The original intent of blogs and blogging was for people to share their personal lives online, much like an online journal.
However, blogging has changed over the past ten years from having more personal to more professional objectives.
Now professionals started blogging for the general public to increase their website traffic, boost SEO, generate leads, promote their products or services, earn money, and for various other fruitful objectives.
But have you ever wondered what goes behind a successful blog? There are a lot of things one needs to take care of to take a blog to the next level. One such thing is building an email list.
In fact, The most crucial asset for a blogger—or any business owner, for that matter—is an email list.
If you haven’t started working on your email list then, this guide is for you! In this blog, we are going to talk about a variety of subjects:
- What is an email list
- Importance of an email list
- How to build an email list
- Ways to grow your email list
Are you ready? Let’s get you going!
Table of Contents
WHAT IS AN EMAIL LIST?
An email list is of the mailing addresses of people who express their love or interest in your brand. In addition to the email addresses, an email list contains names, phone numbers, organization names, etc. An email list is often known as “the mailing list” or “the subscriber’s list”.
IMPORTANCE OF AN EMAIL LIST
Email Marketing is one of the best promotional methods for your business. As per reports, For every dollar spent, there is an enormous return of roughly $40. In addition, email is also used by practically everyone. No matter who your target audience is, there is a good possibility that they have an email account because there are currently 4 billion email users worldwide. It is used for various reasons, out of which, we have we’ve compiled a list of the top 3 below.
1. Cost-Effective Way Of Marketing
One of the most economical methods for contacting potential clients and encouraging them to visit your website is email marketing. You can start building an email list from practically nothing!
Of course, the marketing tools or specialized AI software you need to automate, track, and assess your emails will cost you a little money.
However, expanding your email list for your business and gaining more email subscribers is really affordable when compared to what you would spend on traditional marketing platforms.
Businesses in the US experience an average return on investment (ROI) of 4300% from email campaigns.
2. Helps To Reach The Correct Audience
Unless engaged in unsolicited marketing, the majority of companies utilize email marketing to communicate with customers who have subscribed to their mailing lists.
This indicates that you are interacting with an email user base who is already considering using your goods or services. Therefore, there is a significantly greater chance that they will open your emails, hit the call to action, and thus raise your click-through rates and conversion rates.
3. An Easy Way Of Targeted Marketing
People that sign up for email lists typically do so because they are interested in your services or business.
However, you can have users with various interests if you construct an email list. Some people might want to be informed about impending sales, while others might want you to notify them about an item that is not in stock.
With email marketing, you can segment your list based on your user’s interests. Once you’ve done so, it will be simple to send more focused emails to your subscribers that are very relevant to them, increasing your chances of turning them into paying customers.
Now, that you are aware of the benefits of Email lists, let us tell you how to create yours now!
HOW TO BUILD AN EMAIL LIST ( 12 SIMPLE STEPS)
1. Add Embedded Forms
Adding embedded forms is perhaps the oldest yet most effective method of obtaining email subscribers.
Adding embedded forms at strategic places like the homepage, header, footer, sidebar, or even notification bar is a great way to get subscribers as they receive greater user attention.
Embedded forms have the advantage of being unobtrusive. They largely act as a gentle reminder to the visitor giving them the option to sign up. Because of this, it works best to combine them with the more proactive and dynamic list-building techniques that we’ll cover next.
2. Popups
According to studies, pop-ups typically convert at a rate of 11.09%, with the top 10% converting at a rate of roughly 42%.
While these statistics are enticing on their own, don’t get swayed away! Remember to exercise caution when using pop-ups and take into account Google’s interstitial ad standards. If you don’t, you could be fined.
The main things you should keep in mind while adding popups are:
- Avoid displaying popups that cover the main content either immediately after a user visits the page via search or as he scrolls through.
- Avoid presenting a stand-alone popup that users must dismiss to access the content.
- Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been in-lined underneath the fold.
Now that you know what not to do while adding popups let us take you through various kinds of popups you can add to your website.
There are many kinds of popups, let us discuss the top 4 with you.
4 DIFFERENT KINDS OF POPUP
1. Welcome Popup
Majorly, welcome pop-ups are used to welcome site visitors within the first 15 seconds of them visiting the landing page.
A welcome pop-up must have a compelling call to action in order to avoid being ignored as intrusive.
Best practices include providing a discount code, welcome reward, brand notification, or any other sort of value exchange in return for the user’s email address.
You can use Google Analytics to determine the ideal time a user spends on a page to install a welcome pop-up.
2. Exit-Intent Popup
Statistically speaking, a well-designed exit intent pop-up can prevent 10-15% of potentially lost visitors.
These popups use an exit-intent technology, which tracks user activity or interaction with a web page and then predicts the time a user is about to depart.
Exit intent pop-ups provide visitors a compelling reason to stay on the page or provide information to lessen the likelihood of users bouncing.
For instance, a travel agent could wish to show social proof of how many trips they have booked in the last 24 hours. While a supplier of hiking equipment might provide a list of reassuring advantages that make them the ideal option.
3. Timed Popup
Timed pop-ups are excellent for generating leads because you only display your lead generation offer to visitors who have been on the site or page for a predetermined period of time.
If they leave in less than 5 seconds, it’s likely that they aren’t interested in what you have to offer and won’t ever sign up for your email list.
Once more, it will be crucial to make use of Google Analytics in order to identify the individuals who are more engaged within your target demographic and to whom you should present this type of sign-up form. This is a good technique to divide up active users into groups as not everyone will wish to sign up.
4. Click Popup
Click popups are activated when a user clicks a specific link, picture, or word.
