Build an email list as a beginner, sounds quite a tough job !!
But building Email lists can act as a tunnel when it comes to creating a loyal audience. The amount of effort that is required to captivate the attention of audiences of thousands of people – is equivalent to the amount required for an audience of one.
Despite all of its colorful filters and short-story features, Social media still fails when it comes to converting customers because the connection doesn’t feel personal enough.
An email list, however, is different.
Whenever you send an email, that header contains only your client’s name.
There are no 1 million fans/ followers that they are concerned about. This leads to a more personalized experience for the client, allowing you to update them about our company, the world, or even offer new products & services.
“But, wait – how do I create one?”, we hear you say.
Well, you’re in luck as that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. Specifically, we’ll talk about how to make them as effective as possible. Email lists aren’t magical – but with the right, you can provide the illusion that they are.
So in this article, we’ll cover
- Benefits of Building Email List
- Essential elements to build an effective email list
- How to build an email list from scratch
- How to build an email list without a website
Is Email Marketing still effective in 2020?
As per the report, More than 56% of the global population has internet access.
If we add more stats,
In fact, 40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success, and 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.
Moreover, Email is a very basic thing an online user has. 99% of consumers check their email every day and it is by far the preferred way to receive updates from brands.
These stats tell us the importance of Email Marketing even in 2020.
There are a lot of benefits of building an Email List, a few of them are,
- Creating Personalized Content.
- Communicating with your Audience.
- Generating more traffic to your site.
- Increasing the number of leads.
- Improving sales.
- Creating campaigns.
- Creating more value for your audience.
Therefore, Email list building could be a profitable part to grow your business.
Let’s move to the next,
Essential elements to build an effective email list
You should know about the elements of building an Email list before you create one. Which helps you to grow your email list faster.
#1 Understand your audience
The number one reason newsletters (email lists) don’t work is that the authors don’t really understand their audience. This means you must understand what their demographics are, like age, gender, salary, location, education, and family in addition to their goals, values, fears, and challenges.
Why?
This allows you to create content relevant to their interests or pass on information that is going to be valuable to them. But that’s not all. It also implants the thought of product quality in their minds – if their newsletter is so good, how awesome is their product?!
As a creator, you often have to take that first step to welcome clients to be part of your tribe and that can only take place when you have a clear understanding of them.
Take the example of Beachway Therapy Center, which saw an increase in button clicks by 400% and form submissions by 20% simply because they choose to word their messages to fit their audience.
#2 Website with a landing page (Boost your Subscription)
Asking people on social media to sign up for your newsletter is a lot tougher than you think! Unless you have some heavy celebrity endorsements – which can set you back a couple thousand in some cases – social media doesn’t get a lot of traction when it comes to signing up.
But consider this: you visit a website, browse around a bit and then you are asked to sign up for a newsletter. The chances of you entering your email ID just went up significantly! You’ve already got a feel for what the brand is about, read up on some valuable content, and decided that in the future they could help you out – so you decide to sign up.
That is the power of websites.
Sure, there are exceptions – notably Substack.
But if you notice, they are a very minute group, and some already have a social media presence to boost their newsletter sign up messages.
But what if you’re marketing yourself solely as a newsletter?
No worries. Check out MKBHD, a technology YouTuber who has a minimal website – with links to his business email, social media, and Youtube channel. That’s it – and it’s beautiful to look at.
#3 An irresistible offer for your Audience
No one wants to share their email address for free.
But if you share something valuable instead of their email-address, that makes sense.
Therefore you should come up with a Lead Magnet, which can be anything in the digital form.
Placing a Lead magnet along with the newsletter signup form will surely going to increase your list in no time.
#4 Choose Proper Email marketing solution,
If you’re going to grow your email list, you need an email marketing service.
