When you think about getting traffic to the business blog and higher conversion rates, what do you believe is most profitable: email marketing or social media?
If you thought about social media, this will be a surprise: Email marketing is 20% more effective than social media for customer retention. It’s also essential for small businesses. In fact, 80% of small businesses rely on emails and powerful subscription forms for their customer retention.
Emails have a surprisingly high return on investment (ROI). For each $1 you invest in email marketing you have a return of $38, which means 3,8% ROI. They also are very efficient to assist with sustainable growth. All because people that read their emails prefer to receive communication from companies through it. Out of all customers, 49% prefer to receive special offers in their emails from brands they know and follow.
It doesn’t matter if you are dealing with a B2C or B2B, email marketing is a tool you must start using right now to boost business growth. And you can start right away by building an email list.
Why do people subscribe to email lists?
Think about the brands you like. Or even on the subscriptions that you’ve made in the past week. What do they have in common? You can observe that every brand, stores, and businesses in general that you gave your email are those that you believe can give some kind of value back to you.
It can be a newsletter with articles about the subject you work with or it can be about products that you have an interest in buying. No matter the reason, we only give our email if we believe we can get some value from the subscription.
And this is what you are going to provide as well. As a marketer, your job is to convince the audience that if they sign up for the newsletter they can get exclusive and informative content.
Keep reading this article because we are going to tell you 15 tips on how to build your email list and increase site traffic, generating more leads. The objective of this article is to help you get long-term customers.
What is Email Marketing
We’ve been talking a lot about how to build your business email list and how to increase it. Now let’s explain what email marketing is and why your business needs it.
Email marketing is every message sent with a commercial purpose to a group of people. It can have personalized content, separating customers by their preferences. Or it can be generic with the same content to everyone on the list. It depends on the purpose.
The main use of email marketing is to divulge the business. It can be by using textual content, divulging sales, or given exclusive information. The ultimate goal of email marketing is to send messages that drive sales.
If you have interesting content on the business blog you can convince the visitor to subscribe to the newsletter. They can, eventually, convert to paid customers.
What is an email list?
Do you know when you give your email in exchange for special offers from some business? That means you sign up your email into an email list. And is great for your business to do the same and start building its own list.
An email list is made up of the emails your website collects when people subscribe in exchange for something you offer back. It can be through some purchase or when the lead simply signs up for your newsletter.
Why does my business need an email list?
The main reason why you need to build an email list is to stay in touch with customers. When you offer valuable content you can convert prospects into paid customers. That’s because you constantly remind them of what you or your business can do for them.
If you are in a marketing business you can use the mailing list to send new information on a daily or weekly basis, creating a constant flow of content. That way you can keep the leads updated and connected with your business. You can send newsletters with articles that can be in their interest and also special offers for your products.
It is possible to increase traffic using the mailing list, as long it is well made. Email lists are more effective than social media campaigns. To be precise, they are 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers than social media.
Finally, you can have a target group of people that can become loyal to the brand. People that have a real interest in what you are writing and selling.
15 Tips on how to build an email list from scratch
Here is a list of 15 tips to build a mailing list. We’ve also prepared this quick video on building a mailing list subscription form that automatically sends the submitted emails to an integration of your choice.
1. Make the CTA personalized
Knowing your audience is rule number one when you are a marketer producing content for a target audience. Personalized calls-to-action have a 202% better conversion rate than a basic version of CTA. That’s because the focus of a personalized CTA is on the lead’s current interest.
The CTA is part of the lead’s behavior on the website, reflecting their stage on the buyer’s journey. Each person that accesses your website is looking for something specific. And the CTA you are placing on that page should reflect the visitor’s current need. This practice can easily help businesses increase subscriptions.
Remember to create the content that is going to support the CTA. It can be as elaborate as an ebook, toolkit, or invitation to webinars, or be as unique as a quiz or infographics. Unique contents are game-changer on customer retention.
2. Add a pop-up
The intention with a pop-up is not to be annoying, ok? Keep that in mind when using the tool. You are making a pop-up to generate leads, getting more subscribers. So you need to pay attention to some good practices, such as using a timed pop-up.
