list: 

Develop a Marketing Persona

You need to understand who your target audience is. Before you can start collecting email addresses, you must first set the right criteria so your messaging will be relevant.

Define what makes an ideal customer for your business and identify their job title and what their role entails, where they work, what their demographics are, what their goals and challenges are, and what your elevator pitch is.

With a clear persona in mind, you can then determine where they hang out online, how your messaging should sound like, and what offers you should be providing.

Make Sure You Have A Website

If you don’t already have a business website, now’s the time to get one. A website is a piece of internet real estate that tells your customers what your brand is about, where and how to contact you, and, more importantly, provides a platform for your potential customers to gather. 

A website houses your landing page that contains your opt-in form that people will fill out when giving their contact details to you. In some cases, you may only need a single-page website with just a landing page.

Decide on an Email Marketing Platform

You’re going to need an email platform that can organize your mailing list and send your emails. These automated services make your email marketing campaigns far easier to roll out.

Create an Enticing Offer

People need to have a compelling reason to join your email list so you need to give them something valuable in exchange for their contact details. You need to know what your customers want and see if you have something like that in your resources. 

Maybe you can give them free access to your software for a limited time or you can give them a free report or e-book. Just make sure that whatever your offer is, it gives people real value.

Create Personalized CTAs

Smart calls-to-action or CTAs that are tailored to an individual perform better than generic ones. There can be numerous ways CTAs like this adapt to a visitor, such as their location, browser language, whether they’re already a customer or a lead, and much more.

Remember that people are looking for something specific whenever they visit your blog or your website so you need to meet their needs through your CTA. Personalized CTAs feel more valuable and helpful which improves the chances of people opting-in and giving you their email address.

Use Pop-Ups for Each Page on Your Site Wisely

Timed pop-up ads are excellent for onsite retargeting but if used improperly, they can be distracting and can even cause people to abandon your website.

Pop-up ads are best activated after a user spends a certain amount of time on your page and not immediately when they arrive. Find the average time your visitors spend on your website and use the middle ground to trigger your pop-up ads.

You can also trigger pop-up ads based on the content of the page a visitor is currently on. If a visitor is engaged enough on your content, then a well-timed pop-up that offers more content through your email list could be well-received.

Finally, pop-up ads are best triggered based on a visitor’s behavior. You can show a pop-up ad after a visitor scrolls through a certain percentage of a page. The more a visitor scrolls, the higher their engagement which means they are more likely to want more from you.

You can also display exit-intent pop-ups as a last-ditch effort to try to get a visitor to subscribe to your list.

Turn that “No” Into a “Maybe” Then a “Yes”

Your CTAs don’t always have to follow the typical “Yes or No” format. You can inject a little more personality and humor into your CTAs.

Instead of stopping at “No thanks”, you can add a phrase that will stop people from their tracks, make them think and reconsider, and then eventually hit that opt-in button.

For example, if your opt-in offer is a free mini-course on photography, the opt-out button can be “No thanks, I don’t want to learn how to take better photos.” By saying this, you’re giving visitors something to think about and that hard “no” can turn into a “maybe” and then into a “yes”.

Be Clear About the Value You Provide

Generic CTAs like “sign up” or “subscribe” can have negative connotations and can discourage people from giving you their email addresses. So instead, summarize the value of your offer through your CTAs.

Your CTAs should express how enticing your offer is. For example, if you’re offering an e-book, your CTA can be “Download our exclusive e-book now”. This lets your visitors know that can’t get this offer anywhere else, not even on your blog. It’s exclusive information they can get only by signing up to your email list.

Pitch Your Email Newsletter on Your Social Media Accounts

If your brand is already on social media then you can use your network there to build your email list. These people already know your brand and are interested in what you have to offer. But they may not necessarily be on your email list.

Include a CTA on Your About Us Page

The About Us Page on your website is prime real estate. When people are on that part of your site, then you know they’re interested in your brand and what you have to offer. But they may not be ready to make a purchase yet.

So placing a CTA on this page encourages them to sign up for your newsletter and once they’re in your list, you can nurture them and help them move further down the sales funnel until they hit the checkout button.

Build Your Email List Today

Building a strong email list doesn’t gave to be a gargantuan task for any business owner. With the right strategies, you can put together a database of loyal brand followers whom you can nurture and convert into paying customers.

If you’re still unsure where to start then the listing building experts at FreeUp can help you out! Simply sign up and if you post a freelancer request today you can start meeting professionals qualified for your work as fast as 1 business day.