As your email list grows from ten to a hundred to a thousand and more – you need a way to organize all the data that flows through. This could mean creating a category of email subscribers that are more responsive to a particular product or service and then emailing them when your next product comes out. Or it simply is a way of categorizing your subscribers in a way that provides you with real-time statistics.
Finally, know that email lists essentially mean that you are sending the same email to thousands of people at the same time. Sound a bit like spam?
Well, operationally, it kind of is. But with the right email marketing service, like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, CampaignMonitor, – you can focus on writing valuable content and not on sweating about whether your email is going to be marked as spam!
How to build an email list from scratch as a beginner
Creating an email list from scratch needs time and effort but once you are done the benefits are endless.
1.Create a Lead Magnet
Ask yourself why you are sharing your email address on any website?
The answer could be, “They were offering something valuable to me for free”
or it could be “they were sharing some valuable information which could help you”
and this is the reason you’ve subscribed to them.
Therefore as we mentioned earlier, A irresistible offer or call it a Lead Magnet is what you need to grab the attraction of your audience.
The lead magnet could be anything,
It could be a one-page checklist, a 20-page step by step guide, a 50 -70 page in-depth eBook about any topic.
So before you get started with the other part think what you can offer to your target audience?
or What value you can add in their life?
Once you will have the idea and a Lead Magnet ready to promote, now move to the next step.
2.Setup an Email Subscription System
Well, now you have a Lead Magnet ready to offer your target audience.
What is the second most thing you need to grab an email address?
Yes, you’re right, it is the email subscription system.
An email subscription system is an online application that enables you to collect the email addresses, put them in a list, send automated emails, and a lot of things.
Without any delay, Signup for an Email Subscription provider.
There are a few popular Email Marketing Solutions like “MailChimp”, “CampaignMonitor” “ActiveCampaign” you can signup at zero cost.
Once you will complete your signup with the email subscription system you need to set up a list
which you could embed in a page or share the link of the list.
All set? Now let’s move to the next phase where you need to integrate the email subscription.
3.Design your Landing page:
The landing page plays an important role in email marketing.
The landing page is a standalone page that is specifically designed for marketing campaign purposes.
This is the page where your users “land” and take action based on your offerings.
As a beginner in email list building, the best strategy you can apply is to drive all of your marketing traffic on a landing page where you have kept your offerings with a Strong CTA.
If you are not well versed with coding, you can easily design a stunning Landing page on WordPress using the Elementor plugin.
Else there are many premium solutions like Unbounce, ClickFunnels with templates ready, and might give you a higher conversion.
4.Show popups on your website
Showing popups in the other webpages is a good way to tell the clients about your offerings and email subscription.
If you want to grow your Email list faster then you shouldn’t limit your Newsletter subscription option in Landing Page only.
In WordPress, there are many Popups creator plugin which you can use to create one.
or you can embed code of your email subscription system in the core files by following proper instruction.
5.Display CTA across the website
Another way to get more subscribers in your email list is to show your CTA button across the website.
Highlight your offerings in the key pages or the pages getting the most traffic. Include a CTA button, so that your audience can easily signup.
6.Tell your customer about your Newsletter
Informing your current customer base about your newsletter is another way to grow your email list.
Reach out to them and ask for subscribing to your newsletter or a Value-added offer you are providing.
7.Write an Email Sequence
Have you received a Thank you email just after subscribing or Downloading anything from a site?
Then you’re well familiar with the Email Sequence.
Similarly, create a few emails sequence in your Email Subscription application.
The user will receive an email from you just after subscribe to your newsletter or download your lead magnet.
There are infinite email sequences and automation you can create.
It is the best way to engage and nurture your Email Subscribers with your business.
Wrapping up,
Email lists can be a powerful way of providing valuable content to clients, interacting with them, and generating revenue. Furthermore, they can lead to the creation of a tribe-mentality that is somewhat lacking in social media.
Regardless of where you go from here, we’d like to say that email marketing is one of the most effective tools in building a loyal audience. We hope you have a great time building yours!