Make sure that for each page of the blog you have a relevant pop-up. Be consistent with the information you are offering and be sure that it is according to the audience’s behavior.
Set the pop-up to show up after a certain amount of time. It can be after a few seconds, or for when the audience reaches half of the reading page, or even for when they are about to leave the page.
You can invite the readers to receive similar articles to their email or make an offer that can convince them to sign up the newsletter. The content of the pop up depends on the page and on what is the visitor’s action.
When you choose to do the pop-up like this it won’t be intrusive or annoying, it will actually be informative and constructive.
One more good practice is to give the option for yes or no answer. Let the respondent decide if they wish to receive content in their email.
3. Add value to the CTA
The internet is full of websites with pop-ups saying “subscribe”. But your business is unique, and you want to have subscribers that may make a purchase and become loyal to the brand. Then you have to give the words close attention and select the best action for the CTA button.
You may want to create your email list by offering an ebook, or maybe it is a podcast with business tips. Give something back to the lead. And use the right words. Use specific terms like “download”, “access”, “listen”, “watch”. You get the idea: use imperatives words that give the idea of action.
You are not only expecting that the lead will freely give their email, but you are also proving them that the offered content can be useful for themselves. You are giving something, which confirms that they can get information and interesting content if they sign up. You are making an exchange, giving and getting something back.
4. Know your audience
Your website is designed for whom? What kind of person are you targeting? You must know your audience before you start writing for it. Create marketing personas that represent the ideal consumer, and then, promote your content to that specific audience.
When building this persona, you can create personal information, and set goals and problems that persona can have, and how your business can offer assistance. You can add more information according to the business objective. The more you know, the more accurate the marketing strategy can be. And just like that, you are going to be able to build the best subscription form, which increases the subscription rate.
Knowing who the business is targeting facilitates the plan to build the subscription form and to determine how it is going to be showing for the lead. That way you can decide everything about the subscription form so it can cover the page perfectly.
5. Use lead magnets
Magnets are everything that holds the reader’s attention and conducts them to take action. It can be the offer you are making. You can, as an example, retain a new customer when you give something free for them.
There are several types of magnets and you have to adjust them to the business expectation. It can be a study or research data, templates, webinars, toolkit, tutorials, or anything else that can be offered for free in exchange for the lead’s email. Try to offer something that can solve the problem that the audience can have.
We can use the ebook as an example of inbound marketing. Your potential client may have some doubts about the subject and you can offer the assistance they need through an ebook you’ve built with evergreen content. Add it to the subscription form so you can gather new emails for the email list you are creating.
Remember to keep the consistency of what you are offering with the page where you are placing the CTA.
6. Make it responsive
MightyForms is a form builder that is responsive by default. People that are accessing the business page for the first time must have a good experience no matter the device they are using. The form you are using should be easy to fill out and fittable both in mobiles and desktop, adjusting the size and the images. If you have a pop-up make sure it doesn’t damage all the effort you are putting in order to get more leads.
Building a clean and simple form can assist with the task of being responsive. Useful information can call the attention of the customer without having to use too many images or anything else that can make it difficult to be loaded from a mobile.
One very important statistic to understand the importance of this topic is that 46% of all opened emails are from mobile users. And these stats tend to get higher. Thus, as a marketer, you must be aware of where the audience is reaching the business and take the best action to be responsive.
7. Opt-in Strategy
The opt-in on marketing is the process of inviting website visitors to sign up to the email list. It is when the visitor gives the information you need to contact them. The company can only send messages for those that have signaled that they agree to receive it.
One very effective practice that can assist you in getting subscribers is to add an opt-in on every page of your blog, with a compelling CTA. The least you should do is add a CTA that has a connection to the page content. That already can have a connection to what the lead is looking for, and you can convince them to sign up for more similar content.
It is interesting that you can add an opt-in not only on blog posts but on other pages as well. You can place it on the contact form, and on the “About Us” page. Always give the option to subscribe or not. Be creative so you don’t have a plain and invasive form.
You can also make your opt-in to be set up for double confirmation. That way the visitor can be sure they are willing to receive information from you. That can sound odd but it’s a practice that can assist your business. After all, if a person double confirms that they wish to hear from the business they have a better chance to open the sent emails, increasing business traffic.
