5 Fast And Fair Ways To Build Your List

In this blog post I am going to give you 5 fast and fair ways to build your email marketing list. By using this guide you will be enticing website viewers to convert to become subscribers of your email marketing list.

You don’t want to trick subscribers into subscribing to your list only to end up unsubscribing after your first email when they realize your content is not relevant to them. Or even worse to make a complaint to their ESP, which can land you in trouble if you constantly get complaints.

Offer a free guide or discount code

Everyone wants something for nothing so offering a free guide or a discount code on a purchase will definitely help grow your email list. By offering a free guide or discount code you can use your welcome email to provide the new subscriber with this discount code or downloadable guide.

The great thing with analytics is that you can track in your CMS system how much the discount code is being used, as well as how many times your downloadable guide has been downloaded and see how effective this is.

Share your latest newsletter & provide signup link via social media

Most email marketing companies provide a shortened link to your email campaign, so post this on your social media accounts to show your followers what they are missing out on. With this you should also provide a link to where they can subscribe to your email list, making it easy for them to subscribe!

Add forward to a friend function and many social share options

By adding a forward to friend option in your email campaigns current subscribers can share your email with other people who may find it relevant. MailChimp have other social media share options like sharing to Facebook, Twitter or GooglePlus to name a few. MailChimp will then track these stats for you to view in each campaign to view how many times the campaign has been shared.

Collect email addresses at point of sale? Then ask them to subscribe

Add an opt in option when customers make a purchase from you so they have the option to subscribe to your newsletter.

Make sure you are honest and don’t trick them to subscribing with a purchase, ensure this is clear and this option is manually changed by the customer and not automatically added. By doing this automatically you could start to have a lot of complaints for spamming your customers.

Collect email addresses at your next event or marketing show

If you run events or trade shows use the old school method of a pen and paper list for people to sign up for your newsletter.

I have even seen examples of companies running competitions at trade shows using a glass jar where you post your business card in to subscribe and enter. Winners would be picked at random for the prize and of course you can unsubscribe at any time.

…one for luck!

Website pop-up subscribe box

By using a pop up box on your website you can try to temp your website viewers into subscribing to your newsletter. This is good because the viewer is already on your site and showing an interest in your service or product.

Just be aware that with the pop up option this can sometimes be annoying if it keeps coming up and a customer is just trying to get some information from your website, or even an existing subscriber is on your website and the box keeps popping up!