Email list building is still and will always be important both in the B2B and B2C industry. This happens because email itself is pretty much alive. Just take a moment and think! Most of us have two or three personal favorite newsletters! These newsletters probably have some sponsored content or, in any case, aim at a sale. Nevertheless, we keep opening them, clicking and engage with the content.
Why should you care about building your mailing list?
In most cases, the answer should be obvious. Every business should devote time and resources to grow its email list as well as nurture it. Sales cannot happen in a day; so give it some time! For me, email is the most efficient -and most times, cheapest – way to reach out to people that had expressed an interest in your brand. You have a pool of actual people that have shown an interaction with you and at some point want to buy from you, learn your news or be in touch.
Sending your spring break offer or Surprise sale announcement to a warm mail list cannot be compared to targeting to a cold audience. According to a report conducted by DMA and Demand Metric, email has a median ROI of 122% – over 4x higher than other marketing formats including social media, direct mail, and paid search.
A conclusion by HubSpot on the effectiveness of email marketing that is 100% on point is that “Email newsletters and email ads are unique forms of advertising that consumers have opted into. They’re promotional assets that a consumer can choose to read or ignore”.
Based on Chief Marketer’s data, email marketing is the most effective channel for B2B lead generation. This means that growing your email list should be a KPI -no matter if you are into B2C or B2B.
Let’s see some tools and tactics to use in order to grow your list!
Website widget
Nothing comes first to a marketer’s mind than a pop-up widget. Yes, this works! Let your website visitor get your news before leaving your site.
Offer a coupon or discount for people who subscribe to your newsletter as to engage with them and intrigue them to make the first purchase.
Facebook Tab
Place a form on your business’s Facebook page to collect email addresses. If you’ve already got a form on your website this will take less than a minute to set up!
Referral program
Hold a competition, giveaway or the chance to unique access and make a call to people to submit their email address. In order to be successful make sure you take into consideration these two criteria:
1. The concept of the referral program should be relevant to your product or service. If you create an ambassador program, make sure that the leaderboard offers winners relevant to your brand gifts. You want to attract quality entrants who are genuinely interested in your business and could convert to sales.
2. Create beautiful landing pages that make it easy for people to sign up and then invite their friends. In this way, you will be able to highlight your referral campaign, run a giveaway, build your pre-launch list and anything in between.
Check out, for example, Viral Loops Ambassador Program and how well designed it is. The rewards are awesome and 100% aligned with the brand aesthetics.
Chatbot
I really like this idea of using a Messenger chatbot or any other chat-like widget as to gather information about your leads.
Chatbots feel like real life conversations and aren’t considered as intrusive ways of getting an email as other tools. And, have in mind that if you create a great flow people may ask you how you did it, and *boom* you have started a conversation with a lead.
Go on, try it! You can talk to our digital assistant and ask for some awesome growth hacks!
Offer true value and get the email as a “gift”.
By offering educational resources in exchange for email addresses, you get leads that are truly interested in your content and probably in your services or products. In this way, you create a pool of people that are becoming aware of your brand, have an idea of your quality and are warm enough to receive a promotional email. How can you achieve this?
Think of something that you are an expert in your field. This resource could be anything of the following:
- an e-book
- a tutorial
- case studies
- A webinar
- A white paper
- A checklist of to-do or to-check-out
- or an infographic
This info may be obvious to you but it can also be gold to someone getting started or someone that just looks around for this service. Then, prepare a beautiful yet simple landing page with a call to action to download your offering.
Here a classic example by HubSpot on a landing page with a simple form to download a list of templates.
Offline Opportunities
Your website may not be the only way you connect with new people and encourage email sign-ups. Bring an iPad with a beautifully designed typeform is a good way to get emails in a quick and dirty way. You may open a new pop-up store, be at an event, exhibition or conference and want to ask people for their email.
Getting their business card or letting them write down to a paper probably isn’t the best and tech-savvy way. This is a good way for B2B marketers to get the contact details of leads during events.
To conclude
First of all, let’s think how sad it is that many marketers don’t really consider list building a part of the actual email marketing process. If you do not devote time to find the appropriate tactics, chances are that people won’t find the door into your newsletter or won’t be impressed as to opt-in.
One more thing…Always get permission to use email addresses for marketing purposes!
It’s really important to note that with all of the above suggestions, you need to be explicitly clear about what you’ll be using people’s email addresses for.
If you want to dig into email marketing check out how to create a newsletter that will avoid spam filters.