8. Use humor
This is when you add some personality to the form. You don’t have to use the same old “yes” or “no” answer for your subscription form. You can add some humor or even sarcasm to the options. You can use answers like “yes, I want to improve my business” or “no, I don’t care about my business”. You can convince someone to sign up to your email list by adding some funny answers.
Do you wanna know what more you can get with this action? You show that your business knows they are talking with other people, people that have humor, and further intentions. And that can be the transformation the business needs to acquire more subscribers and generate more traffic.
Besides making the lead laugh, you are also thought-provoking them. The visitor could have to be about to click on a simple no, but with a humored answer option, you are making them think and change their answer choice. It is a great way to get more sign-ups.
9. Diversify the landing pages
Pay close attention to this data to get to know the importance of having more landing pages. Businesses have experienced 55% of growth when they expand their landing pages from 10 to 15. And the more landing pages you have on the business website, the bigger the gain.
The more pages, the more diversified it can be, being able to reach out to varied audiences, expanding the chances of generating leads, and increasing the email list. And you can do personalized landing pages, getting groups of various people going to segmented pages.
You can make landing pages only to get subscriptions, offering valuable content. It’s like you are creating a banner and distributing it online for those that can have a real interest. And you give it through a form where the visitor agrees to give their email back.
Build a landing page that is the subscription form, adding to its materials that can assist in gathering more subscriptions.
10. Use proper design
The form design is going to be the first thing that calls the visitor’s attention on the website. It has to be eye-catching. It has to be branded. It has to stand out and be unique.
And how do you design a form like this? Be realistic and add only what your business can actually offer. Also, add images that have a connection with the content idea. You can also use strong words that transmit actions, like “get this ebook for free”, and use the cover of the ebook as the image.
Keep your form simple and direct. You want the readers to sign up to the email list, but you don’t have to make the form sparkle. You can be outstanding without being an eyesore. After all your intention is to convince the potential client to give you their email, then, don’t scare them out with too much.
11. Have unique content
First of all, the visitors found you among several other businesses online. They got interested in your business. It can be because of the product you are offering, the comments you have on the blog pages, or because they found the content to be in their interest.
You already got their attention, now it’s time to keep this attention and convince the lead to convert and sign-up for the email list. So the subscription form appears on the screen. It showed up at the right time and has a compelling CTA. And just like that, you got a new subscription.
What makes your business unique? What is the business’s purpose? Why should anyone subscribe to its newsletter?
That’s why the first action is to create great content that can also be used as a promise of what the visitor can get by signing up for the newsletter.
No matter what you are selling, as long as you know how to sell it. Having great content on the blog is what is going to help you to get more leads and traffic. Your content is your best sales strategy. Be different and better than other businesses. Be unique.
12. Create a sense of urgency
Sometimes the person that reaches the landing page is looking for something very specific, like some toolkit or ebook. You have this tool and are offering it in your blog posts, but not on any landing page. It would be easier to reach out if you have a landing page that can immediately get a sign up for those rare cases.
But, even if the person is not looking for a particular feature, you can convince them to sign up by adding urgency to the CTA. Simply adding the words “Now” or “Today” can be convincing enough to make the lead subscribe their email. You can also create the sensation of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) with “Don’t miss out our special offers” or “Get ahead in your industry with this ebook”.
As an example of a convincing CTA, you can produce a quiz to test the visitor’s knowledge on the subject. They will get curious and, then, with the results you can offer your free tool, as in the ebook example, and ask for visitor’s email so you can send it. Don’t forget to add an opt-in to ask their permission so you can send them emails.
13. Use scroll box
Imagine your lead is reading your latest blog post. It is the last one of a blog series you’ve been working on. You have a lot of content on that subject and even build a kit with all the information and data you’ve collected. You have gathered this great material and want to sell it. How would you do it?
You can offer a free sample of this kit you made. That is a good strategy. But then, how to promote it? In our example, the visitor is in one of the pages that have a relation to your material. Set a subscription form to appear at a certain point of the content. It can be after they scroll enough to be sure of their interest in knowing more.
