3 Fun Ways To Build An Active Email List

Email marketing: it’s the overlooked darling of the marketing world. In addition to offering a higher ROI than virtually any other type of marketing (an average of $38 for every $1 spent), email is widely-used, beloved by customers, and ultra-effective for your business. Before you can dive in with email marketing, though, you need a well-developed email list. Building that, though, can be easier said than done. Here’s what you need to know:

Email Marketing, by the Numbers

If you’re going to build a healthy email list, you have to understand the why behind what you’re doing. Why is email marketing so worth it? What makes it so productive? Here are a few stats from one of the most prominent email marketing gurus out there - HubSpot:

• 93% of B2B marketers use email to share their content
• By the end of this year, there will be 5.6 billion active email accounts on the web
• 83% per cent of B2B companies use digital newsletters in their content marketing programs
• 40% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are some of their most successful types of content marketing materials
• U.S. companies will spend over 350 million dollars on email marketing in 2019
• 46% of all email opens happen on mobile platforms
• 35% of professionals check email on a mobile device
• iPhone is the most popular mobile platform for reading emails, with 29 per cent of all mobile opens occurring on an iPhone. Gmail is a close runner-up, with 27% of opens
• 73% of millennials prefer email communications from businesses
• More than 50% of U.S. respondents check their email account ten or more times each day, and most customers prefer to receive an email (vs. mail) from companies
• 99% of consumers check their email daily
• 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention
• 59% of respondents say marketing emails help them make purchasing decisions
• Emails related to hobbies have an open rate of almost 28%
• >59% of marketers say email is their most significant source of ROI.

As you can see, email marketing is massively productive. Focusing on it now is a great way to help your business become as productive and powerful as possible. First things first, though: the email list…

3 Proven Ways to Start Building Your Email List Now

Your email list is like the foundation of a house: it provides stability and structure, which everything else needs to move forward. With that in mind, the quality of your email list is what spells the difference between a successful email marketing campaign and something that falls flat on its face. Fortunately, these three steps will help you build an outstanding email list you’ll be proud of:

1. Add a Personalized CTA to Each Landing Page

Your landing pages serve an essential purpose for your company. They give customers a centralized location for knowledge and conversion and provide the information customers need to thrive within your company. Unfortunately, most landing pages aren’t nearly as productive as they could be, where their CTAs are updated just a bit. According to HubSpot, merely adding a personalized CTA to a landing page can boost the view-to-submission rate by about 42%. The reason for this is simple: people visiting your blog post or page are looking for specific information or invitations, and personalized CTAs deliver those. 

2.  Start a Newsletter and Share it on Social

If you subscribe to a newsletter like Tim Ferriss’s “5-Bullet Friday,” you know how valuable and engaging an excellent publication like this can be. If you have yet to start a newsletter for your company, now is a great time to do it. Even if you don’t currently have a long list of email subscribers, creating a valuable piece of content - like an email list - is an excellent way to engage would-be subscribers and give them a chance to hop on board.  Once you’ve started the newsletter, go ahead and share it on your social platforms. You can also add a link to sign-up to your email signature.

3. Create a Sense of Urgency Around Signing Up

Using a sense of urgency is an old trick in the marketing world. It’s especially applicable, though, when it comes to your email marketing.  In addition to adding strategically placed and highly personalized CTAs to your landing pages, encourage clients to sign up for your email list immediately. You want them to feel like they’re missing out on something if they don’t sign up right away. Once they do, reinforce that understanding by offering a high-quality piece of content - like an ebook or a guide - immediately.  Another helpful tactic is to tease the content of your newsletter. For example, you might say, “Get best-in-class marketing tips: sign up now!”

Building Your Best Email List

Email marketing, when done correctly, can be a significant boon for your company. Before you can do that, though, you’ve got to master the process of building your email list. This, of course, can be easier said than done. Fortunately, following the tips laid out in this post is a great way to start building momentum around your email list sign-ups, and lay the foundation for your long-term email marketing.