Why & How You Should Grow Your Mailing List
With social media channels like Facebook and Instagram making it harder for your businesses to be heard, building an email list of your loyal customers and followers is essential. There has never been a more important time to look at why email lists are so important for your business, so we’re spilling all of our secrets to help you build an epic email list and engage your customers on a more personal level.
Why Should You Have An Email Marketing Strategy?
Email lists are a crucial component for content distribution. Unlike other platforms, email lists are privately owned by your company, meaning you have complete and total access to the email addresses in your list. Having your own list means that you are not restricted by the terms and conditions of third-party providers and algorithms when it comes to reaching your subscribers.
It’s a low-cost marketing strategy. Email marketing through regular newsletters and updates is a generally low-cost activity for businesses, yet it has the potential to yield fantastic results.
Encourages personal communication between you and your customers. Using a mailing list allows brands to contact and reach out to current or potential new customers monthly, fortnightly or even weekly. This ensures the brand is constantly front of mind for the customer, whether that’s with a regular newsletter, subscriber discounts or information that simply adds value.
It is now even easier to observe data and insights from your email marketing efforts. Data on how many emails were opened, how many people clicked a link embedded in an email and even if the email made it to the correct inbox at all is available at your fingertips. This allows for improvements in targeting based on customer engagement and response. We use MailChimp for our email marketing and there are a bunch of analytics available to dive deeper into what works best for you.
Email marketing allows businesses to segment and tag their email lists and target a particular group of subscribers, which is more powerful and effective than targeting the entire list. For example, if you’re an online fashion retailer, you can tag the specific customers who have look at or purchased shoes so you can send them (and only them) a targeted email about trends in footwear, new products available or a special discount code to encourage them to make a repeat purchase.
Emails allow for better “word of mouth” marketing. Like social media marketing, email marketing enables word of mouth marketing to flourish as subscribers in your list share your content with friends, family or colleagues. Word of mouth marketing is the best kind of referral your business can get, so create content that your subscribers will want to share around.
Now you know why mailing lists are a great asset for your business, you need to discover how to organically grow your list of loyal and engaged subscribers. To communicate how awesome your product or service is, you need a solid email marketing list that does all of the hard work for you. Here are our tips to help you grow your list.
How To Grow Your Mailing List
Offer a discount or coupon code. Have you ever seen a pop up that says “join our mailing list and receive 10% off” when you land on an eCommerce website? Did you do it? Providing a discount code or an exclusive offering (free shipping is a popular one) is a great strategy to grow your mailing list and reward your loyal customers at the same time.
Produce good content. Keep your readers engaged with great content, offers they can’t refuse and engagements they want to share with their network. This will keep your subscription rates high and simultaneously reduce unsubscribes.
Give something for free to new subscribers. Whether it is advice, a digital download (more on that below), free shipping or a physical product, give something to your followers for free with no strings attached (except the email address of course) and start adding value to their lives.
Create a fabulous opt-in product. Digital e-products are a great way to give something to your community instantly when they subscribe to your mailing list. Depending on your product/service and industry, there are many options when it comes to creating a fabulous opt-in product to send to your subscribers. To get the inspiration flowing, a couple of ideas include an eBook, checklist, how-to tutorial, step-by-step guide or an online course that teaches them something new about your industry.
Make it easy to opt-in. Keep your email sign up form prominent and/or easily accessible on your social media platforms and website. Ensure that it is easily found by customers so there is minimal effort involved in subscribing. When there are multiple steps to the process, potential subscribers will loose interest and think twice about whether they want to subscribe. To help gather email addresses quickly and easily, consider using a pop-up on your website.
Be regular with content. Keep it as regular and scheduled as possible, so your customers know when to expect a communication from you. Whether it be a weekly newsletter or a monthly special, give your consumers something to look forward to every time and keep it regular to build interest and engagement.
Do you have any email marketing tips to share? Are you focusing on building your email list right now? As always, leave your thoughts in the comments below.