You can add your free sample on the subscription form and ask for their email. That’s a useful strategy because you are placing a CTA at the moment when the lead is ready to take action, facilitating the conversion. And you are convincing them with the word “free”.
14. Use social media
It can help with building the email list when you share the subscription form on social media posts, targeting the followers that the business has on it.
You have an excellent tool where people already know your business and want to hear more from it. The chances of you increasing the email list is higher on those platforms than by publishing content without any further action.
Remember that people that follow you enjoy your content, so, chances are they have an interest in getting to know your business better.
You can also do the inverse way and place CTA on the email you send to guide the subscribers to follow the business accounts on social media. That way those that want to be more connected to your business can have a chance to do so.
15. Use email segmentation
You have people that found your business for different reasons and can sign up from your segmented landing pages. It is useful to separate the subscribers in groups of interest. That way you can organize the subscribers into their preferences and buying behavior.
Segmentation is important to retain the subscribers and, if you do it in the wrong way, you can lose them. You can see by the page from the new subscriber is sign-in in which stage they are on the buyer’s journey. If they are ready to purchase you can offer a discount coupon. But if they are still trying to understand their need, the best action is to offer them more content. By segmenting, you can place the best CTA for each occasion, increasing the chances of the lead making the decision to sign up.
Segmenting the subscribers is getting to know the audience and for whom you’re speaking to. That is one action to build a great newsletter that converts leads into paid customers.
Start capturing more leads with your subscription form and build a new form right now.
Top 6 Email Marketing benefits
Email marketing has several benefits and, as a marketer, you must be aware of them. An example is the fact that email marketing has high cost-effectiveness. It is the most profitable direct marketing strategy you can choose for your business. Other benefits can be:
You can use email marketing as feedback
You can use email marketing to conduct feedback surveys and get to know the audience better. Remember to offer an incentive so the audience can decide to take the survey.
After all, when was the last time you answered a survey just because you felt like doing it? I’m sure the answer is close to never. Your clients are the same. But, with the right encouragement, you can gather the data you need. This way you are going to improve your personalized content which increases the chances to convert leads into paid customers.
You can boost your sales
If you are not using email marketing yet pay close attention to this benefit. Marketers have found a 760% revenue increase with segmented email campaigns. You can announce in the email campaign products or services your business is offering. Don’t forget you can always use email marketing to give special offers to the clients.
You can create a channel of communication
It is always important to communicate with customers. And email marketing is an excellent tool you have to create such communication. When the audience knows they can communicate back, the business can develop a channel that assists in establishing loyalty to the brand.
When writing the email marketing content always remember the last email you received and ask yourself “did I appreciate it?”. This exercise facilitates the process of creating email marketing to generate engagement from your audience. It also can be a great help to build the subscription form.
You can promote the brand
Email marketing can connect you straight to customers. This offers a great approach to divulge the brand with its products and also the business’ values and mission. Big brands do it when they send their email marketing. They don’t only sell their products but also an idea, sometimes even a personality. And email marketing is one way to do so, transmitting everything your business represents.
You can bring traffic to your website
Email marketing is one of the mechanisms you can use to improve your SEO techniques. That’s because you are sending periodic content straight to the leads that they can find interesting. Every time a lead clicks-through the email content it generates more traffic to the website.
And how do you convince the lead to open the email and click the link? By using two personalization techniques: the first is using the subscriber’s first name and the second is by segmenting the audience.
Then you can place a call-to-action and convince the reader to click on the sent link, leading straight to the business’s website. It is great for when you have new content, or even to increase traffic to old evergreen content.
You own the email list you build
Building an email list is one of the most important strategies for marketers because you own the list you build. Meanwhile, social media followers and contacts belong to the platform.
Having an email list that you built is an effective way to reach out to the leads and convert them into paid customers. You can interact in the simplest way with the audience and offer personalized content and improving sales.
How to profit with email marketing
You must have already realized that emails are very important for marketing campaigns. But, how to actually profit by sending emails?
It is important to know that the size of the email list is not important. What matters is the relationship that the business builds with the client.