The least obnoxious pop-ups for consumers are those that require user action. They work subtly without posing any harm to website conversion and only appear when visitors wish to see them.
3. Give Your Users Incentives
Now, you must provide more incentives for your potential subscribers now that you’ve demonstrated how fantastic your content is.
Freebies are what we call these. In essence, a freebie will offer someone the final push they require to join your email list if they were on the fence about doing so.
Some categories of opt-in freebies are as follows:
- A new piece of content like a blog post, a Canva media kit, etc
- A stand-alone gift like a free course, ebook, etc
- A mix of the aforementioned two (highly recommended)
With this approach, you will attract a variety of people, some of whom may be truly interested while others may be there merely to take advantage of the incentives. Therefore, you will need to filter the leads.
I’d advise you to set a goal of producing at least one freebie per month for at least 18 months consistently. if you’re a new blogger or are just beginning to grow your email list, this will take your email list to the next level!
4. Add Value To Your Audience
To propel your visitors to click the CTAs you must provide some value to them.
This means, instead of convincing them that your actions would benefit you, persuade them that clicking will improve their lives.
You should not use the words “sign up” to maximize sign-ups. Who desires to “sign up” or “subscribe” to additional unsolicited emails? Instead, you should use words like “Download,” “Exclusive,” and “Access” to clearly communicate the value you can provide upfront.
One example includes writing ” Access our exclusive ebook” rather than just writing “sign up”.
5. Use Social Media
Not only to promote your blogs, you can also use social media to promote your email newsletter.
Even if your list of email subscribers isn’t very long, you still have a network. If you have a sizeable following on Twitter, a fan base on Facebook, or brands you connect with through email, why not use those strong and dependable connections to develop an email list?
You may try promoting an email newsletter on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn profiles for your company.
You could also include a link in your email signature if you don’t feel comfortable promoting your email newsletter on social media. The link could point to your email newsletter directly or it could point to a blog post or landing page with email subscription CTAs.
Another way to use social media to your advantage is by hosting contests and giveaways. Additionally, polls, quizzes, and Q&A elements are very common in Instagram stories that can quickly increase user engagement.
Traffic can be directed to a landing page where followers can sign up to participate in a contest, giveaway, or even a special event.
6. Create Tailored Landing Pages
After conducting research, HubSpot discovered that increasing the number of landing pages from 10 to 15 results in a 55% boost in leads for businesses.
It makes it logical that you can appeal to a larger demographic by using unique and tailored landing pages. Every visitor to your website has different demands, therefore by developing more landing pages you can address each visitor’s specific issues and can get more sign-ups.
Consider an example of a coaching school brochure, some students are weak in Math and want Math classes, while some want to enroll in others as per their requirements.
The more options you put in, the more wide becomes your perspective.
7. Use Your About Us Page
One of the most effective pages for conversions is your About Us page. How often do you browse the About Us sections of companies you don’t care about?
If a user is exploring your About Us page there are high chances he is interested in your business or brand.
Your About Us page should, in theory, pique visitors’ interest in your company, but it might not be enough to persuade them to make a purchase. They are more likely to comply with a CTA encouraging them to sign up for a newsletter than a “purchase now” request.
8. Get Rid of Your Cold Subscribers
Some people will always sign up for your email list but never open a single message. Do you agree?
The simple solution is to: Remove them!
You see, it sends a bad signal to email clients or Message User Agents (MUA) when a lot of people don’t open your emails. Even subscribers who truly want to open your emails, start ending up in the spam or junk folders because they believe your emails are spam.
I suggest you regularly update your email list and get rid of the ones who are not interested. Do this every few months to prevent this.
9. Work On Your Content
Why not use content marketing to build an email list out of it? At the end of the day, you are going to spend time and effort on it.
To provide your readers even more value, produce a case study, research extensively, add valuable links or create a cheat sheet as you write a thorough blog post.
After this, incorporate a unique signup form specifically for that piece of content into your blog article and promote it via social media.
If your content is of superior quality users are definitely going to take an action.
10. Make Use Of Referral And Loyalty Programmes
Customer loyalty and referral programs can be useful when starting from scratch to build your email list. Rewards-based programs can persuade current users to upgrade as well as entice new ones, boosting lifetime value.
11. Make Use Of A Scroll Box
Timing is crucial, if you catch visitors who are actually prepared to take action, your call to action will be most effective.
You should carry out research to establish where your CTA should be placed because the behavior of visitors to your website will define when they are ready to convert.
Does it perform better at the bottom of a blog page, sliding out to the right, or does it convert better at the top, or sliding out to the left?
A scroll box is a subdued and practical alternative to assist you to grab your viewers when they’re most prepared to convert, though ultimately it will vary based on the content of your page and your readers.
12. Never Buy Email Subscribers
Wondering why? Here are some reasons:
- There is a very good probability that other individuals are purchasing the same email list as you if you purchase one.
- Your sender’s email address and IP address will be banned as spam if you send emails to the contacts on that email list, which may be a spam trap in and of itself.
- Even though those people might not be spam traps, they nonetheless mark you as spam because they are unqualified leads for your company. Consider this: 10000 people report you as spam. The reputation of your company is effectively dead.
- Purchasing a paid list and distributing your campaign to the contacts on it will cost you a fair sum of money and practically no fruitful results.
CONCLUSION
Creating an email list is possible to boost your online presence, generate leads, and promote your brand. We have provided a few suggestions above in this post to assist you in building a strong one. We’re confident that if you use these suggestions, you’ll be happy. Let us know what worked best for you!
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