The email is a more intimate channel of communication. It is not like advertising on social media, where you have no control of the content and you have to build a campaign for everyone. Email marketing is also a great preference among marketers, being the most important channel of marketing for 91% of marketers.
Few tips for revenue using email marketing:
Treat the audience as human beings
People who are receiving and reading the emails that are sent are people with desires, fears, and dreams. The emails can have a better return when you remember you are writing to another human being.
Write simple emails
Send text-based emails to clients. According to Hubspot, the more images an email has, the less clickthrough it has. In other words, the cool gif you made is not always the best idea. That’s the importance of getting to know the audience. Analyze each situation to be sure of how many images you can use.
Use personality
We talked a bit about this already when we talked about segmentation. Each one of the customers that signs up has a different personality. Send emails that correspond to that personality to increase the clickthrough rate.
Choose the best time to send the email
People usually read their emails from their phones during breaks from work. The time that has the best return is 11 am. Use this in your favor, and try to send emails around this time.
Send more emails
Create consistency when sending emails. Choose to send it weekly or daily. Maybe you can personalize once a week and send automatic emails on a daily basis. It is a logical thing, after all, if you are sending more emails the bigger are your chances of clickthrough. It all depends on what the business is about.
Allow conversation
Let the audience speak about the emails you are sending. Send a survey to get to know the audience better. That assists to create the relationship we’ve talked about.
Make the email personalized
The personalization can be as simple as adding the name of those you are sending the email but can also be even deeper and give specific content. By only adding the client’s name on the subject line you can reach a higher rate of clickthrough than if you don’t. To be more precise, it has a 26% chance of the email being opened when the client’s first name is added.
How to build an email list Subscription form
MightyForms has several free form templates for you to choose from. And you can always create your own form from scratch. This choice depends entirely on the business preference of work and on the process of creation.
You can edit the form to be exactly what your business needs. Do the adjustments that are necessary, change the background, the typography, the colors and the words to adapt the form to your branding. It has to be consistent with what the business stands for.
Follow all the tips we gave in this article so you can increase your email list, and never forget you are dealing with other human beings, so, try to be human in your form.
When you finish building the form, add all the features MightyForms provide to make your job lighter, and then, spread the news. Embed the form on the landing pages and blog posts, share it on social media and start collecting email signatures.
Watch your business grow with a few simple actions.
Referral URL for your newsletter
The referral URL is a form tracking feature. It lets you know the URL where people filled out the subscription form. It also shows which one is the most popular, the one with more conversions.
Remember when we talked about segmentation? This feature is one tool that is also useful for your business when you have to know its audience. When using it you are able to segment by preferences the subscribers and send the right content to each of them.
How to use Referral URL: To use this feature with MightyForms is quite simple. When you have your form embedded on the business website you go to your dashboard on MightyForms and select the form you want to track. Click on “Edit Columns” and switch to ‘On’ the option for Referral URL.
And just like that, you can start tracking all your forms.
Custom URL for the form
Imagine you have built this great form, it has the right design and has all the features to assist in the collecting data. But, when it’s time to share it, it has this huge URL that is very confusing, which can spoil all your efforts to build an email list.
To avoid this kind of problem, MightyForms offers a feature that allows creating the form own URL, that has a connection with the form purpose. This way each form can have its unique URL, avoiding any cause of misunderstanding.
Creating the custom URL that carries your brand on it is easy. Before sharing the form you select to edit the URL. Type the URL you think is best for that form, save and share it. See how easy it is?
Now you can have a useful URL made exclusive for that form, that can look like this one:
Use Logic Rules to get specific information
When you are building subscription forms you are making it simple and straight to its point, that is how to get more subscribers.
But you can add the newest feature by MightyForms: the Logic Rules. This is a free tool made to help you and improve all your forms.
Maybe you can build the subscription form to be like a survey. First, you ask if the person wants to subscribe, and, depending on the answer, you give a second option, to confirm that decision.
Improve and grow your business with forms
No matter the size of the email list that the business has right now. You can see it getting bigger and with an increasing rate of clickthrough by following our tips. Forms can always get you more leads. Add the right CTA to the target audience, follow our tips, and watch your business gain more customers.
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